Here’s a free speech question. Rupert Murdoch and his Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and his “Libtards” and “Econazis” were part of an organized, strategic effort to dismantle American democracy and replace it with whatever you call what the country has now. We were all blasted with this evil, lying propaganda for decades. Civil society was destroyed. Good leaders were smeared with lies. Important public institutions were dismantled. Rule of law was removed. Etc etc etc. We all saw it happen. We all live in the world that created.
At the same time, related propaganda prevented us from dealing with the CO2 problem. Even as scientists warned us oil and coal companies pumped millions and millions into propaganda convincing people there was no problem, discrediting scientists, and fueling an increase in CO2 emissions.
Now corruption is endemic. A few wealthy people are ending up with all the wealth and lower for themselves and the country is an autocracy rules by one of the worst people in our history. We have oligarchs soaking up all the wealth. War is spreading across the world. And the climate crisis is upon us and growing in severity each year.
And all that is accelerating.
So does freedom of speech cover what was done to us? If so, can there ever be functioning democracy run for the good of the people?
This post first appeared at Government Cheese – Chronicling the collapse of democracy.
Virginia broke the rules. That’s all there is to it. Rules are rules.
Republican states can gerrymander to favor Republicans, Democratic states cannot gerrymander to favor Democrats. States can draw districts that exclude minority representation. States cannot draw districts that enable minority representation. Rules are rules.
It’s like “Stand Your Ground” gun laws. White people can stand their ground and shoot black people. Black people better not get near a gun. Rules are rules.
It’s like when I was a kid. All my neighbors were Black. I had to go to what was called the “white” school. It was a shiny new school some distance away. All my neighbors went to what was called the “black” school. It was built in the 1800s, run down, moldy, leaking roof, etc. Rules are rules. (Ann Arbor). Along came LBJ and Civil Rights and Democrats lost the South forever.
The South has risen again.
PS Also, women couldn’t get bank accounts, loans, managerial positions, and got paid 59 cents for each dollar men got paid for the same job, etc so expect that soon, too.
We will not “get over it” until the nation commits itself fully to the work of healing our collective wounds and reconciliation. The first step, in fact, is the recognition that the wounds of some affect the health of all. The ethos of Trumpism is individualism, that each person rises or falls on their own and no one owes anyone else anything. Your successes are yours alone, and so are your problems and failures. But the same Bible hoisted by Christian nationalists tells a different story. The apostle Paul said that we are all part of one body, and each part depends on the health and well-being of every other part. “The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I don’t need you!’ And the head cannot say to the feet, ‘I don’t need you!’” Paul wrote in his first letter to the Corinthians. King made the same point when he said, “All men are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.”
It is so brilliant and spot-on: “the wounds of some affect the health of all”. It is one of the best analyses of America’s situation I have read.
This line really resonates and says so much about why the US is where it is: “Instead, we are the cancer patient who took too low a dose of treatment and stopped the treatment too early.” I would add that after every attack by the disease the nation refused to exercise and take other preventative steps to ward off the next one. They could have stamped it out after the Civil War but the warfighters were so relieved thinking the fight was over and stayed home while the South rose again. Rachel Maddow’s Ultra series talks about how America just forgot about fighting its internal Nazi collaborators after winning WWII, allowing them to grow into what we are seeing now.
As he wrote, “We will not “get over it” until the nation commits itself fully to the work of healing our collective wounds and reconciliation.”
A “moral revolution”. The country needs a full Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Full accountability for the crimes and corruption. Preventative measures to protect the future.
And finally, the country must come to full recognition of the “disease,” coming up with a preventative prescription to fight inevitable future attacks from the fascists, monarchists, psychopaths and the rest of that crowd that infect humanity. Maybe use tests at birth and move them to a well-guarded, secure island where they can enjoy being cruel to and fighting with each other. Maybe give them toys to accumulate and hoard and fight over. That is MY vindictive “light that shows the way forward.”
If you give them an inch … And look, now they’re taking their mile.
Crossing the border without authorization is a misdemeanor. It only became a crime at all thanks to white supremacist eugenics arguments in the 1920s. They said “they” are “invading” and we have to keep “them” out. So they passed laws to keep them out.
They started swarming across America’s border, millions of desperate families fleeing poverty or seeking political asylum.
But many people were repelled by their presence. Some warned that the country was facing a “genetic invasion” and that whites were “losing the demographic game.” Another said, “There will no longer be an America for Americans.”
