On Personal Responsibility and Privilege

The ideal of personal responsibility is the only part of conservatism that holds any value or appeal for me. I do agree that there is a valuable truth there, that there is something deeply imbalanced placing all of the responsibility for inner-city problems on "society" and giving the gangstas, their parents, their community a free pass.

The problem I have with conservatives (and libertarians) emphasizing personal responsibility is the total lack of appreciation for the big picture, the context in which folks are failing to raise good kids, or kids are failing to become good citizens. By emphasizing personal responsibility over the reality of ghettos, of police crime & abuse, of joblessness, of systemic racism that makes it 3x more likely for a white to get the job over a black, that makes the loans 3x more expensive for a black, that makes the car 3x more expensive for the black, ... these things all matter. Not just a little. A freaking ton.

To me, I can't understand the lack of understanding of the set & setting (the context) except to frame it for myself as a matter of white privilege. Privilege is the ability to not-think about a lot of stuff - to take a lot of stuff for granted - and not even be aware of what you're not thinking about, not worried about, not concerned about, doesn't enter your thinking at all, because it is true for you, due to your privilege, and you're simply not aware of it at all because of your privilege.

So, a lot of people who experience life growing up in middle class or better families in America (sometimes regardless of skin color), believe with all their hearts that if the folks in the ghettos would just work as hard as they do, they would succeed. That their sense of personal responsibility and self-determination are what sets them apart. That life is hard, but if only these other folks would put their noses to the grindstone they'd have a solid chance to succeed, just as they themselves do.

This line of thinking - is so fundamentally intertwined with a world-view born of privilege. Of seeing things work out when they try hard. Of only having themselves to blame for things not working out. When they themselves are lazy, then things go badly. Or when a friend or class mate is lazy, they see the problems that flow from this. But even then, most times, such people can redeem themselves by learning their lesson and getting with the program.

But this whole world-view is one supported by having stable parents. By having only to worry about yourself, for the most part. By not worrying about whether you'll eat today. Whether your father will come home and beat you. Or some other man your mother just brought home desperate for love and attention, even if it means the kids getting beat up a bit. Or no parents around at all, and the responsibility of feeding your little siblings falls on your 10yr old ass. Or of being shot at on the way to school. Or pressured by your friends bigger brothers to run drugs for them - which would pay some bills, get you some standing (and you'd be "protected" by your gang), and so on.

I just... I cannot imagine living under those conditions and being expected to just "study harder". "Focus on school." And worst of all - "It's my own fault - my laziness - for not doing better under these circumstances". I just... I would be livid with fury if others who have "everything" came down to tell me I'm a moral failure for being unable to cope in the way they think I should be able to when they haven't lived this life for one friggin' second of their pampered-ass privileged-ass mutherfucking-lives!

Yes, responsibility has to also be shouldered by those who live in ghettos. I think there are many, many heroes who try to stand for justice and reason every day in such communities. But corruption, police-abuse, governmental incompetence, and outright hatred of blacks get in the way time and time again, and reinforce the social structures and patterns time and again, all the while some ass-hat at Fox is screaming about you having "a refrigerator!" - as if that is what marks living the easy life, or having privilege like they do!

And to sort of head-off a really common response by other whites and privileged folks I've had this conversation with -- whatever degree of "but I grew up poor / underprivileged / worked my ass off to make it where I am today / I struggle to make ends meet / I had less than perfect parents / I was abused as a kid / etc" -- sure, all of those things are true enough - but they're a pittance compared to what ghetto kids face. And you have every opportunity to change things for yourself. You can go get a job, and are 3x more likely than any black to get the same job you're both competing for. You very likely have family with some resources to help you out should your ship really tank. You can definitely go get public assistance, and you're very likely to face a streamlined process that doesn't immediately suspect you're cheating the system and you're a lazy bastard mooching off of society. You have resources you can fall back on, so you have a level of freedom to take chances in life because you freakin' know you'll likely be okay in the long run.

Ghetto folks do NOT have this same level of assurance of support. They have much worse chances for a good outcome in every possible direction they look. You're likely to get that job, not them. You're likely to be paid more when you land that job, because of the unwritten rules that indicate that a white person is worth more than a colored. You're likely to be trusted more, given more autonomy and respect in any position you hold. I'm not saying you're going to be treated wonderfully by everyone, but you're likely to be treated better in every single thing you do and try in life, as compared to a colored / immigrant. You don't have to worry about deportation, and you worry a shit ton less about police brutality or wrongful imprisonment!

I really don't think personal-responsibility is the primary issue here. It's important, for sure, but emphasizing it is exactly what every racist and privileged person does, and it only adds more weight to pushing down the exact folks you're thinking you'd like to see succeed.

On Gang Culture, Racism, Classism, and Radical Self Reliance

In response to the idea that inner city kids are a product of poor parenting...

I really doubt that this was due to the parenting - at least for most of these kids.

I would suggest that it is due to living in a world surrounded by people who shoot each other - the gangs. Why are there gangs? Because of a pervasive hopelessness. Because everywhere an inner city child looks, there is poverty and guns and killing and hopeless adults who aren't able to find jobs and pay the bills, and stressed out mothers who also can't find jobs, and schools where the teachers are freaking out because everyone is shooting each other and bringing guns and knives to school and on and on.

The very conservative (and libertarian) idea that this is a product of a moral failure to raise children well is .. as far as I can tell, naive.

I'm not trying to say that culture isn't important... at this late date, there is a strong element of gang-worship, of bling mentality, of live fast because living for the long run ain't worth it.

But that just underscores the liberal point: there is no real evidence that if you're a black kid in an inner city that you have any rational reason to think that you will be better off if you study and work towards a long stable life of fitting into the larger world.

