In Trump’s speech to the people he’d asked to come to DC and
march on the Capital he gives a long speech in which he says
“After this, we’re
going to walk down — and I’ll be there with you — we’re going to walk down,
we’re going to walk down — anyone you want, but I think right here — we’re
going to walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators
and congressmen and women. And we’re probably not going to be cheering so much
for some of them. Because you’ll never take back our country with weakness, you
have to show strength, and you have to be strong. We have come to demand that
Congress do the right thing, and only count the electors who have been lawfully
slated — lawfully slated. I know that
everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully
and patriotically make your voices heard today.”
Trump uses
the word “peacefully” and “patriotically” as code for, “you will break into the
capitol and demand the count stop!” Being
“strong” and being “peaceful” have opposite meanings in his rhetoric. It is also his pattern of inciting violence
but leaving wiggle room in his speech so he can deny he said what he obviously
said. He is no more credible here than a
Mob Boss telling an associate to “do him” about a person he is putting a hit
on. And he goes on to make one false
allegation of corruption, cheating, fraudulent votes coupled with asks for the
mob in front of him to take action. Threatening congress. He accuses Democrats of:
“oppos [ing] every effort to
clean up their voter rolls. They don't want to clean them up. They're loaded.”
Tells the
mob to not only to stop the certification of the count but force the congress to
pass sweeping legislation.
“So
today, in addition to challenging the certification of the election, I'm
calling on Congress and the state legislatures to quickly pass sweeping
election reforms, and you better do it before we have no country left.”
He says:
“Today is not the end, it's just
the beginning.
And after
accusing Democrats and turncoats of every manner of fraud,He says:
“We must stop the steal and then we must ensure that such
outrageous election fraud never happens again, can never be allowed to happen
again.”
He tells his
mob:
“Don't let them talk. OK, well, we promised. I've had a lot of people.
Sir, you're at 96% for four years. I said I'm not interested right now. I'm
interested in right there.”
He tells them, their mob will:
“Together, we will drain the Washington swamp and we will clean up the
corruption in our nation's capital.”
He tells them that their insurrection is actually stopping a takeover of
the country:
“If we allow this group of people to illegally take over our
country because it's illegal when the votes are illegal when the way they got
there is illegal when the states that vote are given false and fraudulent information.”
Then he tells them to fight like hell!
“I think one of our great achievements will be election
security. Because nobody until I came along had any idea how corrupt our
elections were.”
“And again, most people would stand there at 9 o'clock in the
evening and say I want to thank you very much, and they go off to some other
life. But I said something's wrong here, something is really wrong, can have
happened.”
“And we fight. We fight like hell. And if you don't fight like
hell, you're not going to have a country anymore.”
Then he sets them to march:
“So we're going to, we're going to walk down Pennsylvania
Avenue. I love Pennsylvania Avenue. And we're going to the Capitol, and we're
going to try and give.”
“The Democrats are hopeless — they never vote for anything. Not
even one vote. But we're going to try and give our Republicans, the weak ones
because the strong ones don't need any of our help. We're going to try and give
them the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country.”
“So let's walk down Pennsylvania Avenue.”
And he aimed them at Congress!
|
| From my mom's compilation & Sarah Persons. |
Truman C. Carpenter, My Great Grandpa, was a big guy and an adventurous fellow. My cousin tells me a tale that he once met Jessie James while getting a hair cut. Evidently Jessie James came into the same Barber Shop. The story is that Truman commented that he was a mean fellow. Which makes sense. He was. That would have been in Kansas or Missouri near the eastern end of the Southern Pacific. It ran from Southern California to the Mississipi River, started right after the Civil War and didn't disappear until the 60's.
My Great Grandfather lived in El Paso, Texas, which is about the halfway mark between the two ends of the Southern Pacific, so it makes sense. He lived there from about 1905 til about 1910 when he moved back east. Long enough for his wife to have my Grandfather born in El Paso. And I thought he was born in St Johnsbury for so many years!
My Great Grandpa, took people on expeditions into the Southwest and Mexico. He took hunting expeditions down into Mexico exploring. The photo above is represented as being Hop Valley in the Sierra Madre (Oriental?) mountains. The picture apparently is of Santa Maria Canyon near Strawberry Canyon. Where-ever it was, his life intersected with the Mexican revolution.
