By RICHARD JOHN STAPLETON
It’s sad that USian and Earthian states of affairs have evolved to where they are today.
I have always been a passive politician and citizen, doing nothing more than stating my opinions and voting. I never marched, never incited any sort of violence, never ran for a political office; but I was never confronted with a reality such as we now face:
Both political parties are oligarchies.
Both Republican and Democratic politicians operate the US government as pseudo-employees of the elite rich and large corporations who have paid them to do their bidding.
We the people are almost irrelevant.
Yet, I have some hope the DNC will recognize Bernie Sanders as the rightful leader of we the people, if he receives more popular votes than any other politician in the 2020 DNC primary race.
If so the US can progress along the right (and rightful) path.
At seventy-nine years of age I probably won’t change. I most likely won’t march and I won’t incite or commit violence if Sanders is robbed of his rightful place in USian and Earthian history by DNC superdelegates; but I can’t keep from thinking there will be hell to pay one way or another if the DNC and the RNC do not allow quasi-real democracy to work in the 2020 US presidential election.
Full democracy has never existed in a US presidential election, since the authors of the US Constitution saw fit to insert the odious Electoral College in the voting procedures, giving individuals the power to override the popular national vote in close races. Unfortunately, there is nothing that can be done about that now, and Bernie Sanders could wind up like Al Gore and Hillary Clinton, winning the popular vote in the national election but deprived of the office of president by the Electoral College, assuming he wins the DNC primary popular vote, and the DNC pseudo-Electoral College allows him to run in the general election.
How great it is, this democracy of the US!
DNC superdelegates have the power to negate a Sanders popular vote victory in the primaries according to arbitrary rules insider DNC establishment members approved among themselves, that a judge has ruled legal.
That ruling is not a DNC in-house Electoral College enshrined in constitutional law. Far from it. It runs counter to common sense notions of fairness and justice; it smacks of corruption; and it will not mollify the anger of Bernie Sanders’s workers and financial contributors, who were led to believe their work, money, and votes would count—and Sanders would be the Democratic nominee—if he won the most votes in the primary elections.
Or have I missed something? Did the DNC insider establishment make this clear at the outset?
Did DNC establishment insiders tell Sanders’s supporters something like this:
“Yes, you people can vote in our primary race for anyone you want to, but your votes won’t count if you vote for a candidate that wins that will not work with DNC establishment insiders to satisfy their personal financial and egotistical wants and needs, and the personal financial and egotistical wants and needs of their elite rich and corporate employers.”
Are DNC establishment insiders worried about this? Of course they are. Their livelihoods are at stake, as are the livelihoods of most Repub and Dem politicians, their paid employees, and the locust swarm of lobbyists in Washington, given that Bernie Sanders promises to help the lower ninety percent instead of the upper ten percent.
The poor will be with you always? Well, maybe not always, but a long time, if Trump or a DNC insider gets elected in 2020.
Let it be known that Bernie Sanders is not a real socialist. He does not advocate nationalizing all US industries, just the healthcare industry, which should be managed as a natural monopoly, as I have pointed out in my article, “Why Healthcare Should be Managed as a Natural Monopoly,”at https://blog.effectivelearning.net/why-healthcare-should-be-managed-as-a-natural-monopoly-2/.
Sanders is a social democrat, a reincarnated Roosevelt New Dealer bent on enhancing social programs, not tearing them down, which is necessary to prevent the US from sliding deeper into fascism, which the Deep State and the RNC and DNC establishments seem to have in mind.
The 2020 presidential race is more than a contest between two pseudo-different political parties; it’s a contest between different kinds of humans who have been scripted from birth to feel, think, and behave as they do. I disagree with the common sense notion that people can easily choose nihilism or democracy using free will. Most people are indoctrinated and programmed by their parents and others before they are eight years old with psychological injunctions to feel, think, and behave somewhere on a continuum between extreme democratic idealism and extreme authoritarian nihilism; and it’s difficult to change this indoctrination and programming even if individuals are aware of being programmed and make concentrated efforts to change the programming. The programming is deeply embedded and ingrained in their subconscious minds.
It seems to me humans are polarized emotionally and intellectually between two general extreme categories that might be best described as democratic idealists and authoritarian nihilists, with most humans being clustered closer to the middle of the continuum.
All democratic idealists in the US are not necessarily members of the Democratic Party; and all authoritarian nihilists are not necessarily members of the Republican Party. You can have wolves in sheep’s clothing in either party going against the grain of the programming of most party members, aka trolls or traitors, in the eyes of true believers.
A democratic idealist in my view is someone who visualizes new states of affairs that might make an unsatisfying situation more efficient, effective, just, and satisfying through consultation, collaboration, and cooperation with others.
Authoritarian nihilists in my view are dissatisfied with states of affairs as they are but do not visualize changing them by creating new states of affairs through democratic processes such as consultation, collaboration, and cooperation, believing instead that strong leaders in positions of authority should simply make existing systems and processes work better for them by out-competing and destroying others.
Most so-called liberals and progressives would be included in the democratic idealist category and most so-called conservatives would be included in the authoritarian nihilist category.
An extreme democratic idealist would care less than most about the here and now and would focus primarily on ideal states to be achieved in the future; extreme authoritarian nihilists would be primarily focused on the here and now, caring less than most about achieving better imaginary states of being in the future.
Abraham Lincoln once remarked there are two kinds of people who never amount to much in life: those who cannot do what they are told, and those who cannot do anything but what they are told.
People who can only create imaginary air castles often have a hard time making a go of things in life; and people with no goals and imagination are pretty much stuck where they are, if they’re lucky. Probably most successful people lie somewhere in between the two extremes of idealism and nihilism.