The reality is that our prisons are full of black inner city folk. The big majority are the people from their neighborhoods - their fathers, their uncles, their mothers, their brothers, and so on.

And I don't know how that anyone can honestly believe that human beings are born equal yet turn into such horrible people unless you're implying that there is a strong element of genetic predisposition to moral failing.

And there are many studies that show if you take an inner city child and raise him or her up in a suburban home, they're likely to have white people attitudes. You're saying it's entirely what their mother & father said to them that makes that difference?! Or maybe it is seeing everyone around them preparing for a life of paying the bills and being a citizen? And critically: seeing that they're succeeding.

Watching those who struggle to do right fail in the face of overwhelming poverty and racism - with the police attacking you or your friends or your parents or your neighbors; you're just not going to get the sense that you're on the same side with the cops, or with society as a whole. You're clearly the wrong color, coming from the wrong side of the tracks, and unless you're a basketball / football star, your prospects are shit, is going to give you a very different view of your potential futures and what strategies might be sensibly applied to your life.

Seriously! Parental upbringing is the problem?! That's flat-out vastly insufficient to explain the phenomenons of inner cities, and would fit well with every racist group on the planet: the Jews are garbage. The Spics, the Beaners, the whatever. Their culture is to blame. Their upbringing. There is something fundamentally wrong with them.

No, there is something fundamentally unfair about the world, and kids aren't stupid. They get it by the time they're about 10 yrs old. This shit is rigged, they're on the losing team, and any attempt to change teams will be met with fierce opposition by both sides. They're fucked up, down and sideways. So, if they're fucked, then there's nothing for it but to get what you can before you're shot. To do your best for your tribe. There's honor in that, clearly. Fuck the man.

"Liberal"

For those who are still confused by the vitriol aimed at "liberals" and "liberalism"

I'm far from the first to point any of this out, but it seems to me that many continue to be baffled by why "liberal" is a dirty word in my book:

Basically, American "liberals" (self-identified) are better referred to as "neoliberals" or "bourgeois liberals" - liberals of middle and upper classes who wish for personal freedoms and ignore the suffering imposed by liberal capitalist markets at home and abroad.

Certainly that is the core of my criticism - "liberals" in American common parlance - i.e. as most Americans understand the term (i.e. those on the "opposite" side of the political aisle from "conservatives/republicans")...

That sort of liberal is happy to be ignorant or self-deluded about the evils perpetrated in the name of America and Capitalism and Globalism to untold billions of suffering fellow human beings who are effectively made to live in slave labor in nations which are themselves enslaved to America or its western allies.

It robs people of their autonomy, dignity, self direction, local accountability, right up to and including death by near starvation wages and inhuman working conditions.

This is not a happenstance or a fringe effect of American style capitalism - but rather a direct desired result to grease the wheels of resource extraction - whether it be raw materials robbed from the ground, water, wildlife, or vegetation; or human labor robbed from the populace...

Rather, this outcome is intentional and deliberate and orchestrated with the use of propaganda and terror viz the CIA and black ops and outright military intervention and color revolutions and bribery of local officials. This terrorism includes the funding of local (or even non-local) violent groups - who are often trained, armed, and aided by the US in order to carry out attacks against any who oppose our enslavement - most often targeting the civilian populations in order to murder and instill fears or mislead them into believing that they're actually being attacked by another group and should help the American agenda for their own good.

American "liberals" claim to be the dictionary definition - accepting, loving, compassionate, open to change, etc., while absolutely turning a blind eye and deaf ear to all of the above - denying its existence - insisting it is all propaganda - siding with the USA's doctrine of "Exceptionalism" to "justify" the rape and pillaging of most of the planet so that they get the material benefits of a bourgeois lifestyle.

It's a quid-pro-quo arrangement: I, the American Liberal, will turn a blind eye to the evils you perpetrate and not agitate politically for reform as long your evils keep me relatively well off.

That's the core of "American Exceptionalism" - we can do what ever we wish to the planet and are above international law or even the most basic levels of human decency because we're full of "exceptional" people who deserve only the very best at any conceivable cost...

Atheism is not a religion - or How 5 is like pie... (or NOT)

From Wikipedia:
"...most agnostics see their view as distinct from atheism, which they may consider no more justified than theism or requiring an equal conviction.[43] The supposed unattainability of knowledge for or against the existence of gods is sometimes seen as indication that atheism requires a leap of faith.[44] Common atheist responses to this argument include that unproven religious propositions deserve as much disbelief as all other unproven propositions,[45] and that the unprovability of a god's existence does not imply equal probability of either possibility."

Arguing that Atheism is a theism, is akin to arguing that "5" is a "fruit". It is not, by its very nature, and cannot possibly be. One can confuse the issue and make confusing observations such as "there can be 5 fruits, 5 fruits taste delicious, my favorite pie has 5 fruits in it..." and so on. But you're simply confusing the issue... not proving that 5 is a fruit, or fruit is a 5.

A person could, to my mind, spend all eternity positing unprovable possibilities, and then engaging in the pointless exercise of trying to prove or disprove each of them until he or she collapsed with their last breath. Such a life is, to my mind, wasted. I much desire to avoid that fate. To give credence to the argument that in order to not believe in god - to outright claim that it doesn't exist - requires such a meaningless waste of a lifetime is tacitly buying into religion's frame of reference - the very world-view that leads to so much human suffering.

