There are two active and interrelated juggernauts that are currently poisoning the US political landscape. One is the damning and poisonous belief that the 2020 election was stolen wholesale from former President and narcissistic psychopath Donald Trump. That millions adhere to this toxic myth is both a testament and a warning about the power of unrelenting political propaganda. The other is the incredible and unprecedented attack on voting rights choreographed by todays Republican Party. Both of these realities present a clear threat to the Republic.
It’s not possible to quantify the full scope of damage levied by Trump. Next to his wholesale and unrivaled commitment to environmental collapse and destruction, his unrelenting attacks on both free elections and the right to vote may well be his greatest achievements. This coupled with the incredible loathing and hatred of democracy showcased by Republicans with their historic avalanche of over 300 voter suppression bills is horrifying. And let us be clear — these voter suppression bills are not targeting affluent white people. The current political polarization that is highlighted by both the belief and adherence to an epic lie and an unprecedented attack on voting rights cannot be left unchallenged. Reasoned and caring people need to rise up and voice their belief in both the integrity of elections and the right of all Americans to vote. This is the only real power that can prevail over this historic and unprecedented attack on American democracy.
JIM SAWYER, Edmonds, Wash.
Response to “If We Don’t Protect the Natural World by 2030, Earth May Be Unfit for Life” by Reynard Loki [6/15/21 TPP]. Let me see if I understood this article correctly. By 2030 the 30X30 plan will remove enough land out of production agriculture in order to enhance natural biodiversity on 30% of the world’s land base so that we can feed the 25% more humans expected to be born by 2050. Is everyone going insane?
The right-wing oligarchy is giddy with happiness over this gift from whom they brand as radical east coast elite Socialist extreme environmentalists — and Californians. As I write, they’re holding meetings all across rural America denouncing Joe Biden as a pawn of these freedom hating Socialist elites. Apparently, the extreme right wing anticipated the 30X30 plan and are already handing out slick, professionally produced brochures on how the Democrats are bent on expelling farmers and ranchers from the land. Does no one remember those pesky red states and the 50 US Senators they elect?
What on Earth are they teaching in Biology 101 these days? How did “bio-diversity” become the catch-all nostrum for all things governing the environment? Clearly, “bio-diversity” is now the central tenet of a belief system for many self-described environmentalists, much like Jesus walking on water is dogma for Fundamentalist Christians. Because you believe in something does not necessarily make it true.
Consider this, agriculture is the antithesis of the doctrine of “bio-diversity.” In order to maximize production, the farmer (or gardener) systematically minimizes biological diversity.
GILLES STOCKTON, Grass Range, Mont.
There are two problems with Wayne O’Leary’s column, “Broken Clocks are Right Twice a Day” [5/15/21 TPP]. One is that he treats globalization and immigration as two separate and distinct phenomena. The other is that he focuses only on how globalization affects United States workers.
Globalization is a fancy, sterile word for the domination of much of the globe’s economy by a relatively small number of mega-corporations based in western capitalist nations prowling the globe for cheap labor, no unions, no taxes, no environmental protections, and no regulation. Of course, this disrupts or totally destroys the economies, environments, social structures, and cultures of the nations targeted. This, in turn, creates multitudes of people who cannot live decently in the countries of their birth. Hence they try desperately to go where they can live decently. They are the dreaded refugees and immigrants.
In the United States many are from central and South America where economies, environments, social structures, and cultures have been wrecked by United States imperialism, exploitation, naked violence, and undying support for brutal, lawless, thug governments. If some United States workers (actually a very few-the jobs the refugees and immigrants take are in sectors of the economy where exploitation and degraded working conditions are so egregious that “native” United States workers don’t even consider them) suffer some negative consequences from the presence of these by and large decent, warm, law abiding people who add color, life, variety (and some great restaurants) to our communities and vitality to local economies the solution is not exclusion. It is creating a globe where all people can live decently in the nations of their birth. But that means taking on the mega-corporate globalizers and, incidentally, depriving Republicans of their major tool for distracting, dividing, and demoralizing the working class-hatred of “them,” hatred of the “other.”
ED BELLER, The Bronx, N.Y.
