November sunshine

 We're in the part of the year where the sun acts like an ex who ran into you in public and can't get away fast enough. If you see them at all, they're hurrying away, hiding behind anything convenient: a hill, trees, their friends the clouds, who block you. If you do get a clear shot, you'll get stabbed in the eyes just for looking in the general direction.

You knew it was coming months ago. They started sending love notes to that other hemisphere in mid summer. By late September you both knew it was over. They'd been spending less and less time with you, consigning you fully to the darkness of true night, and casting long shadows during their grudging daylight appearances.

Hold on for a few months. In only another month after this one, the notes will start to come your way, easier and easier to read. You have to get used to being a summer romance, year after year for as many years as you get.

The Democratic Party's accidental 4-D chess

 The Democratic Party has been a consistent disappointment at least since Lyndon Johnson buried us balls-deep in the Vietnam War. I mean, they've had their moments, but even after Watergate the party couldn't get the White House back for more than one term between 1972 and 1992. The Democrats did control Congress until the mid 1990s, but that power crumbled as well.

The Vietnam War was very much a bipartisan endeavor, from all the way back when it was our French allies getting forced out of their colony in Indochina. But it became the Republican Party's problem when the Nixon administration viewed it as not a burden but a joy when they took over from the departing Johnson administration. They became the party of war, of the military-industrial complex, of heavy handed reactions to protest under leaders like California governor Ronald Reagan.

The Democratic Party pivoted to an anti-war stance, or at least a portion of it did. It had already stressed itself by passing civil rights legislation. Now it dallied with being "soft on Communism." This was the era when you could buy bumper stickers that had a picture of a peace sign with the caption "footprint of the American chicken." Yep, even then, masculine virtue was linked to fighting in any war assigned to you, to prove that your physical courage -- or the insecure need to project its image -- far outweighed your moral courage.

Regardless of the party in power, our country made social progress on multiple fronts, as well as enacting environmental protections that addressed some of the more obvious pollution and degradation effectively enough to make industry organize politically and economically against government. As elections became more and more just sales campaigns, and society grew more noisy and complicated, voters were easier and easier to distract and divert while powerful financial interests focused on taking control.

A philosophical basis isn't really a detailed plan, but generation after generation of Republican politicians advanced the idea that the rich should be allowed to become richer. Because every American liked the idea of being rich, having seen the freedom, luxury, and leisure that the top tier enjoyed, even on the hippie side of the aisle no one seemed averse to making a pile if they could. During the dark age when a Democrat couldn't get within sniffing distance of the presidency, this embrace of a prosperity gospel seeped in to saturate them. The neoliberal was born.

Mind you, I witnessed most of this as a dipshit kid, and later as a dipshit adult. I always had this vision of a country and a world where everyone had enough, no one had too much, and we were all fine with it. I mean, how stupid is that? It seemed to me then, and still does, that it requires the least wasted effort on cruelty and the artificial suffering of war, for the most return on the true simple pleasures of life. As far as I could tell, I was nearly alone in this belief. There was absolutely no political machinery devoted to something so benign. But if anyone was going to pay it lip service it was probably Democrats. It was a thread in the successful campaign of Bill Clinton to finally unseat the Republican fuddy-duddies who acted like grandparents and made our government smell like mothballs and cordite.

Of course the Democrats couldn't break the Republican hold on the Oval Office without the leverage of corporate money. Someone has to pay for the media saturation. So lip service was all we got, along with incremental tidbits.

The partisan divide is the reason so many voters identify as unaffiliated. Shallow observers identify this as "the middle," where the wishy washy majority loll in contemptible political apathy, but it's more than that. It's a diverse ecosystem of assorted malcontents. We are all afflicted by the same foul forces from above. And here's where the accidental 4-D chess comes in.

There's some chess involved in governing, but what is chess anyway? It's a game with known pieces on a finite board. Seriously, after all these years with so many documented games, why doesn't every game between Grand Masters end in a draw? Any top level player knows where the pieces go and has gamed out every possibility. But in real life, a player blinks, forgets, or is successfully distracted for just long enough. Politics and government take place on an almost infinite board with many more pieces, none of them reliably under direct control. Philosophies that stress obedience to authority have an advantage keeping their pieces moving where the plan requires, so authoritarianism has come to dominate. But the combination of Republican centralized authority and Democratic structural instability may finally have pissed off enough of that reachable rabble of independent minds to get them to mutiny and take control of the one party still up for grabs and publicly devoted to the general welfare. The brilliant, accidental move by establishment Democrats has been finally to demolish themselves and let the next wave climb the rubble to plant a flag and build something better.

Some of us have been waiting a long time for a politically viable number of people to catch up. Maybe they finally have. The party label only matters because branding still matters. The Democrats were the party of slavery in the 1850s and the party of civil rights in the 1960s. The Republicans were the party of abolition in the 1860s and the party of cronyism and corruption in the Gilded Age. But we're comfortable with the names. I don't care what you call it. Just get busy proving that life really will be better when the lowest are lifted and the highest are hauled down a few notches.