I reject outright any such frame of reference, so I don't need to waste my life disproving every possible proposition, no matter how ridiculous. And any argument that requires that we limit our minds to that frame of reference has already lost - has already proved itself a doomed enterprise, by failing to recognize the absurdity, the suffering, the pointless waste that it is to try to disprove every goofy thing that could-possibly-be-but-there-is-no-reason-to-think-it-might-really; and by that, proves the questioner to be profoundly confused and ignorant of the underlying truths - essentially to be ignorant of the most important thing: their frame of reference.

New Atheism - the kind that doesn't piss-around with useless "we cannot know therefore we cannot really say", or the equally mealy-mouthed "we don't think it's likely, but we respect every goofy thing everyone might believe no matter how destructive to society and the very health of this planet" - is not trying to win hearts or minds or play the stupid game that religions do. New atheists acknowledging what is inevitable, indisputable, fundamentally true. What science shows to be fact.
All religious beliefs are by their very nature mental masturbation and wasteful of life, mind, and existence, due to the fact that they don't have any error-correction mechanism. They can posit any ridiculous notion and because someone believes it - it is sacred and indisputable.

I don't mind others having all sorts of goofy religious beliefs, per se. But I don't need to waste my time on them, insofar as they don't curtail my own life, or insofar as I don't care about the poor schmuck who's so abused him or herself with those blinders.

However, I take passionate unction towards anyone who tries to shoe-horn the conversation of atheism into one that can only support the untenable world-view that proof of the ridiculous is required in order to dismiss the ridiculous.

I understand that emotionally and culturally (and even humanly) that folks often find that they are afraid. Afraid of death. Afraid of the unknown. Afraid of pain, loss, suffering. Human beings often feel the need to appeal to a higher authority, someone they feel they can trust to tell them what is the right thing to do.

This is a need to feel that there is a parent-figure watching over them so that they can feel confident that everything is okay.

However, that is an emotional short-coming on their part, and by no means requires that I, or anyone else, participate or prove to them anything, nor justify my own rejection of such stupidity and short comings for any purpose whatsoever.

Again, the perspective that a world-view, or frame of reference need prove itself to be "good" is already devolving into the blinders of religious dogma and foolishness.

Atheism doesn't try to justify itself. It doesn't acknowledge a connection between one's religion and whether you're a good or bad person. Goodness and badness are relative to who benefits, who suffers. People's behavior is far more motivated by our basic biological necessities and circumstances than by such ephemeral minutia as religious beliefs. We're the product of millions of years of trial & error, of brains that got eating and shitting right, and later mastered social grouping behaviors. We are quite literally layers of minds - deep down we have our lizards stems, and above that a much larger mammalian layer, and above and to the fore of that we have our uniquely Human frontal lobes.
Atheists have a wide variety of spiritual beliefs, have a wide variety of "goodness" or "badness" or "charisma" or "bluntness" or any other characteristic you wish to name. None of those traits has anything whatsoever to do with Atheism per se, any more than 5 has to do with pie. They're not related. At. All.

What sparks me about conversations with religious folk is that I see you as requiring that we speak in religious terms: goodness, badness, beliefs. Atheism doesn't doesn't exist inside of any of those. It is not a belief, nor is it a faith. It is, inexorably, incontrovertibly, the search for that which honestly, truly is. It is in fact the very essence of 'reject that which has no evidence,' and simply trying to find 'that which is.'

This is quintessentially why atheism lends itself to science. Not the magical pseudo-science that most religious and laypeople believe in - but rather in the actual, provable, incontrovertible, inescapable, what-is (or in Buddhism, suchness: Tathātā/Dharmatā).

It is also worth awakening your mind to the fact (not belief, not faith) that Buddhism is not a theism, and should not be lumped into religion anymore than Enlightenment or Humanism or Secularism should be. Philosophy is better term, because it is better grounded in an honest desire to discover the truth, rather than the deceitful desire to hide the truth from oneself in order to conform to the will of others and "fit in".

I would posit that the word belief is inappropriately applied to Atheism by religious folk. Atheism is not a belief - it is not subject to the "might be true, might not be". It simply rejects that which has no basis in reality. Religion exists within the world-view of belief - it might or might not be true, and it desperately tries to hide the truth and divert people's attention away from even thinking about the truth or falseness - the likelihood of what it posits to be truth. If you don't look too hard, don't think too much, you can stay happily ignorant in the fold of religions.

But science looks for what is, what is repeatable, what can be observed by everyone, consistently, repeatably. Its only "belief" is that these things constitute solid evidence of what is, and that there is something that-is in the first place. i.e. that there is a reality that we all share that is independent of our desires for what it should be, but simply is what it is.

I certainly believe in science (i.e. I have no way to prove the existence of existence). Science is the most useful philosophical point of view I have encountered in my life, and requires the least faith of any philosophy. Again - only the belief that there is something real that we're learning about.

But atheism is even simpler: It only rejects the silly magical invisible guy in the sky stupidity. It makes sense from multiple logically self-consistent frames of reference, and I know it equally from several coherent spiritually satisfying frames of reference.

But what you choose to believe, or come to know for yourself, is your own business. And I couldn't care less (other than a basic desire to see you not force the suffering upon yourself that comes part & parcel with all theism and religion in general).

But please do not limit your thinking so drastically that you insist that 5 is a fruit - that atheism is a theism. It is not, nor ever will be.

We are a nation in existential crisis

1. We are a nation in existential crisis.
Are we going to be a land of freedom, liberty, and justice; or are we going to continue to decline into capitalistic greed and an American flavor of fascism (tight coupling of state and private business interests, using the state as the bully stick to force workers into line for private for-profit interests against the will of we-the-people)?

2. This IS NOT NEW.
We've been going down this path for a very long time now - certainly since WW2's expansion of the Military Industrial Complex (MIC), which was vastly ramped up with Reagan and continues to this day - with every - single - president & congress in those intervening years supporting and expanding the power of the MIC and, more recently, the Surveillance State - the CIA, NSA, Homeland Security, and etc.