The Mexican Revolution broke out in 1910. Much of it was fought near the Border with the United States. The old President had made himself a President for Life and was ruling as a dictator, and in 1910 the democratic faction insisted on elections. That failed and so a civil war broke out. Pancho Villa was recruited to lead.
...in Potosí, Madero [had] called for revolutionary action against the Díaz regime on 20 November 1910, and declared himself provisional president of Mexico. In Chihuahua, Abraham González, reached out to Villa to join the movement. Villa joined and subsequently captured a large hacienda, a train of Federal Army soldiers, and the town of San Andrés. He went on to beat the Federal Army in Naica, Camargo, and Pilar de Conchos, but lost at Tecolote. Villa met in person with Madero in March 1911.
Shortly after they laid seige to Ciudad Juárez in April and May, and the city fell to the combined forces of Pancho Villa, Pascual Orosco and Madero. Subsequently Porofiro Diaz fell from Power and Madero became President. Villa and Orosco needed to pay their officers, and their plan was to give them seized properties. Madero rejected their demands, and so the revolution didn't stop. Juárez is just across the river from El Paso. It was no longer safe to travel into Mexico, so moving back to Vermont where Truman had family, made sense. And he did.
Truman C. Carpenter left the railroad around 1910. He seems to have seen the risk associated with the Mexican revolution that was breaking out at the same time he left. I knew he was a railroadman. But he was more of a cowboy than I previously thought! I'll ad more as I find it.
For my post on Grandpa Truman E Carpenter: https://holtesthoughts.blogspot.com/2021/01/great-grandpa-truman-c-carpenter.html
Too many laws, require proof that the person telling a lie or breaking a law, did so knowing it was a law, lie or illegal. The result is that this makes it hard to prosecute officials, news presenters, tv personalities, etc... or get compensated when they harm others. At one time they simply locked up the criminal insane, but nowadays it appears they just get valium. This is beyond absurd, bad law, it is deadly to our republic, its democratic features, comity, and to many of us survival. Some of this may be bad lawyering. But the results are dangerous. An example is that Tucker Carlson just won a legal case, in September,
Except the issue is that many viewers are not reasonable viewers, because they watch and believe Tucker Carlson! This is not a legitimate legal defense! On the contrary, the fact that he is a deliberate liar and propagandist should be an aggravating factor in McDougal's lawsuit!
The judge ruled that:
“ Mr. Carlson’s invocation of “extortion” against Ms. McDougal is nonactionable hyperbole,... This “general tenor” of the show should then inform a viewer that he is not “stating actual facts” about the topics he discusses and is instead engaging in “exaggeration” and “non-literal commentary.” Milkovich, 497 U.S. at 20-21; Levinsky’s, Inc. v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., 127 F.3d 122, 128 (1st Cir. 1997)). Fox persuasively argues, see Def Br. at 13-15, that given Mr. Carlson’s reputation, any reasonable viewer “arrive[s] with an appropriate amount of skepticism” about the statements he makes.”
Except Tucker's audience sops up his lies as if they were truth, and people are engaging in violence and threats based on them. The law needs to be stricter here.
First drafted back in October
I never really seriously thought we could have a dictator here, until Trump showed up on the scene with the Tea Party and made his authoritarian attempt in 2016. I knew the country had authoritarian elements. But I didn't realize just how easy it was to go from wingnut cranks to a movement like Trumpism until I started reading Robert Altemeyer while Obama was still President. Trumpism is fascism. It is the latest incarnation of a system of government that underlay Monarchies and republics alike for most of history.
Until I saw Trump at work, As I've explained before, Trumpism predates Trump. But the word "Trump" perfectly describes the nature of the movement. It derives from joker, fool or con artist, and Trumpism started as a money grubbing con. A Trump card is a card that is, by the rules of the game, supreme, not by merits. Trumpism meets all the attributes of fascism. One can argue about how fascist they are, but not that they are. At it's beginning Trumpism lacked a youth movement, but that quickly changed as he either adopted, consumed or subsumed existing ones and created a few of his own.