It's never going to happen like the flip of a switch. Progressive activists today hiss angrily that the Democrats never really intended to fix anything, because they so seldom succeed. This narrow-minded perpetuation of the blame game betrays a youthful naivete about human nature and the political headwinds that nominal members of the same party face in their highly varied home regions. Democrats have been the less popular party for so long that they are always more worried that a backlash will whisk them out of office or that a "blue wave" will roll back leaving them flopping helplessly on parched sand before they can spawn a new generation. 

Ignorance and malice always move with great confidence. We are by far a country of bystanders when it comes to elected office. Snappy put-downs resonate with us as an audience, because most of us have never had to try to bring together disparate factions to enact large-scale policies against well-funded resistance. The oversimplification gives these darts a sharp point and a sticking barb. Cynicism masquerades as wisdom.

Cynics are disappointed optimists. Don't let the bitterness fool you.

As always, success comes down to gathering the votes. Candidates and their organizations have thousands and millions of cats to herd to get everyone to go to the polls at all and then to make the desired choice. Then the actual legislating starts, with more votes to wrangle from officials gathered together from all across the sprawling country. Each one comes with their own set of leashes and tripwires installed by everyone who had a hand in getting them there. Some of the strings are clearly visible, some are not. Even the ones not obviously owned by some power bloc are answerable to the voters back home, some of them placid, others highly volatile.

Building the resistance movement

 The No Kings demonstrations on October 18th stirred up backlash from the right and left. You can find many examples for yourself in written postings and in videos from the many aspiring and established influencers.

Firebrands on the left want to fulfill the regime's wish for violence. Bullies on the right have been looking forward to violence for decades. Russia and China would be on board. The real losers would be the American people, no matter who "won."

Wiser voices have reinforced that the demonstrations of opposition encourage others who may more quietly oppose the regime to feel more confident and become more active. They energize the already committed. They show the regime and its supporters that their actions and policies are unpopular.

Because the regime has many fascistic qualities, and a visible percentage of their base openly displays Nazi imagery and expresses Nazi sympathies, resistance discourse has looked for parallels in the rise of the National Socialists in Germany, their use of power once they had it, and the opposition they faced within their own country and, ultimately, from the combined military forces.

The sad story of Sophie Scholl and the German anti-Nazi White Rose movement inspires many with her courage and tragic end. She and her older brother Hans, along with Christoph Probst, were beheaded by guillotine after a show trial in 1943. Their heads were cut off. They were young people in their 20s. Shoved into an execution device, and thunk.

Their movement and murder have motivated many in the years afterward to honor their sacrifice, even though it failed at the time. As I read the story, they weren't on a suicide mission when they set out leaflets for their fellow university students to find. It was just bad luck that their littering -- tossing their last 100 leaflets from an upper floor into a large space, just as one of the people charged with keeping that space tidy happened to be passing through -- spurred that person to chase them down and turn them over to the Gestapo.

Human sacrifice is a terrible recruiting tool. Christianity didn't really take off until it became the state religion of Rome instead of a great way to get nailed to a wooden fixture or get to meet a bunch of lions face to face.

As for the ultimate defeat and removal of the Nazis from power, that required years of military action, and the deaths of millions. The time for internal resistance against the Nazis to work was way back in the 1930s, when they seemed like a good bet for Germany. Even Hans Scholl and Christoph Probst were Hitler Youth and served in the German army. Political resistance before it was too late just wasn't going to happen.

The circumstances in Germany were not the same as what we have now in the United States. Political resistance has a very good chance here, without the strong risk of summary execution for those who speak out and act up. So far, anyway... Which leads to the other half of the comparison to de-Nazification in Germany: the world war itself.

Hitler's big mistake was in pushing for more and more territory. If he had stayed more or less within his own borders, he could have committed atrocities to his heart's content. Other nations might condemn, but they wouldn't interfere. It would be like Russia today, where political opposition faces arrest and/or unfortunate accidents, elections are for show, and everyone knows who is and always will be in charge. The German citizens might not be extremely happy, but they would get by.

Even when the United States was finally dragged into the war by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the armed forces didn't magically spring into full size and strength on Dec. 8. Over the course of the war, 61 percent of the people who served were drafted. They served with valor, but they waited to be called, and probably hoped that they would not be needed. That wasn't recruiting. Patriotic films and whatnot served not so much to trigger a flood of volunteers as to take the sting out of inevitable induction.

Moving forward in time to the civil rights movement of the 1950s and '60s, there again the front line people faced injury and death at the hands of adversaries who would in most cases never face punishment or, if they did so, it was so many years later that it was a formal gesture at best.