3. President Trump is NOT an ABERRATION.
He is merely the next in a long series of flip-flops between the Republicans and the Democrats holding power - almost like clockwork, going back to Reagan.

Every 8 years, the populous is sick and tired of the current party's excuses for not doing almost anything whatsoever of its promises of hope & change - and instead has delivered endless more-of-the-same - sellouts to big money.

Whether we're a Democrat or a Republican, the bottom line is we see that the administration has failed us.  Many of us become disgusted by this, and we don't come to vote for our party - which allows the other side - which has become enthusiastic about ousting our side during the interim - to come in and garner enough votes to swap an R for a D, or a D for an R.

4. This CYCLE allows for continuation of American POLITICAL evil.
It wasn't President GW Bush who was truly at fault for the problems of American Imperialism.  Nor was it President Obama, who continued the same policies - in fact - expanded on them for his eight (8) years in office.  Nor was it congress fault entirely, who overwhelmingly went along with expanded wars, and surveillance, and expansions of executive powers during these past 16 years.
No president is solely to blame.  And no congress, no matter how obstructionist, is entirely to blame.  Not even a significant minority to blame.  They're just doing their acting roles in a larger play that is being put on for our endless entertainment.

5.Our willingness to believe in these actors and this play as being real - having real power and mattering - or of us having some real - meaningful degree of influence over this charade by being active in the system - voting, campaigning, advocating for (D) or (R) candidates - that is a huge part of the problem.  This charade is being performed to keep us interested in "The days of our government's lives" daytime soap opera and not out in the streets refusing to allow this to continue.

6. Trump is bad.
7. Obama was bad.
8. GW Bush was bad.
9. Bill Clinton was bad.
10. H. Bush was bad.
11. Reagan was bad.

These presidents all expanded executive power, set precedents of corruption, executive dictatorial power grabs, expansion of the MIC and Surveillance State, the erosion of privacy, of individual liberty, of perversions of the constitution to enable greater latitude in being openly corrupt and pay-to-play.

Every single president here is guilty of going along with, or actively wanting to create, the global capitalistic dominance of the planet and hand-in-hand the global militaristic dominance of the planet by America's corporate and military might.

This, folks, is the actual textbook definition of "Fascism."

Not racism, per se, not jack-booted thugs, not burning Jews or other pogroms - rather, the intimate conjoining of private business interests with the military and governmental powers of the state.

America is Fascist and has been for quite some time.

Trump has only made it minutely more so - expanding on a vast set of precedents and foundations laid by his predecessors.

These same actions that many democrats are now decrying were actively done by Obama, and all prior administrations, especially including (D) administrations.

In fact - many of the most pivotal moments have happened during (D) administrations.  The vast expansion of the incarceration of black and poor folks was accomplished by Bill Clinton, with democrats cheering him on.

The vast roll-back of entitlements that had previously greatly helped poor people and single mothers to make ends meet, was ripped out and gutted under Bill Clinton with Hillary Clinton being an instrumental wheeler and dealer in accomplishing this change. (This being one of the strongest criticisms of HRC as being very much NOT a defender of children, but rather someone who throws them under the bus whenever politically expedient to do so).

The dissolution of the Glass-Steagall act and passage of the "Commodity Futures Modernization act" by Bill Clinton with the help of the republican congress - removed the protections against global economy-destroying overreach and greed by Wall Street which had successfully protected us since the Great Depression.

Removing Glass-Steagall lead directly to the Savings & Loan debacle and recession, and the growingly massive recessions and depressions we've had since.

The housing loan derivatives market which was legalized by the "Commodity Futures Modernization act" directly lead to the housing collapse & recession in '08/'09.

According to statistics on the global economy - we have a recession every 4-7 years on average.  The last one was in '09, which means we are DUE for another RECESSION, and since we have failed to reinstate Glass-Steagall, it may bring the entire global economy to a state similar to the '30 Great Depression!

---

To summarize:

I. We're a fascist, imperialist, colonialist, racist nation and have been from the start.

II. Trump is not an aberration, but a culmination of our continued denial of who we really are and our collective failures - especially as white people - to do a goddamn thing about it.

We are the reason

The real problem is that the born-here American people - from truck driver to CEO to Soccer Mom to Cable TV dad to Senator are complacent with American Imperialism.

The real problem is that Liberals accept a lying, cheating, warmonger in stride, they don't even notice that it's at odds with the concept of liberalism. Americans turn a blind eye on foreign policy with a pervasive attitude that "what happens elsewhere in the world is of very little importance, really."

They accept the deportation of jobs and industry in the hopes that the dropping prices at walmart will compensate, that their standard of living will remain much higher than the world's average, that they will have a chance at becoming filthy rich in "the land of opportunity."

The real problem is that white americans who are really feeling the results of austerity measures (a term intended to facilitate the takeover of our government by the oligarchy) are the very ones who are angry and lashing out against immigrants and people of color, angry at their loss of status and income, but much, much, much too ignorant and culturally unprepared to cope with the reality that capitalism is their worst enemy.

The problem, my friend, is that Liberals have fallen into a complacent stupor - unwilling to criticise in any sort of a serious manner their own "leaders" - Jon Stewart, John Oliver, Bill Maher, Samantha Bee, & etc., all get doughy eyed around Democrats and are so frightened of the current right-wing threat that they decided that they cannot criticize their prevaricating, greedy, in-cahoots democrats for fear that something even worse will get into office.