All the attributes of fascism can be measured. As attributes they are present in movements, and governments. To a degree they are common. But the quantity and intensity of these attributes should be the way we judge whether our political opponents are behaving like fascists. You can measure a countries nationalism by its propaganda and reporting about it's peoples. And by its actions. Patriotism is normal. When a government starts killing or oppressing ethnic minorities and justifies it on a tribe, clan or nation as tribe, that is hypernationalistic. When a country is at peace with its neighbors and patriotism includes all the people living there, that is not hypernationalism.
All the tensional attributes in this list can be found (Patriotism vs nationalism, militarism vs readiness, fetishing youth for example) are present in more normal societies to a degree. And to ebb and flow towards or away from fascism is normal.
It is the degree and combination. When society becomes malevolent towards dissidents and minority groups, power combined with violence, that is fascist. The word fascism referred to the punishment power of the State. A fascist movement can seem downright anarchistic out of power, but fetishing official violence is a feature that is fascist. Fascism can emerge in a previously mildly authoritarian state top down, or it can start as a movement. In the case of Trumpism it started as several movements within the Republican party.
Hypernationalism, xenophobia, “us versus them,” another term is Chauvinism. politics against neighbor ethnic groups, these are features of fascism. In a normal republic, patriotism defends the republic, it's principles and people. In a fascist system loyalty to the state means loyalty to the central figure. In the run up to WW2, WW1 veterans who happened to be Jews, started out thinking that their patriotism would protect them from German Chauvinism. It doesn't.
A feature of fascim is militarism. Sometimes that militarism is outwardly directed, but it usually is inwardly directed. That is, the militarism is a tool of control and power. A fascist movement usually employs cadres of agent provocateurs and thugs to beat up enemies and recruit adherents. These groups get called various names, black shirts, brown shirts, or proud boys. They run in paramilitary form. They infiltrate and eventually displace or become the police. And they wage war on internal enemies. Fascism as attributes can be left or right. But militarism is almost always a feature.
Fascism believes in violence. It's notion of “law and order” is perverse. To a fascist movement “enemy” and “criminal” often become synonymous. And heaven help people when a fascist movement has full governing power. The symbol of the "fascii", sticks for beatings and an axe for cutting off heads, explains why fascist movements resemble one another left or right, christian or moslem. Freedom is for the movement, its powers, and its leaders, everyone else must "freely obey." The fearless leader can do anything, so long as he pretends to live up to that myth.
Fascist movements depend on propaganda. Part of that propaganda is the notion that there is a utopia waiting for the children of the faithful. Fascist movements dream of 1000 year reigns and permanence. And they seek to get to that permanence by indoctrinating youth. Fascist youth movements provide shock troops for both representing dissidence within the country and for the wars that fascist movements usually pursue.
Fascist leaders use words like “strong” or “powerful” to describe themselves and words like “weak”, “corrupt”, “swamp” for enemies. They often project their own fears and plans onto their targets. This masculine fetish goes with the violence. The leader must be a hero, a superman. Mao Tse Dung swimming the Yangtze, Putin riding a horse, Hitler or Mussolini standing tall and strong at a review stand. The followers carry guns or weapons to compensate for their own feelings of inadequacy.
Fascist movements are basically cults, except usually larger scale. The leader, often full well knowing he is conning them, and the conned, top flying monkey knowing they are being conned but along for the ride – portray the leader as masculine, strong, a father figure, who can do no wrong. This happens in ordinary politics too, but, again, it is the degree to which a fascist movement or government does this that distinguishes it from democratic or more normal movements and governments.
For all the bravado and claims of positivity, at heart most fascist movements live on resentment, fear and grievance. The propaganda message is always “It's not our fault. You were robbed!”, even as the kakacrats who usually lead such movements are looting and despoiling, dispossessing and conning their followers, they point to a lost past Golden age and/or dreams of a future golden age, to motivate their flock of goats to keep going forward and to attack enemies. For Hitler it was the "stabbed in the back narrative". For Mussolini it was Romes ancient glory. For Spain it was God, King and Catholic Church. Fascist movements brand themselves according to the people they are conning.
An accomplished demagogue, like Trump, can turn anything into a motivation for this pigeons. Mask wearing, because it was promoted by his “enemies” (including doctors trying to save lives), became a rallying cry for Trump and his Trumpers, with tragic consequences. This part of propaganda puts a wedge between people who follow Trump and everyone else. It is part of his power strategy, part of the propaganda. The border wall is an example. It's not really about keeping out Mexicans, it was about defining his opposition to immigrants and minorities and giving it a symbol. Support the wall, you are with him. Think it's a bad idea? You are the enemy.
