Listening to the interview that Chris Hayes did with Hillary Clinton, last night, the depth of the crisis in American democracy and the place that the corrupt American media played in bringing that about was constantly on my mind. Anyone who listened to Hillary Clinton, comparing the choice of a majority of voters chose but who the United States Constitution prevented from becoming president favoring Donald Trump and doesn't see that the election of 2017 was as a disaster is either corrupt or they are an idiot. Such idiots pretend that the system can be made to work when it has worked, throughout the history of the United States to thwart egalitarian democracy and morality. Unfortunately, such idiocy is endemic to pretty much the entire media, the legal system, academia and pretty much any of the institutions that might save us from catastrophe. It is also endemic in large parts of other institutions, including many, though far from all of the churches which should be in the thick of asserting morality but which, in too many cases, are too polite and too cowed and too interested in their property to do what they are alleged to do.
After the 2004 election, following close on to the 2000 Supreme Court putsch which gave us what up to then was the worst administration of our history I wrote a number of times on the catastrophe that would result if the electoral system was not protected from corruption. Not much was done and it was the corruptions then obvious and some which became more obvious in the past decade that brought us here. The use of computers, especially those which don't rely on a hand marked ballot, the use of social media by the crime boss, Vladimir Putin - announcing an open invitation for all manner of billionaire criminals that our elections are open to such corruption, etc. none of those are likely to be fixed and in the unlikely event that legislation passes that fixes it, it will be challenged with Wall Street, computer billionaire oligarch money and the Republican-fascist majority on the Supreme Court will do what they have been doing, knocking those protections down in the name of "free speech". Of course the official, quasi-lefty legal con jobs, such as the ACLU will enter on the side of such "free speech" even though we have now had decades of proof that such "free speech" enables the enemies of democracy and equality and morality.
I feel like I live in a nation of zombies who don't see the disaster that is going on all around us, ruled by the most corrupt cynics whose manipulation of an effective margin of them is locked in by the very things that we have been suckered into supporting. That some of those zombies believe themselves to be superior to the others might feel good to them but it is demonstrably not the case.
I don't know or expect that Hillary Clinton would agree with me on this, I don't know if she would appreciate me writing about the depth of the catastrophe we are not on the verge of entering but are in the midst of and the part that the First Amendment - as read by current "free speech" advocacy, the "free press" the "rule of law" and the other alleged ornaments of the Constitution have played in that. I have written recently that I've been looking at the words of James Madison and others and how the very institutions and Constitutional provisions they explicitly put in place to protect and defend slavery are the very ones which the Supreme Court, other courts, legal scholarship and "civil liberties" advocates have used to bring us to the place where our elections are vulnerable to being ratfucked by Vladimir Putin, the Kochs, the Mercers and other enemies of the American People using the media to propagandize the vulnerable, using computers to analyze and target the Electoral College, state and local voter systems which should, by law and common sense, NOT BE OPEN TO THE INTERNET OR TO ROBOTIC MANIPULATION
Playing 18th century reenactment should be kept for the people whose concept of history includes fancy dress and recreation, it should be entirely out of our legal system and the decisions of a modern democracies highest court. Pretending that modern, mass media, the internet, computers and sophisticated and criminal use of all of those to thwart egalitarian democracy is the business of the products of our elite law schools and those of them who become members of courts but democracy cannot stand with the status quo or even any of the alternatives popularly presented do defend us against that corruption. The idiocy of the past, professional reformers is proven by the history of things getting steadily worse for the entire history that such groups as Common Cause, The ACLU, etc. have been in existence. That style and kind of advocacy has failed as abjectly as the intellectual bases of them have been proven mistaken or, in many cases, just plain stupid and even some of their most eminent figures have made nice with the enemies of democracy. That has failed, its failure is proven over and over again as things get steadily worse. The same can be said for the media of the alleged left - the Nation magazine under the control of Katrina Vanden Heuvel, who bought her position with her inherited wealth, deserves to be considered the emblem of that entirely predictable failure.
I would caution the people of Germany, of Canada, of other places where they don't have our ridiculous cult of the 18th century slaveholder founders that they should take the United States as an example of what happens to a democracy under the modern style of attack which our congenitally corrupt and entirely outmoded constitution even under an official cult of "freedom of speech". Any "freedom of speech" which doesn't distinguish between the the truth and the danger of lies is, from now on, going to contain the disease of its own, inevitable destruction. When you add to that the cult of materialist scientism which denies the reality of morals, the destruction will only be the faster and for the worse. And that materialist corruption can happen even as people make a pretense of religious belief, I listened to the footage of Trumps Nuremberg-Alabama rally, too. If the worst happens and we survive a nuclear exchange brought on by the 2017 election, it will likely be too late to make democracy work.
I think this is the most pessimistic thing I've ever written, but I'm sincerely more pessimistic than I've ever been. I think it's quite possible that only divine intervention will save us, now. My advice is to pray and resist and understand.
"It seems to me that to organize on the basis of feeding people or righting social injustice and all that is very valuable. But to rally people around the idea of modernism, modernity, or something is simply silly. I mean, I don't know what kind of a cause that is, to be up to date. I think it ultimately leads to fashion and snobbery and I'm against it." Jack Levine: January 3, 1915 – November 8, 2010 LEVEL BILLIONAIRES OUT OF EXISTENCE
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Just came across a reference to a book (https://www.amazon.com/Black-Rights-White-Wrongs-Transgressing/dp/0190245425) that apparently argues the racism of Enlightenment liberalism is a feature, not a bug. You can read the precis of it at that link. My seminary education tells me the fix is in radical Xianity, not just in "occupying liberalism." Gotta stop re-arranging the deck chairs and jump off the ship.
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