One leader even thought of a radical way to keep them out.
“Can we build a wall high enough around this country so as to keep out these cheaper races?” he asked.
It sounds like a Republican Party campaign ad.
This idea that the border exists to keep “us” safe from being “invaded” by “the other” is so ingrained now that the public accepts the concept – and the far right can use it. So instead of acknowledging that immigrants are human beings, Democrats are adapting the Third Way argument that some lesser people are “illegal” – less than human. ICE is showing “excess,” we still need to “remove” them.
You can’t fight racist bullies by appeasing them. Spain’s government understands that and is showing the way. Go read this whole thing.
Foreign nationals with clean criminal records who arrived before the end of 2025, and who can prove they’ve lived in Spain for at least five months, will soon be eligible for renewable one-year residence permits. People who applied for asylum in the country before December 31 will also be able to apply. Migration Minister Elma Saiz said Tuesday that she expects applications to open April through June.
This extraordinary mass regularisation – the first in Spain in more than 20 years – was born from a citizen-backed proposal signed by some 700,000 people and supported by hundreds of civil society groups, including the Catholic Church.
While most immigrants in Spain have legal status, the country’s booming economy has also drawn hundreds of thousands of largely working-age people from across the world to work in the country’s underground economy. Undocumented migrants work on construction sites, on farms, in shops and restaurants or in people’s homes, cooking and cleaning and caring for children.
She further explained: “ICE agents began tear-gassing a residential neighborhood after shooting a man nearby. As the gas spread, a family got into their vehicle to escape the tear gas. In the video, a man is seen standing in front of a car with airbags deployed on all sides, explaining that he told the agents he was trying to leave his house, with his family because of the tear gas. It comes after an out-of-control ICE agent yelled a disgusting 3-word slur before shooting a woman 5 times.
“Despite this, an agent threw multiple flash-bang grenades at the vehicle anyway… while children were inside.
“Inside the van was a 6-month-old infant who stopped breathing after the attack. EMTs were called and taking the baby in an ambulance.
Decades of siding with Israel while the government of that country carried out its apartheid policies oppressing Palestinian civilians is now reaping consequences. It has made the United States and others accomplices in crimes against humanity.
I think the Israeli government’s announcement shutting off water, food and fuel to Gaza was an inflection point. It was a crime against humanity that everyone could see, and solidified people’s sympathies for the civilians mistreated by that government’s nasty, right-wing, racist apartheid policies. (I say Israel’s government here because the people in charge are right-wing Trumpers and I separate them from the people as much as I separate Hamas from the Palestinian people.)
That Trumpy government justified their long-term policies mistreating Palestinians with “self-defense” claims, saying it protected their own civilians from attack. That justification vanished when Hamas carried out that attack. Those apartheid policies are now recognized as just making things worse.
After the water, food & fuel announcement, supporters of that government (not supporters of Israel, Jews, etc, but that Trumper govt) became accomplices in a crime against humanity. Providing weapons, etc.
There is no excuse. It looks like President Biden has done a lot behind the scenes to stop Israel’s government — but anything short of demanding that govt step down is too little, too late.
PS To be clear I think the Hamas attack on civilians was an act of terror – a crime against humanity. All the people involved should be hunted down and locked in cages and kept there on display for 100 years, alive or dead.
A mix of authoritarianism, pro-wrestling, “stab-in-the-back” mythology (“they” sold us out), militaristic imagery, shooting machine guns while saying he won’t “appease the left,” bikers and Trump stickers.
Arkansas really wanted someone dead, their supply of death drugs was running out.
I was hiking in Muir Woods this week, ran into a guy with an Innocence Project t-shirt. They do great, important work. Send them money here.
Then today I read a story about Ledell Lee and how the Innocence Project tried to save him.
In 1993 Debra Reese, 26, was murdered in Jacksonville, Ark. Ledell Lee was accused. But there were problems. Lee was prosecuted but the jury hung. Then, a few days after OJ Simpson was found not guilty and white people were pissed off, Lee was prosecuted again. The judge was having an affair with the prosecutor and later married her. Fingerprints at the scene did not match Lee. Lee did not have good representation. Etc. Etc.