O’Leary replies: I agree that globalization and immigration are interlocked issues, but space constraints prevented my elaborating on the connection. Without doubt, corporate globalization can’t easily function without free population flows across national borders providing cheap labor where desired.
As far as the concentration on American workers is concerned, they obviously have to be our number one concern. Much as we might like to solve all the manifold problems created worldwide by the globalizers, it’s beyond our capacity. There’s an exception, however: targeted foreign aid aimed at offsetting the international disruptions caused by globalization, thereby slowing the need for migration.
I take exception to a recent Gene Lyons column [6/1/21 TPP]. Lyons gives racist policing a liberal nod, then lurches off into the tall weeds of black-on-black violence (a scourge, no disagreement).
However, the topic is a right-wing propaganda staple for tripartite racist subtexts. 1) Blacks are prone to violence. 2) Police are the solution to crime. 3) Summary justice never hurt anyone. (Who didn’t have it coming!)
The first and third premises are easily dispelled. There is no genetic indicator for intelligence nor violence. A society in which any race persistently underperforms is racist by design. And no society grants police powers of execution except police states.
The second premise, however, is a belief inculcated in the public by the pernicious influence of cop shows. Yes, we all know they are fictional, and to a howling degree of unreality. I also know Coke ads are selling me Coke, but I’m genuinely thirsty.
Rarely do police ever solve or interdict crimes. This is a civil service branch with attitude, a trade with a powerful trade association and pervasive propaganda. Every Action News station to assign a unit to catch pothole crews leaning on their shovels should be required to cover precinct houses for cops standing around with thumbs up their butts. To the extent the heroes actually work, they are serving up victims of the Drug Wars to the prosecution-incarceration complex to persuade the public their security is a matter of punishing free men whose free will indulges substances banned to manufacture a never-ending crime wave.
Meanwhile, violent crime runs unchecked beneath the noses of police departments sulking that their superior order of citizenship has been challenged by mere civilians to stop patrolling poor neighborhoods on the model of pacification efforts in Vietnam. The failure to address actual crime is just another component of the unaccountable insubordination of our police establishment.
George Floyd’s murder galvanized consensus against racist policing. The Minneapolis PD chief testified against “bad apple” Derek Chauvin. But where is the follow-up? Root out the brass who praised and promoted and covered for Chauvin his long, brutal career. Identify cops with records as egregious, and their brass. Relying on police to reform themselves defies the pure biological truth of the “bad apple” analogy: one bad apple means the barrel must be dumped.
At this key moment in which sweeping reform is on the table, here comes Gene Lyons with the Grand Old Party line. Not a word he wrote is inaccurate, but the racist subtext is deafening. … I’m sure his heart is in the right place. One of the qualities of white privilege is it can’t see itself in the mirror.
M. WARNER, Minneapolis Minn.
The propaganda that no one is above the law does not hold water. For example: Trump incited the Jan. 6 Capitol building riot, resulting in the death of five people, and he is not in prison.
Another example: George W. Bush waged an unnecessary, illegal war against Iraq, killing thousands of civilians and soldiers. When weapons of mass destruction were not found, why didn’t he stop the war? How was he punished? He is now a respected ex-president with a substantial retirement pension and a library built in his honor.
When someone kills one person, he is arrested for murder. When the leader of a country murders thousands of innocent civilians in an illegal, unprovoked, unjust, barbaric, savage war, he is honored as a conquering hero! Indubitably, some people are considered above the law!
GILBERT A. RUBIO, San Diego, Calif.
Victorian philosopher John Stuart Mill, in his masterpiece, On Liberty, Chapter 2, asserted the need of at least two political parties for the health of a commonwealth — one for stability and another for reform. The parliament then boasted a staunchly conservative House of Lords balance against a somewhat liberal-leaning House of Commons.
In our two-party system, the Republican Party appears to be in serious decline, and it behooves its leadership to recognize and revise outmoded concepts of justice, order and equality under law. The citizenry has to have an adequate choice, afforded through civil dialogue, mutual respect of differences and, yes, volitional compromise.
Few TPP subscribers will concur with this brief expression of personal opinion. Yet, upon cool reflection, many may acknowledge the need for more partisan equilibrium that democracy may flourish.
WILLIAM DAUENHAUER, Willowick, Ohio
From The Progressive Populist, July 1-15, 2021
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