James Lateer Wrote:My entire extended family, (even cousins, etc.) have been drinking that Deep State Kool-Aid. They are out of their heads when it comes to a rational discussion of the Trump legal issues or anything related to that. Am I alone with this problem?

It may not be Deep State Kool-Aid. I'm beginning to think it's Deep State Crack! Is there anything hopeful on the horizon with the Trump scenario? How will all of this end?

James Lateer

Peter Lemkin Wrote:May I suggest a very interesting new book by Craig Unger - House of Trump; House of Putin. It takes things back 30 and more years and shows how Trump has had almost 60 strong connections to the Russian Mafia dons - made his fortune through them and was saved by them when he was billions in debt. He is essentially in debt or owned by them. They, in turn, are connected to the Russian national security apparat. He makes a very convincing case. The only place where the book falls down, IMO, is that he is blind to the fact that the US National security state also has a wing which is and has been Mafia [in the true sense] or Mafia-like in the Valentine sense. With that caveat or blind spot, still, this is a book to read to understand Trump and where he came from and is trying to 'go'. Others have covered much of this material, but this is the most comprehensive and clearest telling of this long and sad history. Someday someone will retell this story with the other half - the USA half and then we'll have a more complete story. There are names and connections here you've not heard of before - documented - and they will be coming out somehow and sometime soon. Trump and his family at best are being used and at worst are totally compromised. This began more than 30 years ago. The US tries and does the same thing in the obverse and that that is not even mentioned is a fault of the book....but here is a look at one side of the fetid waters of international politics and monied power. I hope those familiar with this website know that the same can be easily said of the other half [the US and its Western allies], no less guilty of similar things........ Just read this with a copy of, say, one of Bill Blum's books nearby or Valentine's latest......what is inside this book I think is very accurate and damning, it make the 'West' look better than it is [understatement] and the 'East' look like the only bad hombres on the World stage. In different ways neither side of the old 'cold-war' divide are playing things straight nor for the common good.....

Quote:"Instead of simply reacting to the horrors and misery produced by capitalism, it is crucial
to call for its end, while supporting the formation of a democratic socialism that gives voice to
and unifies the needs and actions of those who have been left out of the discourse of
democracy under the financial elite. The need here is for a language of both critique and
possibility, a rigorous analysis of the diverse forces of oppression and a discourse of educated
hope. Such a task is both political and pedagogical. Not only must existing relations of power be
called into question and their authority to govern society be denied, but notions of neoliberal
"common-sense" learning must be disconnected from democratic forms of political agency and
civic literacy." ... "Resistance is no longer an option: it is now a matter of life or death. The lights are going out
on democracy across the globe, and the time to wake up from this nightmare is now. There are
no guarantees in politics, but this is not a cause for retreat. No politics that matters is without
hopea hope forged in an educated awareness of history and the possibilities for real
intervention and social change. This is not simply a call for a third political party. Progressives
need to create a new politics and new social and political formations. The time for mounting
resistance through a range of single-issue movements is over. Nothing is more important now
than to bring such movements together as part of a broad-based political formation.
Those who believe in a radical democracy must find a way to make this nation ungovernable
by the powers that currently claim governing authority. Small-scale defiance and local actions
are important, but there is a more urgent need to educate and mobilize through a
comprehensive vision and politics that is capable of generating massive teach-ins all over the
United States so as to enable a collective struggle aimed at producing powerful events such as
a nationwide boycott, sit-ins, and a general strike in order to bring the country to a halt. The
promise of such resistance must be rooted in the creation of a new political movement of
democratic socialists, one whose power is grounded in the organization of novel political
formations, unions, educators, workers, young people, religious groups, and others who
constitute a popular progressive base. There will be no resistance without a vision of a new
society and new mechanisms of resistance. In this instance, effective resistance involves
cutting off power to the financial elite, religious fundamentalists, and neoconservative
warmongers. In doing so, it gives birth to a social wakefulness and a politics of ungovernability.
Hopefully, in that wakefulness, a resurgent act of witnessing and moral outrage will grow and
provide the basis for a new kind of politics, a fierce wind of resistance, and a struggle too
powerful to be defeated: democracy in exile. Proto-fascist conditions are with us again. Fortunately,Trump's arrogance as a champion of such forces is not going entirely unchecked as the great
collective power of resistance to his regime deepens. Mass actions are taking place with
renewed urgency every day. Facing the challenge of fascism will not be easy, but Americans
are marching, protesting, and organizing in record-breaking numbers. Hopefully, mass
indignation will evolve into a worldwide movement whose power will be on the side of justice not
impunity, bridges not walls, dignity not disrespect, kindness not cruelty. The American
nightmare is not something happening somewhere else to someone else. It's happening here,
to us. The time to wake up is now. To quote James Baldwin's letter to Angela Davis:
Some of us, white and black, know how great a price has already been paid to bring into
existence a new consciousness, a new people, an unprecedented nation. If we know, and
do nothing, we are worse than the murderers hired in our name. If we know, then we must
fight for your life as though it were our ownwhich it isand render impassable with our
bodies the corridor to the gas chamber. For, if they take you in the morning, they will be
coming for us that night.
In the end, there is no democracy without informed citizens, no justice without a language
critical of injustice, and no change without a broad-based movement of collective resistance."