And so, my friend, you, me, everyone who claims to care about liberal issues has fueled the race to the bottom - to Hillary & Trump. Some of our friends were saying "this is an untenable pattern - it will lead to the bottom" for years, and yet you, and I, and most every liberal around ignored them as the "crazy fringe" .
But - and I cite reality here - they were resoundingly right.

So, although I respect everyone's right to make choices for themselves - that's a core to my progressive-humanist values - the fact is that it is this continued blind faith in the status quo and a real deliberate looking-away by liberals that allows this system to accelerate towards - if not outright to WW3, then at the very minimum degradation of the biosphere to catastrophic degrees of CO2 emission, sea level rise, the 6th extinction, and a return to slave or near slave labor for most of humanity in a senseless pursuit of profit for 1% of 1% of the population.

We're text-book insane as a nation. And since Liberals will not acknowledge this - or their place - their complacency - and the dire degree to which all of this is real, on the ground reality here and now - I see no hope of turning the tide here in America.
I honestly have no sense of what - if anything at all - will turn the tide short of self destruction on a grand scale.

And I cry for the children bombed in Somalia because America doesn't consider the people there to be people, and they were just in the way in some geopolitical move that the Clintons wanted to make.

Or for the children in Syria, who are dying under our 45,000 bombs dropped this year so-far by the Obama administration - 24hrs / day, 7 day / week - while liberals and americans and journalists pretend that this is a "just war" which is "borne of humanitarian reasons."  (See here for another perspective)

It's sick - it's cardboard cutout cartoon villain level of bullshit - that you, and my previous self - and most everyone we know happily barely acknowledges and hides our war mongering away in their peripheral vision so that they don't have to think too hard about it and just trusts the idea that america as a reasonable sane place with flawed but overall sensible well-meaning leaders (well, R's think theirs are the sane ones, and D's think theirs are, while in truth they're both beating the same war drums and taking the same corporate pay-to-play cash).

Liberals willfully buy-in to the "Assad is a bad guy" pre-chewed narrative and go along with the idea that this somehow gives the USA carte blanche to bomb and starve and terrorize civilians in order to bring about a regime change that suits our geopolitical interests better even though this is a flash point for Russia and China and seriously endangers sparking a WW3.

But, you know, "bad guy" = them, and "good guy" = us, and all is right under the american pie.

The DNC is a reeking corpse...

I agree with all Alicé Anil has to say in that video except the idea that we can do anything at all useful with the DNC.  They're extremely well funded and corporate-money controls them to their core.

There is no we in the DNC - no populous anything - just a lot of neoliberals trying to blow up the world for fun or profit.

The DNC is pro-war, pro-repressive regimes, pro-puppet regime change, pro psy-ops, pro-globalization, pro-human rights abuses, anti-humanist, anti-working class, anti-democracy on every possible level.

So - YES! The DNC couldn't have been more stupid - more self-destructive - more destructive to our nation if they tried (wait - they did try - they did their absolute damndest to retain power at the expense of all moral and ethical value - all reason to legitimately want power in the first place!)

The DNC sold their soul when they chose to follow Bill Clinton and his advisors from the DLC into "3rd way democrats" - i.e. wooing big monied interests by agreeing to help them with their agenda while simultaneously trading on the good name they still had from FDR and Kennedy to woo us voters.

But they haven't helped minorities, or the poor, or really fought for women's health in 30+ years.

And time and again when they lose big (as they did in 2010 midterms, and before in 2000 when they lost to GW for christ's sake!) - they just say "oh, it was /anything-but-their-failures/ to blame.

They never acknowledge that their focus on pleasing big money has utterly hollowed out their party and left it a vampire that feeds on the lifeblood of those who still believe in the goodness of people, of FDR, of JFK, or MLK, and wrongly believe that the DNC is in there fighting the good fight with them.

No - the DNC is not our friend - nay - it is indelibly our sworn enemy - the enemy of all goodness and human interests for the mindless pursuit of power and money.

Do not be a fool and fall for their lies.

Do not be naive and accept that there is ANY path to redeeming the DNC.

They are dead, dead, and dead.

All that's left is for us to bury their stinking reeking corpse, and to birth a new political system - not a goddamn two -party duopoly - but a real democracy with a real parliament or something similar that's open, inclusive, diverse, and multiethnic, multi-inclusive, as America really ought to be!!!

It begins with a process of reconciliation

I watched a TED talk recently where a man - a black man - Bryan Stevenson - works with incarcerated youths who were tried as adults and imprisoned for life.

Of all of the so-called developed nations, this only happens in America - that we take 14yr old children, try them as adults - and give them life sentences.

One of his remarks that most struck me was this idea that America has not yet really committed to the process of reconciliation - and that process requires a full commitment to truth.

We are a nation that is literally founded upon a genocide as grave and enormous as the Nazi attempt to annihilate Jews of Europe. We literally sit in houses built on stolen land, having murdered almost all the people that rightfully owned it.

We are a nation whose wealth was initially created - but largely continues to be created - through the enslavement of millions of black Africans - hunted, captured, chained, and shipped here to die as cattle for our greed.

We are a nation whose infrastructure was built on the backs of mistreated and abused immigrants whose search from something better landed them in a place where their labor was cheap, their lives cheaper still.

We are a nation whose military dominates this globe. We use that military to bomb 7 other nations currently. We use that military to coerce other nations to give us access to their oil, their metals, their water, any commodity that we covet. We use that military and our CIA to undermine foreign governments - often democratic governments - who do not jump in line to offer us access cheaply enough or freely enough for our greedy exploitative corporations.

We are a nation that believes itself to be exceptional. Exceptional in the sense that we do not owe respect to any other nation, nor to international norms, or international treaties, or international laws. We do as we please, where we please, when we please, and we claim that it is because we are a special people and these lesser restrictions do no apply to so exceptional a people as we.