And of course, fascists blur the line between all the people and the people. To Trump, "the people" were his mob. Anyone not with him, was not part of his people.
I'll be talking about this in more depth later. Balint Magyar describes the modern version of fascism as “the Mafia State”, the underlying archetypical image is of devoted followers kissing the Godfather's ring. In a fascist state, the ruling family is the state. Absolute monarchy was a form of fascism before the term was popular. In modern fascism, the Godfather is the State, violence and criminality are state tools. In classic fascism, devotion to the leader was mandatory and supposed to be unquestioning.
At the heart of fascism, classic or modern, is propaganda. In power fascist governments believe that might makes right, that the will can triumph over everything. And if you can't make a promise happen, you can pretend to make that promise happen. Some of the diabolical ways that totalitarian authoritarians do this were described in "Origins of Totalitarianism" by Hannah Arendt. If you can't make unemployment go away, starve the unemployed!
It is no accident that Trump rode his job at the "Celebrity Apprentice." Fascism at heart is always a deep fake. Insecure and narcissistic leaders. Tons of lies and and misrepresentations. Looting and kleptocracy. All running alongside theater designed to indoctrinate and entertain the masses. Trump's Presidency has been “Celebrity dictator Apprentice” and ran 6 seasons and is not yet over.
This post memorializes a mix of memes I created myself and ones I borrowed from others. I wrote it first with my cell phone and was having trouble editing it or it would have been published a while ago.
We aren't out of the woods yet. Written 12/4/2020. Updated 12/9/2020
The SCOTUS denied CERT for Trumps latest frivolous lawsuit today. It's over for Trumps Presidency.
Adolf Hitler, along with others, tried to seize power in Munich, Bavaria, on 8–9 November 1923. They failed. Hitler was convicted of Treason. He wrote Mein Kampf from prison. He was made a hero. The Judiciary had sided with him. He came back to power 10 years later and ended the German Republic, replacing it with the "Third Reich."
The Germans had been traumatized by the
The "peace" with the Brits, French and Americans, involved betrayals and was labeled Dolchstoßlegende, "Stabbed in the back legend." it was sold as an explanation of Germany's loss. “We didn't lose the war, we were stabbed in the back” morphed into “We lost due to the Jews”, became a vicious antisemitic narrative that appealed to Germans suffering depression, inflation and a society that seemed to be deteriating. Hitler came to power, partly, on the strength of this Dolchstoßlegende lie.
Trump is trying to build such a Dolchstoßlegende about his election. To him, this narrative addresses 3 deep ego needs.
Trump's effort to overthrow the election is sedition. Unfortunately, with Trump we can expect years of sturm and drang from Trump – eventually he will fail, but the big worry is that whoever picks up the standard after he is tried and convicted of a long list of crimes or finally strokes out — will carry on from where he left off. What Hitler did was sedition. Trump is doing sedition too.
Meantime we need to shore up our democracy against these fascists. All the complaints trump is making about the need for paper ballots and better process, are stolen (like most of his better rhetoric), from Progressives and Democrats.
Rents are taxes on property. Taxes are rents assessed by tax collectors, public or private. In ancient times there was no difference. The lord and master of a property, whether a Squire, Baron, Count, King or Empire, collected rents as taxes owed him as owner. During the medieval times, ownership was usually a contract between the person who lived on a property and the government, embodied in a person. During the enlightenment, property owners conned governments into separating simple ownership from government. They did this by creating central banks and privatizing ownership of land. This allowed Lairds and lords alike to evict millions of peasants from their property to raise sheep or otherwise find more economically productive industry. A landlord could go broke not putting his property to such use, and both broke former lords and evicted peasants emigrated. It wasn't just the nobility. When you read books like Jane Austen you find the "gentry" figured their social status based on how much rent they could collect from property they owned. (See Piketty).
In the United States, the landlords had to be more clever. They learned early on that they couldn't just march into a frontier town and take their taxes. That sparked locals to form "Regulator Militia", so they mainly endeavered to wall off economics from politics and use their rental income to influence local and general government. It is no accident that it took a civil war to end slavery. It only didn't end sooner because it became economically valuable. Both the slave and the people empoverished by the best land being in the hands of landlords were paying a premium to landlords for the fact that they owned the more valuable property. Owning valuable property was the source of wealth for the few. Property taxes mainly made it easier for the already powerful to keep their property and force work out of small holders. This system, by its design concentrates wealth due to premiums in the form of unearned economic rent from the mere privilege of owning the more valuable property.
