Treason in a Nutshell

150 police officers were injured by Trump's rioters on January 6, 2021. Some were hit in the head with baseball bats and pipes. The leader of the violent attack on U.S. Capitol Police who organized the attack and stashed an arsenal of weapons for a follow-up attack was released from prison by Trump. Four DC police committed suicide in the months following the Trump insurrection. 

Dysfunctional System

I recently read somewhere that one third of the federal budget goes to the military, and another third of what should be part of the federal budget are the taxes not paid by the rich due to corruption. That leaves all other social needs to fight over the remainder. This dysfunctional system is now imploding.

Democracy DOA

In my 2016 article Wag the Dog, I tracked the psychological warfare and fraud used by the financial elite in the US to sell the very profitable oil wars to Congress and the public. 

In the 2023 documentary film Mafias and Banks, the money is followed to tell the story of how transnational organized crime has captured the global banking industry. 

Financial warfare by criminal capitalists is detailed by Michel Chossudovsky in his 2003 groundbreaking book The Globalization of Poverty and the New World Order. 

In 2024, the film Bad Faith tracked the money behind the takeover of the US Government by white supremacist Christian Nationalists.

Champagne Circuit

Righteous, authentic, grassroots pro-democracy non-profits deserve our support, but the champagne circuit non-profits that pay lip service to democracy while undermining it deserve our ridicule. Perhaps the best examples of high-level hypocrisy by NGOs is illustrated in the 2016 article Smart Power and the Human Rights Industrial Complex by Patrick Henningsen. While this article focuses on warmongers at the Pentagon in bed with Amnesty International, the model applies to all areas of public conflict where the interests of Wall Street and the White House need to manufacture consent through deception. 

Golden Era

In the Golden Era of North American Indigenous civilization, prior to European immigration, the highest values taught in learning houses and universities were generosity and harmony. Medicine, art and poetry were highly developed, as were social clubs with particular public responsibilities. These authentic relationships with nature, each other, and the universe enabled them to thrive and serve as models today for re-grounding ourselves as human beings rather than as mindless consumers.

Bits and Pieces

The United States began as an aristocracy where the more slaves one owned the more votes one had. Over time and at great human cost bits and pieces of democracy have been secured by activists who made an effort at great personal cost. These bits and pieces of democracy include the Social Security Act, the Civil Rights Act, and the Environmental Protection Act. All these achievements are under threat from the Christian Nationalists who in two days are taking over the government of the United States.