We are a nation that lies to its own citizens while singing songs of freedom.

We are a nation that condemns other governments for human rights abuses as we attack the water protectors in North Dakota who are trying to protect their water sources from yet further ecological damage from greedy oil corporations.

We are a nation that has unilaterally given itself the right to assassinate anyone, anywhere - including American civilians - if the president decides its in his best interests without judicial oversight and against international treaties, norms, and laws.

We are a nation that tortures.

We are a nation that steals.

We are a nation that lies about its past, its present, and its future.

We are in desperate need of some honesty.

We are in desperate need of acknowledging our unlawful, immoral, unethical, abusive, and intolerable behavior towards every culture on earth that isn't white upper class Americans.

I agree with that fellow in the TED talks:

We need a serious and honest commitment to reconciliation -

And until we do that, we cannot honestly nor reasonably have any hope at all of being able to move forward and stop repeating these same crimes and abuses over and over.

So, no, we cannot stop talking about the war crimes and crimes against humanity that Obama and Hillary and GW Bush and Rumsfeld, and the rest of our leaders have committed.

We must continue to act as our conscience until we as a whole - we as a community - we as a nation - stop lying to ourselves and face the truth to begin walking in the path of justice.

We must prosecute our criminals - starting at the highest levels and working our way down until we have renounced to our very cores exceptionalism once and for all.

Germany reminds itself annually of its criminal past - and has memorials in many prominent places to remind itself of its dark past.  It teaches of itself honestly and openly in its schools so that it never makes the same mistake again.

America needs to own up to its global crimes and begin that same process.

As Bryan Stevenson notes - the opposite of poverty is not wealth - it is Justice.