Every murderer gets away with the crime. Even if the killer is caught, tried, convicted, and serves a sentence, the victim is still dead. This unfortunate inequity is even worse when the killer has gotten to live a long and prosperous life. In the case of unrepentant racists, their legacy is the continuing culture of bigotry that shows no sign of just dying out on its own. Younger generations aren't born at the highest level of enlightenment. They're born empty, blank, to be filled in by whoever is around them.

Humanity faces a huge challenge now, as every neglected area of concern reaches a crisis at the same time. Economic disparity, gender bias, racism, environmental disregard, and general paranoia all need to be addressed. They can't be addressed by one single thread of appeal, because not enough people connect the dots to get the picture. All are related, but have been treated as separate for eons. Our species needs group therapy, but avoid getting homogenized into a bland blend or forced into a mold under restrictive authority. On the other hand, restrictive authority has the power to act quickly to respond to the crises that can't wait for the slowest students to reach consensus. Like, the planet is baking right now. Resources are being devoured right now. At least two factions of super wealthy power mongers have different -- but both unpleasant -- visions of the future that they are poised to impose on the rest of us.

How much should one person or one generation worry about the generalized future? You live, you die, you're gone. Maybe you think you care about your children and grandchildren, but once you're dead you can't hear them complain anymore. The planet itself doesn't care whether we're here, or even how we treat it. What reason does anyone have not to live completely selfishly to the fullest extent of their skills and budget? That logic exists at some level inside every human mind. "Why should I care?" You have to make a damn good case. Find out what motivates each individual with whom you interact. Not too many of them will be very enthusiastic about getting their head smashed like John Lewis, or get murdered by racists just for trying to sign up voters, or guillotined for a principled stand against one of the most evil regimes that ever rose.

Peace is most definitely possible, a productive peace with a high degree of personal freedom of expression and movement. All it requires is universal acceptance that it is the greatest good. Sacrifice in a case like that consists of mild things like forgoing seconds on dessert rather than submitting to lynching or state execution. A simple concept but a surprisingly hard sell.

Edited petition to Brooke Rollins

You probably get these too: emails asking you to contact various government officials to ask them to be decent human beings or good stewards of the environment or some crap like that. If they were either of those things, we wouldn't have to petition them. So in the part that I can edit I usually try to reach them where they are rather than call them to where the petition sponsor thinks they should be.

The most recent example is a petition to Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, asking her to release the contingency funds to cover SNAP benefits during the government shutdown. The suggested language was conciliatory and deferential to human rights and values of which this regime has not demonstrated a single scrap. So I took my usual approach.

To: Brooke Rollins, Secretary of Agriculture

 At some point, your party's top-down approach to ruling has to become obvious, as it does now in this cold move to use Americans in need as hostages to coerce the Democratic Party to surrender to your party's overall plan to make life more precarious for the working class.

Your party's policies will increase mortality among children, the elderly, and the disabled, three groups that represent little value to a wealthy elite. Children have some utility as future workers, but only if they are sturdy enough to do the work required of them before they are discarded by your system when they get too old or injured. A good example here is how the Republicans pay lip service to military personnel and veterans, while cutting funding for support systems after their service. As for the elderly, just die already, am I right? And the disabled... they never had anything to contribute in the first place. Life ain't the Special Olympics. Eventually, it will be legal to just leave a defective baby out on a frozen hillside to die, won't it? Or maybe part it out for useful organs first. Just because some parts don't work doesn't mean that no parts work. All that lies a little further down the road, but we're at a critical fork right now.

Preventing 42 million Americans—including about 16 million children and nearly 7 million pregnant and postpartum women, infants, and young children—from being able to buy groceries seems unnecessarily cruel and dangerous until you consider that it's a first step toward necessary culling of useless people. The tough will survive. Anyone not tough enough to endure the test is just dead weight on society anyway. Am I getting this right? You know I am.

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) has an emergency contingency fund, and experts indicate that the US Department of Agriculture is able to use this or other funds to keep food on people’s tables. Or you can siphon off the funds to pay for CBP officers, golf trips, and Gatsby parties. Maybe pay to ship senior military commanders in for another pep talk by Major Hegseth over at the Pentagon.

According to your own shutdown contingency plan, the agency has a reserve of funds, which can be used to pay SNAP benefits directly. In fact, the SNAP Appropriation law’s own language makes the contingency reserve broadly available for program operations. Even in President Trump’s first administration, SNAP benefits were paid out during the government shutdown in late 2018 through early 2019—the longest recorded shutdown in American history—without interruption. You can come through again or admit that was a mistake, a moment of weakness you won't repeat.

I now return you to the earnest entreaty that assumes that you have a core of humanity that can be appealed to. Who knows? Maybe they're right. Surprise me.

I call on you to do the right thing for the American people and put politics aside to fund SNAP benefits so that millions of families can eat. You have the power to stop needless suffering and children going hungry. Please use it.

Sincerely,

(Your information here)