Author: Innomen

Writer. Philosopher. Nerd. If you want to know more, contact me. I don't know where it's getting that photo.

Bernie can’t fix anything because powerless?

It’s funny how some people say that the president doesn’t have any real power to change things, when the fact is we haven’t had an actual progressive president since jimmy carter, so how would we know?

Well by the actions of every other president since Carter. So long as you realize they are actually republicans trying to maintain a facade.

Every democrat elected to the office has been functionally a moderate Republican. And if you’ll notice, each one had to talk further and further left to get the job, and thus their betrayal was more and more obvious each time. Hopefully Obama is the last one that was possible. He had to make such a massive about-face going from a reform mandate landslide to the impotent banker puppet his funding sources desire that it hopefully discredited the entire ploy of running a republican in reformer clothing.

I think that’s why the right wing has virtually given up on this race by allowing Trump and the clown car. They know they don’t have a prayer.

The question is can the actual progressives and reformers seize the opportunity and have the courage to risk looking like a fool again. By once again admitting hope and voting for a reformer.

Yes Obama tricked us all, but that should not translate into a strategy of handing a dying party the executive branch, overtly or covertly. (By which I mean a vote for anyone other than Bernie.)

And we definitely don’t have to preemptively compromise by picking Hillary when there is zero risk when voting for a real reformer. Worst case, Hillary wins anyway and then we all have to pick her to avoid outright insanity. Best case, the reformer we thought we were electing when we pulled the lever for Obama.

The election is going to test some interesting theories. Essentially we’re going to be putting the alternative vote to the test because people in the democratic primary can indeed go for broke and vote for the real reformer with zero risk to the general.

The question is do people engage in tactical voting only to avoid a loss or is it also ego, join the herd, Stockholm syndrome?

In any case, I predict a Bernie primary and general victory. The scales will possibly clearly tip when the tickets are complete and we know who the VP will be.

Mental Victims

This culture has a disease. It take many forms but the root is ultimately tolerance for the suffering of others. So many of us have mental victims.

Hypothetical people that represent real groups whose suffering we tolerate or even enjoy, and tell ourselves we’re right to do so.

But we never are. Suffering is never helpful. Human rights have no exceptions.

Hurting evil does not make you good. You must do good to be good. Preventing evil is doing good, but rarely do our fantasies of deterrence occur. Vengeance does not actually dissuade future exploitation, ironically because like we do with our mental cruelties,  the criminal always assumes someone else will be doing the suffering.

It’s always a surprise when we find ourselves the victim. And when it’s over and we expect outrage and sympathy on our behalf and for our plight, we get nothing because we to our horror find out that someone else dismisses our suffering. And we think we are better. But you can’t be better so long as you want the suffering of someone else.

You are merely different. And being different from evil leaves room for being a different kind of evil. As I said, being evil to evil does not make you good.

“Being against evil doesn’t make you good. Tonight I was against it and then I was evil myself. I could feel it coming just like a tide… I just want to destroy them. But when you start taking pleasure in it you are awfully close to the thing you’re fighting.” ~Ernest Hemingway

The meanest word in the English language is “deserve.” We dismiss on the grounds that they deserve our violence and their pain.

 

Bernie Email: 2015-10-07

(Published here because they don’t put these emails on the web anywhere for sharing.)

Bernie Sanders for President

In two weeks, Bernie will be giving a big speech at the Iowa Democratic Party’s Jefferson-Jackson Dinner. It is the largest gathering of Iowa Democrats of the year, and it comes exactly 100 days before the Iowa caucuses.

This event is a BIG deal. Usually, campaigns make sure big-time contributors get the premium tickets. That’s what we expect the other candidates to do. Same old, same old.

Our campaign has a different idea, and we need your help to carry it out.

We want to pack the Iowa Events Center with regular folks — supporters carrying crushing student debt, parents who would benefit from a $15 minimum wage, and workers who have lost their jobs due to our disastrous trade policies.

General admission tickets cost $50 apiece, and our campaign is asking for supporters across the country to sponsor a student, a parent, a worker, or a campaign supporter by covering their cost of admission.

Contribute to our campaign today and and help us pack the Iowa J-J Dinner with the people powering our political revolution.

If you’ve saved your payment information with ActBlue Express, your donation will go through immediately:

Every member of the national political media will be there, and this is a moment we can ensure the voices of students, parents, and those looking for work are heard loud and clear. Let’s send a powerful message about what a united national movement standing in solidarity with each other looks like.

All my best,

Robert Becker
Iowa State Director
Bernie 2016

Paid for by Bernie 2016

(not the billionaires)

PO Box 905 – Burlington VT 05402 United States – (855) 4-BERNIE

Liberal Hate

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To be fair, I do see a lot wrong with the progressive movement, just ask me about gun control, GMO hate, and nuclear power, but that makes a lot of sense since progressivism is forced to be a single party event in this country.

There are two general approaches to political change, the desire for something new or the desire for something old. Conservatives are by definition regressive. They wish for stasis or regression. Progressives are the other side, they wish for change and progress towards something new.

The problem is that there are many possible futures but we all share a past. It makes sense to have a single conservative party. However, in order to counter that you need a concerted effort to balance it, and that’s a problem because progressives can’t agree as easily as conservatives because there are many possible futures, some of which are mutually exclusive.

For example, I want to see a future with nuclear reactors and the freedom to own weapons. My reasoning isn’t relevant to this comment. The fact is that many progressives do not.

Now conservatives may disagree on which elements of the past to keep and how far back to emulate, but those difference are much easier to reconcile. Progressivism of any stripe is always going to be at a disadvantage in this context all else being equal.

My point is to prove that it isn’t logical to lump “liberals” together like it is to do so with conservatives, because of the shared past, divergent future, dichotomy.

8765786076That said, if any party is more guilty of ignoring facts it’s the conservative party (or conservative elements within progressive parties) since there are reasons we abandoned elements of the past when we did so.

Granted not all of them were valid and good reasons but for the most part we had good cause, at least at the time.

The right wing (be they overt or covert) in this country is completely fact immune on a whole slew of issues ranging from economics to climatology to sociology. When they aren’t simply lying for power on behalf of their 1% owners or pathological greed.

Basically we need a depth of process reform that simply isn’t going to happen prior to the singularity. And what I am hoping for is internal changes to the one party that overtly stands for change. Since currently the ship of state is headed for a waterfall.

1336153857475Letting the 1% try to keep ALL the money is just insane. It will destroy the country. Though of course the wealthy can always just fly away. Realizing that they are a pathology at the systemic level is the first step towards finding an ethical cure.

That as opposed to merely executing them, French revolution style, which is perfectly possible given how few people we’re talking about here. And I should also point out that if this ever becomes the position of the government, there’s no where to run as our drone strikes have shown.

The opposite is not true I’m quick to add. They simply couldn’t win a war vs the rest of us.Â