On Honesty & American Denialism

My sense of the world that you and I live in is that folks want to believe whatever they believe and are very quick to turn away if what someone else has to say disrupts that belief in any way. I can count on my fingers the number of folks I know who consider content more important than tone, and I think when push comes to shove, tone is ultimately critical to them as well - myself included. But I don't think that makes us all equal in this regard. Even the intention of putting content first - at looking through the ephemeris of the message to its core is important. It's a philosophical point of view that I hold dear. I suppose it's a belief I have: That attempting to understand what is true is more important than making everyone feel good to maintain the peace. I don't hold the belief that there is only one truth, however. Understanding what is true is more of a process of eliminating those beliefs that simply cannot be true. That are at odds with reality, insofar as we can actually say with some degree of confidence what some part of reality is. That doesn't mean that I feel the need to require everyone to believe a certain way - but it does mean that I don't respect a person's beliefs that are in conflict with known facts, especially when those facts are readily available to them - that it is a matter of wilful ignorance, not a matter of innocence. I can and often do empathise with people's desire to believe things that are demonstrably untrue, or radically unlikely. And I have a basic empathy and respect for everyone wherever they're coming from even if they're deeply wrong about any number of things - as far as I can tell or know. Again, It's not that I believe I have some special line to "objective" reality - but I don't find that there are that many in my spheres of experience who give a flying tomato for what is true over what they wish or were brought up to believe is true. The point being, I would just like to have more folks who are willing to look for what we can know to be true (or at least not demonstrably false) and have the conversations that flow from that starting point or minimum adherence to reality. A friend recently put it thus - that all truth is human truth - subjective - because at best we approach what is potentially objectively true by continuous refinements - it's an asymptotic relationship. All of science is like this. As a hypothesis is well tested and shown to be predictive and useful it becomes a theory, but theories are still conditional - they can still be modified and over time usually are. Not discarded whole - rather updated or modified to better encompass additional understandings that were poorly or incorrectly handled by the previous incarnation of the theory. Newtonian physics being expanded and deepened and corrected by Einstein's theory of gravity and spacetime. Newtonian physics didn't cease to exist - it's explanatory power didn't end with Einstein's discoveries - rather it was given context and its limits better understood and we achieved through Einstein new insights on how to go beyond those limits (but the new limits are still limits, and I have no doubt that we will come to modify our understand of reality again and have new insights that allow us to understand more deeply than either Newton or Einstein did, continuing the refining process, or the expanding understanding process). Again, my sense of talking with people about politics or social theory is one of constantly running into people's emotionally held beliefs and anger at having those beliefs thrown into question. It's like the reaction of the Catholic Church to Galileo. His ideas upset their beliefs and that was intolerable to them. Not that they were interested in refining their understanding of the world - just that it was upsetting and they wanted the upset to go away. Not, mind you, that I am comparing myself to the genius of Galileo! Rather, that even my meager desire to be truthful and honest and refine my understanding of what is true - to apply science to my own understanding of life as I live it - leads to analogous encounters. I am constantly bombarded by former friends and family who want me to stop questioning their beliefs. I am told that it's how I say it, not what I'm saying. But no matter how nicely I say a thing - I'm still asking them to question their beliefs which is a fundamentally painful experience - and as far as I can tell - that's the real issue. As such, it is impossible to avoid the pain and the backlash (or would you like to point out the scientist who was a greatly beloved member of his or her society and brought about great insights into the world without upsetting folks around him or her?) Learning ugly truths about Hillary when Hillary was our best chance for a female to rise to President of the United States thus far is not going to be welcome news to anyone for whom having a woman hold the highest office in this land is a strongly held desire. Everyone has the ability to do the research - to look a few things up about her - to discover "is she often a good person and in alignment with my personal values or is she often what I consider to be a bad person - out of alignment with what I value and believe others should value?" (Or, perhaps being a moral person is not a virtue for you?) The same is true for Obama. Or democrats as a whole. Or the United States domestic or foreign policy as a whole. These things aren't hidden if you simply look beyond the immediate surrounding veil of surface information. Listening to CBS evening news certainly isn't going to challenge the predominant narrative that America is great. Listening to NPR isn't going to give you one shred of evidence against the righteous democratic and glorious nation of our motherland. Talking to your friends, coworkers, and family - who also only go by these same sources for their information - isn't going to challenge anything you've been taught to believe your entire life by a culture that is intent on having you be a supporting member of its cast. America wants you to see America as a great, good, just, righteous nation. That - is - at - its - core - for its own survival: your allegiance, your faith, your cooperation and participation. And other Americans in power wish to keep their power and so they also work hard at generating this sense of positive messaging about America. Because it makes them powerful. Your allegiance makes them powerful. Whatever America is doing has made them very powerful, so it is insanity to question it. The higher a person is on the economic ladder in America, the more they're going to be a true believer in America - regardless of any objective ethics - because it is working for them very well, or very, very, very well. It is not a failing on my part to ask you to go beyond your inculcation - your programming - your illusions and your jingoism. That push-back, that desire to denounce me, that feeling of anger and unhappiness is a desire to kill the messenger - perhaps it is a sign that I am actually on to something and at that point it is up to you to figure out what is true: Is your understanding more correct or not? Do you have supporting evidence from reasonably neutral, reliable sources, from disparate sources, which bolster your understanding and creates a holistic view of what's going on to give context to my concerns that render them no longer upsetting because in the larger deeper context you know their place and their place is small? Or, are you simply not interested in what is real - what is true - not even interested in approaching reality as best we can - but perhaps your real desire is to be left in peace with the beliefs you were given as a member of society and leave it at that? Stepping outside of the accepted norms of society is scary. It's potentially deadly, it's potentially very bad for your social and economic positions. In fact, it directly means coming to terms with the fact that you and I and everyone we know owes their economic surety to the life's work, sweat and tears of enslaved peoples. A vast cruelty that is hard to imagine in depth and scope. The enslavement of 12.5 million black Africans captured as if they were but animals, all rights stripped, all decency, all empathy, all humanity unilaterally stripped for the immediate benefit of our great great parents - but which almost certainly benefits you and me to this day. Many of my black brothers and sisters speak of reparations. Reparations that they are owed. I agree. America is one giant spoils of crime. Of a genocide of many native peoples who existed here before my European ancestors did, and murdered them en masse. Whether genocide was better or worse then racially based mass slavery is impossible to know, and probably pointless to debate. Both were crimes against humanity. Both were as monstrous as Auschwitz and the other ethnic pogroms of the world. Yet we don't talk about it. Yet I am attacked when I point out that these United States of America exist entirely upon the blood of millions in genocide and in human chattel. When I attack Hillary's record - when I attack Obama's record - when I attack the DNC's record - when I question this nation's goodness and history and righteousness and lack of justice - I am directly asking you to step out of your comfortable lies and illusions that allow you to ignore the reality that all you have exists only because your forefathers stole it or beat humans into creating the conditions under which it was created for them and for you. We Americans owe a debt to the world that in all reasonable conscience we can never repay. How can we un-murder millions of native peoples? How can we un-enslave millions of black people? How can we restore the hundreds of millions of children never born to those people? How can we restore the dignity we robbed? The lives we destroyed through poverty or incarceration? The suffering we administered on people... on humans - on our brothers, our sisters - for our greed? America is one big circle-jerk - one big amalgamation of the children of crime lords arguing about how just and righteous and honorable a people we really are. We have the audacity to claim exceptionalism - a right to stand above international law and ethical norms - to do as we please through might and extortion and war and assassination and global theft - and we claim it's because we are better than the rest of the world. We are just that exceptional a peoples. And folks get angry at me. Americans feel upset by me. They have their feelings hurt by me pointing out that our leaders are all of those things - that if you bother to pay even a little attention to what is actually true - and not the Disney story of America - but the factual record of one Hillary Rodham Clinton - you see all of these crimes and more writ in plain English in our very own public records within OUR lifetimes - contemporary crimes against humanity occurring NOW! Not in some comfortably far off yesteryear, some blameless place remote in years from our existence. But in the here and now and - not even becoming less criminal! Instead, accelerating and becoming more criminal! More heinous, more cruel, more inexcusable while we American citizens argue over which of the insanely unworthy crime lords propped up for our perusal we should have elected as the face of the global war crimes machine. I try - I really try to be gentle. To deliver this information to folks in small bites, in easy to understand pieces backed up by articles by good journalists who've done their homework to bring you and I some insight into the world. But y'all don't listen. Y'all just want to shoot me, the messenger, and gaslight me, and tell me I'm the crazypants, the tinfoil wearing nutjob who will believe any old conspiracy theory. I hereby formally reject that lie. I am - to the very best of my ability - a discerning person who does his honest best at determining whether the information is true, fits the scenery, connects with other information, and genuinely fits the whole. I am also - to the very best of my ability - willing to change my mind when sufficient evidence is found or presented that refutes a point I used to believe. I am willing to refine my hypothesis and theories and learn from my mistakes and work with you if you you're but willing to be brave enough to work with me, unflinchingly honest and in integrity with what is actually to the very best of our ability to understand or uncover to be true. I am looking for allies, friends, brothers, sisters of the faith in honesty, integrity, and virtue of becoming a better people for the greater good of all humanity. If there is any way to restore balance on this planet - I believe that it is to renounce our criminal ways of the past - and to work as TRUE EQUALS with all HUMANs everywhere on this blue marble. It is our spiritual salvation. Our ecological salvation. Our material salvation. Our one true road forward to a time when we can be honest about who we are AND FEEL GOOD ABOUT IT. Please stop participating in the theft by hiding from the ugly truth of human history - especially of American history - and work together to put an end to the violence, the thievery, the gaslighting, and the small-minded self-destructive greed that we are all complicit in by staying silent or by defending the very politicians and political systems - including our police - and military - which continues to execute those same crimes here, there, and almost everywhere around this earth. I'm not claiming to be perfect or know all of the answers. But I am eager to discuss any and all of this with you if you're willing to be intellectually honest with me towards refining an understanding of truth instead of obfuscating it on behalf of fears. We can take responsibility for who we are and where we are and who we owe for that. For me, that must be grounded in honesty. A commitment to the truth and a real process of reconciliation in which we admit that our very way of life as Americans is predicated upon global theft, and we stop it. We. Stop. The. Evil. Machine. Together. First, by simply being willing to realize that this is the situation, and no longer being willing to be a defender of it out of our own shame or fears. We can create a future worth existing in. One that can sustain humanity. But it cannot be one whose foundation is not firmly set in love, integrity, and peace. Please, help.

