Monthly Archives: August 2017

History, Politics & Current Affairs

Fascism in America

Video

Vice News has created a powerful documentary on the murderous fascist violence that took over Charlottesville last weekend. It is hard to watch, but important to see. We must all bear witness to what is happening and not turn away from it but fight it together.

Fascism has been an undercurrent in American politics for many decades and has never been wiped out. But it now has thousands of newly emboldened, well-armed adherents who feel safe leaving their shadows, rifles in hand. They see themselves as part of a holy war. Aided and abetted by Trump and Bannon, American Nazis have gained the confidence to come out, threaten, attack, even murder. They act out more forcefully now because they fear no reprisals—they believe God and Trump are on their side. This makes them a much more powerful force for evil than they were only months ago.

Unless we stomp this fascist uprising down hard and fast with the rule of law, show immediate intervention between sides at rallies where fascists appear, and disallow armed proponents of violence from threatening others and brandishing weapons in the streets and elsewhere—unless we legislate against the legal arming of members of hate groups who actively support the murder of innocents and the overthrow of our government—we may enter an age of increasing white fascist terrorism.
 
The president has spit in the face of all who fought the Nazis during World War II. He has made a dirty joke of the sacrifices of all who were tortured and slaughtered by Hitler and his followers. Trump has all but welcomed the Klan into the White House. He daily proves himself to be an utterly unfit and illegitimate head of state, a leader opposed to his own people and his own nation, a traitor in support of a malign foreign power and a man with a malignant and severe personality disorder that keeps him from thinking rationally or caring about any interests other than his own.
 
If Trump should eventually be impeached and ousted by those in power who recognize his instability and moral bankruptcy, we may hear and see threats made against those who oppose him. Extremists who feel their fascist president was toppled by a communist coup d’etat will go after both liberals and conservatives who finally feel too soiled and disgusted to carry water for an unhinged tyrant who seems to be in league with Putin against the United States.
Whether Trump stays in power or not, he has unleashed heavily armed monsters without morals or mercy. So far, they have been given the benefit of the doubt by police and government agencies when they should have been held back. Legislators in the pocket of the NRA have allowed people with documented mental illness and histories of domestic violence to own and use deadly firearms and even purchase semi-automatic weapons of mass destruction. Our nation has been willing to coddle supporters of violence and support them in their efforts to arm themselves like professional soldiers and build up huge personal armories.
 
Fascists do not stop at threats. They do not stop at murder. There is a good chance that, emboldened by irrational hatred and violent tendencies, some will believe that it is their holy duty to engage in what they see as righteous war against members of the U.S. government. No, they cannot topple our government, but they have already infiltrated it. They are massively armed and exist in larger numbers than we have seen in decades. They are likely to continue to do great damage, and to distract us all from helping those who are in need and watching how international affairs affect us. We must speak against tyrants, demagogues and terrorists. We must change our gun laws. We must be ready to bring fascists down.
Politics & Current Affairs

The U.S. Should Invest in MINERS, Not MINES

Miners

Keeping people employed is a great goal. However, pouring huge resources into and propping up a dangerous and polluting industry that damages the environment and gives people deadly black lung disease is a bad long-term investment in both people and resources.

Yes, it’s sad when people who have traditionally worked in a field lose the option to carry on. But the main reasons so many families have long worked in coal mining for generations is because they were often poorly educated, untrained for other work, and they lived in areas that had few if any other reasonably-paying jobs. Mining has long paid especially well for a job that requires no college education.

Fewer than 77,000 Americans work in the coal industry—compare that to the 3,384,834 Americans who are directly employed by the clean energy industry. That’s right: there are 44 times as many jobs in clean industries, and that number is growing every year. Offering free job training and education to America’s coal workers and making sure they and their families have medical insurance, food and housing support to keep them going for a couple of years while they re-train would result in enormous social benefits to them and those in their communities at relatively low cost. Such an investment in their retraining would provide permanent improvements and social benefits that would help them and their local and national tax bases for the rest of their lives.

Investing in coal miners in this way for just two years would make them healthier (meaning they wouldn’t need huge medical interventions caused by black lung later), much more employable (meaning they’d put tax money back into the local and national economies) and better educated (which makes them more independent and engaged citizens). Many could be retrained to work in the alternative energy sector, which is currently booming. Dragging out the coal industry’s lifespan just postpones the inevitable day of reckoning, exposes more people to killer diseases and further dirties our environment and contributes to global warming.

If we want to improve the lives of coal workers and make American cleaner, safer and stronger and Americans smarter and more employable, investing more resources in coal miners instead of in coal mines and their owners would be the patriotic and financially (and morally) responsible thing for our country to do.