Quote:fascism | |faSH|izÉ™ m | (also Fascism)
an authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization.
(in general use) extreme right-wing, authoritarian, or intolerant views or practice.
The term Fascism was first used of the totalitarian right-wing nationalist regime of Mussolini in
Italy (192243); the regimes of the Nazis in Germany and Franco in Spain were also Fascist.
Fascism tends to include a belief in the supremacy of one national or ethnic group, a contempt
for democracy, an insistence on obedience to a powerful leader, and a strong demagogic
approach.

Quote:While sectors of Trumpist fascism may
re-use imagery from European symbols of the 1930s, its actual roots extend directly from the
absolute white supremacy of the settler-colonial origins of the United States and its subsequent
racialized economic history of destroying and erasing Native American civilizations and
enslaving, breeding, and subordinating Africans and people of color for generations. It will take
great struggle for the American public to come to terms with the voices and narratives of this
history, and even greater struggle to overcome the ways Trumpism is giving new social
legitimacy and political form to these racist legacies today.
The danger signs are not just in the United States. Movements in North America and across
Europe are exhibiting growing support for right-wing extremist politicians and political
movements, though there was one respite with the 2017 presidential election in France with
centrist Emmanuel Macron's victory over far-right leader Marine Le Pen. Unemployment, wage
stagnation, vision-less futures, a growing sense of precarity and insecurity for working and
lower middle classes, and an increasing sense of atomization and alienationall of it fueled by
austerity measures, a growing worldwide culture of fear, and a permanent war cultureare
undermining not only the foundations of democracy, but a belief in the value of democracy
itself.4 Many people now find themselves living in societies in which they experience a kind of
social homelessness, detached from and invisible to the policies and language of those in
power.
As Hannah Arendt, Simone Weil, and Erich Fromm, among others, have reminded us,
rootlessness creates the conditions for an escape from freedom and social responsibility, and
finds meaning in the foundations of totalitarianism. After reviewing a number of Harvard
University reports analyzing historical and current attitudes on the part of millennials in North
America and Europe, Gwynn Guilford concludes that young people have grown weary of
democracy. Not only have many millennials lost their faith in democracy, but many are less
willing to oppose military coups and no longer view civil rights as absolutely essential; more
than a quarter dismiss the importance of free elections to democracy.5 Roberto Stefan Foa and
Yascha Mounk argue that support for authoritarianism is increasingly apparent. They write:
Citizens in a number of supposedly consolidated democracies in North America and
Western Europe have not only grown more critical of their political leaders. Rather, they
have also become more cynical about the value of democracy as a political system, less
hopeful that anything they do might influence public policy, and more willing to express
support for authoritarian alternatives. The crisis of democratic legitimacy extends across a
much wider set of indicators than previously appreciated.