Henry George assessed the value of rent from property ownership as making the property owner "nature's tax collector." He knew that simply owning valuable property was a source of unearned premiums. Basically property owners are collecting a private tax when they rent property or successfully speculate on property. They have a right to keep "wages of intendency" & a duty to collect and invest the income necessary to maintain or improve their property. They do not have an inalienable or absolute right to aggrandize valuable property, because land ultimately belongs as “natures bounty” in commons between a sovereign and those who work or live on it. An owners right to rent property is tied to "the sweat of the brow" used to keep that property healthy.
Economic rent is a premium a person gets for owning something valuable, having a degree, land, buildings, owning stock, owning a business, company, etc... and employing people to use that property. Henry George made a valid distinction between property taken, borrowed, or owned from natures finite bounty and property that is lived on, productive and tended. The reason he did this is that the premium from simply owning part of natures bounty is unearned. Additionally, if one has valuable property, the premium from working that property is not entirely earned. Henry George called properties belonging to "natures bounty" "land", by land he also included Oil, Gas, Coal, though because his supporters came from oil, gas & coal interest that would be obfuscated after his death. He used the word "economic rent" to describe such premiums from working land, employing labor, owning property & renting properties. He described them as premiums and avoided calling them income because he knew property owners would try to confuse the two. After he died they did.
If one performed any kind of labor, one has earned one's income. If one earns a premium from simple ownership of property or privilege, that income, some or all of it is unearned. Earned income also comes from when one improves property by one's effort. Such productive property, tools, plant, factories, raw materials, are capital. In the Georgist formulation the three factors are labor, natures bounty (Land) and capital. Capital should not be confused with land when calculating unearned premiums from property ownership. High Rents in Manhattan reflect the valuable monopoly that is land there. The buildings themselves are capital. The way you tell is that the buildings need constant maintenance, sustainment and refresh, to retain their value. That maintenance, sustainment and refresh is earned. Any value over those costs is economic rent.
No one should be taxed on gross income no matter the source. No one should be harmed by taxes, nor should taxes lead to depreciation of properties real value. Taxes should always be figured on net income and net premiums. If a landlord or building manager tends the buildings he manages. All those costs are justly part of the rent he/she charges tenants. Taxes on land value should fall on the premiums gained from owning the property. Thus the rentier should pay progressive taxes on the economic rent he/she receives. One can link the zero tax rate to a calculated poverty level and allow cost of transport, food consumption, maybe donations, and personal shelter costs to go untaxed completely. One then sets up a system where no one pays taxes on that portion of income. But anyone making more than that pays maybe 10% of the net above that amount.
If one performs some kind of labor or work, one has earned at least part of that premium. If one's premiums are privileged, not all of it. The underlying principle goes back to the middle ages; “Do your duty or pay a duty”
We privatized ownership markets (stock markets) and money, long ago. But the constitution gives government sovereignty over our money supply. The Federal Reserve only makes sense as an arm of the Treasury. As a private bank, it has too much power to engage in mischief. Wealthy people live on rents from owning banknotes and debt. When the economy does well they do well. When it collapses they take property from both workers and capital, but they and the rest of the rentier class wind up wealthier than before the crisis started. At this point the business cycle is an intentional feature not a bug in our system and is an instrument for taking wealth from working people, in other words, exctracting economic wealth using debt.
Money as debt is not innocuous. Federal notes are useful backed by token money. Backed by government debt, they are a means to extract rents from tax payers. Backed by personal or corporate debt, they are time bombs. Avoiding risk is avoiding responsibility.
The Fed should be supporting public capital (highways, railroads, transport in general, communications and energy) thru supporting local and federal government solvency. Not enforcing "balanced budgets" that treat capital and natures bounty as if they were merely costs. The current system treats cities and states as less important than banks, GM, Ford, etc.... This is a worldwide phenomenom as the system of States are continuously held accountable for doing the right thing. The current system is based on extorting companies by stripping sovereinty from them over their own finances.