“A song by Anne Feeney dedicated to all activists who have been arrested while they were fighting for justice, and especially to: the Haymarket Martyrs, Dr. King, George Carlin, Mumia Abu-Jamal, Carlos from Genoa, all who have been arrested in the Battle of Seattle, Cindy Sheehan, the Belgrade 6, all who have been arrested in the Greek riots and many others.”
Always use the phrase “Jim Crow Filibuster” or “Racist Filibuster.” This takes away the cover of pretending the filibuster is a “norm” or “tradition” as an excuse for not killing it.
Senators like Manchin should not be asked if they support “ending the filibuster,” they should be asked if they support “keeping the racist filibuster.”
The nature of the filibuster, its rules and norms, is hardly an iron-clad tradition. It has changed and adapted greatly over the years since it first became popular in the civil rights era. But what hasn’t changed is its enduring connection to racism. The filibuster has always stood in the way of racial progress, whether employed by Southern Democrats of the Jim Crow era or the Republican Party today after a major shift in the party’s stance on racial equality. When you understand the filibuster’s racist past, it becomes clear that it has a racist present as well — and that we need to get rid of it.
Call it what it is, don’t let them take cover under “tradition.”
In a democracy, We the People are in charge. We are the boss of the corporations. At least that’s how it’s supposed to work.
Apparently, that isn’t so much the way it is anymore. The United States used to regulate corporations to protect people from concentrated power. Now concentrated power has taken over our government, which fights the people for the benefit of corporate profits.
Or, to paraphrase John Kenneth Galbraith and a Soviet joke: In democracy, We the People regulate corporation. In deregulated America is other way around.
The Face Of Deregulation
This is literally the face of deregulation of corporations:
This is what can happen to you now in the United States if you get in the way of something a corporation wants:
We’ve all seen the videos. A guy gets beaten and dragged from his paid seat on a United Airlines flight because, in essence, he was interfering with corporate profits just by being in the seat. The airplane was full, the corporation decided it could make more money by moving some employees to another town, and a passenger was in the way.
Airline Deregulation
Airlines used to be regulated in the U.S. as a public utility that served citizens. They competed with each other by offering better service.
Then in 1978, airlines were deregulated and passengers were considered consumers instead of citizens. The airlines argued that more competition would bring benefits. Instead, as time passed, airlines did what corporations tend to do.
They consolidated, reducing competition. They reduced and reduced and reduced service to reduce costs. They cut employee wages and benefits. They changed routes to “hubs” for their convenience, causing passengers to have to wait hours in crowded airports. And they write contracts that said you can’t use their (essential) service without signing away every right you have.
Since deregulation, airlines intentionally overbook many flights. They scrunch as many people into smaller and smaller seats just inches from the next, and sell you more legroom. Instead of serving food, they sell it. They charge you if you travel a suitcase. They charge you to bring a travel bag on the plane.
Soon, they will put a large spike in the seat and charge you to shorten it.
It’s not just airlines. All kinds of corporate deregulation have been harming We the People. There used to be regulations requiring broadcast media to act in the public interest in exchange for use of publicly-owned broadcast frequencies. Now, obviously, there isn’t.
“Arbitration clauses” are now used in all kinds of contracts and agreements to keep you from being able to take corporations to court. “Tort reform” laws also restrict access to courts when people are harmed by corporations.
You get the idea.
“Burdensome” Regulations
Corporations complain that regulations are “burdensome.” They complain that regulations cost them money.
Of course, regulations that stop corporations from polluting streams place a “burden” on them to properly dispose of waste. Of course it costs money to require them to not just dump waste into rivers, streams, and the air we breath.
Carmakers used to complain that rules requiring seat belts in cars were a “burden.” Tobacco companies used to complain that stopping them from selling cigarettes to kids “cost money.” So far, government regulation has protected us from these abuses-for-profit. But for how long?
Who Is Our Country FOR?
Americans have lost our understanding of the meaning of democracy and of the powers democracy brings us and duties it places on us. We have become consumers instead of citizens and we think that markets should make decisions for us instead of our votes.
In a democracy, We the People are supposed to be in charge. In a democracy, our government by definition exists to serve us, protect us, and do things for us that make our lives better.
A democracy regulates corporations to protect people from concentrated power. If we let concentrated power make decisions for us, we end up getting dragged off of airplanes because the corporation decided the seat we paid for would make them a bit more profit.
Corporations should be regulated to serve the public interest. Why else would We the People want to allow these things called corporations to exist at all?