Extreme democratic idealists are worry-warts; extreme authoritarian nihilists just don’t give a rip about anything in the future.
I agree with most transactional analysts that Earthian humans are scripted to be what they are, whether idealist, nihilist, or whatever, in early childhood by injunctions that are psychologically transmitted from the child ego states of parents to the child ego states of their offspring, largely outside of conscious awareness.
Changing dysfunctional scripting, feeling, and behaving is not easy; but it can happen if humans after they learn how to read accept new messages powerful enough to cause them to override the early psychological script injunctions.
See my column “Or So It Seems to Me Right Now” introducing the latest issue of The Earthian Forum, Number Fifteen, at https://blog.effectivelearning.net/the-earthian-forum-15/ for more information on the democratic idealism…authoritarian nihilism continuum, including its causes and effects, which I constructed and published in the Effective Learning Report.
The political situation now reminds me of what went on at recess when I was a pupil in a small rural grade school on the South Plains of Texas.
There were about one hundred or so kids from several grades milling about on the playground, about half male and half female. We had as I recall two recesses of about thirty minutes each, one in the morning and one in the afternoon, unsupervised by teachers or the principal, several grades together doing whatever they wanted to running wild with whomever they wanted to of whatever age. Younger smaller boys had to watch out for older and bigger boys. The unstructured process or melee was like a form of gang warfare, at least among the boys. I don’t remember what the girls did since I never played with them. It behooved the smallest and youngest boys to choose their friends wisely.
Nobody to my knowledge ever got seriously hurt but there were always Games going on, and fights happened. I got involved in a couple that drew blood. Never lost a fight. Law of the jungle basically. Apparently the teachers and principal thought this was good training for adult life.
In recent years I have come to feel and think at times that I am now living again in a process similar to those recesses in grade school. International relations now seem like a form of gang warfare, with mafia don-wannabe presidents and prime ministers like Donald Trump and their cronies mucking around Spaceship Earth playgrounds Persecuting, Rescuing, and Victimizing others playing Games.
But it’s far worse now than it was in my grade school playground days in Texas since one cannot escape big brother watching everyone with electronic surveillance. I have no idea whether I am actually being watched electronically, but I could be; and, as Craig Murray, George Galloway and others in their videos point out here at http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/53041.htm?fbclid=IwAR2QJf0HIhpAP2WmpmvW8cb43TculjtnefoLOkNFcGGcjkdr3upVw6DaBwI , serious effective truth tellers exposing or maybe just discussing the crimes of governments on the Internet can wind up getting disappeared, rendered, tortured, extradited, incarcerated, or murdered.
Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning are dramatic and egregious cases showing humanity run amok persecuting truth tellers. Processes of persecution inflicted on them have become extended sadistic and gruesome ordeals watched by Earthian humans around Spaceship Earth, processes that have probably caused billions of mere humans around Earth to feel smaller, weaker, and less significant than ever.
US and UK governments are degenerating not progressing, as they get exposed more and more as the thuggish gangs they are in many cases. Mainstream media talking heads and their watchers and hearers generally seem certain Assange and Manning are guilty of heinous crimes, appearing devoid of empathy for them, and oblivious to the significance of the truth of the matter, namely that Assange and Manning were serious ethical truth tellers doing the right thing for humanity as a whole.
It seems most readers, watchers, and hearers of this sadistic ordeal feel and think Assange and Manning made the US government look bad; so they should pay, big time. They seem to feel and think big brother governments can watch anyone committing crimes using electronic surveillance and tell the whole world about it; but anyone watching big brother commit crimes with electronic surveillance has to lie by omission about it: they can’t tell anyone outside the gang about it. As is the case with Assange they can be cornered, isolated, and harassed without trial for ten years and then (possibly? probably?) get sent to prison for life if they go to trial. What’s good for the gander is a crime for the goose in hypocrit nations.
The 2020 presidential election may be the most significant US election yet. If Bernie wins USian and Earthian states of affairs can improve; if Trump wins the US can wind up a full-blown fascist dictatorship run by extreme nihilists cut from the same cloth as Hitler and Stalin.
Most USian voters won’t accept the fact their governments have committed egregious crimes against humanity since the beginning of the US as a nation. Whether the US has been worse in this regard through time than other major nations is another matter.
Regardless, all Earthian humans around Spaceship Earth have got to learn how to use more nurturing parent and adult ego state energy to seriously work together to combat global warming and nuclear bombs to survive. Life on Earth has been hell for most humans for a long time, and those days must end.
No one around Spaceship Earth can be fully OK unless everyone is OK, and nobody can be OK if global warming or nuclear bombs render humans extinct, annihilated, so it behooves humans to work with and for everyone, not just a chosen few.
Here’s a way Bernie supporters can maximize their power in the short run to prevent unfair treatment of Bernie and themselves by DNC insiders and playground bullies in the event Bernie does not win 1,990 delegates, despite receiving more votes than anyone else in the primary popular vote. To make sure Bernie is not screwed out of the popular vote nomination by superdelegates in second round voting at the DNC Convention July 13 in Milwaukee, Bernie supporters should let potentially-unfair Dems know now they will not vote for a Blue nominee other than Bernie in the general election against Trump, if they unfairly screw Bernie out of the nomination using superdelegates.
If the DNC obstinately screws Bernie and his supporters they will then be guilty of causing Trump to win by choosing the greater evil— by choosing their insider DNC vested-interest favorite regardless of the fact Bernie fairly won the popular vote.
The problem boils down to a high stakes “Chicken” Game, such as those played on playgrounds by nihilist kids back in my time during grade school recesses.
Richard John Stapleton, PhD, CTA, Founder & Director, FreeFairProgressParty of Spaceship Earth, at https://www.effectivelearning.net/freefairprogressparty.html, March 3, 2020.