An Open Letter to Liberals

An open letter to American Liberals:

You're right of course that liberal governments are lesser evil than conservative ones.

I wish that was enough of a common ground that we could genuinely work together in harmony (it's enough for us to work together on limited actions).

I honestly wish it were entirely enough.

But the problem is that I still haven't heard you call out Obama for his war crimes, or for his failures to address police brutality, or any of a very long list of humanitarian failures.

And before you jump in to defend him - he's only Human, he was hog-tied by the GOP congress and on and on - those things are true to some degree, but if he didn't have a (D) after his name those things would not be stopping you from railing against him on those issues.

And my aim isn't to have you criticize Obama for criticism's sake. Rather, it is the underlying ability to distance yourself from the liberal bubble that renders Trump satan, and Obama gabrielle.

And not because Trump needs my protection, or because I hate Obama (I actually like his personal demeanour, his grace, his appreciation for the arts, for how he's handled himself as the international face of America, ... there's a great many things that I admire about Obama)

...but because I need to have allies that are willing to stop trusting the liberal narrative.

...because the liberal narrative (just like the mirror conservative narrative) keeps people ignoring the underlying causes of everything and supporting false leaders and false goals.

Again - this may not be something you're available for? I don't know? People are where they are, and I spent the entire GW Bush years drinking the liberal kool-aid and lambasting the tinfoil hat wearing ninnys that kept telling me then that LEV (lesser evil voting) was wrong, and that both sides R/D were really on team Oligarchy, and etc.

I remember strongly how I reacted to such information - with astonishment, disgust, scorn, amusement, disbelief, and so on. "How can anyone [who isn't absolutely bonkers] believe that Ds and Rs are equivalent IN ANY WAY WHATSOEVER?!!!"

And having watched what happened to Barack from '08 to today - what's happened to Bernie over the past two years - and learning much more than I ever wish I knew about Hillary over this past year - has utterly destroyed - obliterated - laid waste to my former liberal beliefs.

Now I laugh at my old self and wonder how I could ever have been so naive?

But see, that's the rub. I wish It didn't matter whether you believed in the liberal narrative or not. But - just as you believe that Trump is very likely to accelerate global warming, usher in the most corporatist government in human history, reinstate the most racist and reactionary conservative laws and policies; I believe that Hillary would do exactly the same in all of the ways that really matter under the surface.

In fact, I am quite certain that a majority of Ds in congress will do the same.

In fact, I am quite certain that all Ds and all Rs are effectively on the same page (due to being compromised by their need for corporate funding to various donors and groups), and that the smoke and mirrors of disagreements are circus for our entertainment and distraction (whether any given senator is savvy enough themselves to realize they're actors in a big farce, or if they're unwittingly so, is quite irrelevant at the end of the day).

The most recent case in point is Corey Booker and the other Ds who voted against Bernie's bill to allow us to import drugs at reduced costs through Canada.

Another is Democrats reappointing Nancy Pelosi as their leader. Another is Democrats failing to run Bernie in the general. Another is Democrats using false stories about Russia to resurrect red-scare McCarthyism (a very ugly page from our history) to distract voters from the unbelievably corrupt and disheartening contents of the emails penned by Hillary Clinton, John Podesta, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, and others in Hillary's election campaign (which included, unethically, the entire DNC machine). Another is Obama's creating a 'Ministry of Truth' in his final days.

The list goes on and on and on.

But liberals - want to keep the current system and elect more Ds to office - on the basis that this is a good thing.  The ills as y'all see it isn't that Democrats have failed the working class utterly over the past 30+ years.  It isn't that their policies have effectively done zero for black rights in that timespan.  It isn't that they're complicit in taking corporate money.  It isn't that they've been caught red handed rigging an entire primary for POTUS.  It's just that there aren't enough of them. :'(

I cannot abide that. I cannot support that.

It's a failed political philosophy - with a world near ready to catch fire and burn out of control possibly eradicating all Human life, irreparably damaging this planet's ecosystem and biosystems, it's gone from bad-policy to extinction-threatening-policy.

I'm tired of watching good friends and family support an evil system - one that bombs 7 nations simultaneously, is the largest arms dealer to the world, has a military 10x the next 10 biggest combined, poisons our inner cities with lead and bacteria, openly lynches black and native peoples publicly and makes excuses for it, etc., etc.

At the core of american liberalism is the acceptance of democrats as our only and best hope.

That's a sickness.

I may not have all of the answers - but I sure as hell know that aiding the cancer is not one of them.

Science vs. Nature

I was just listening to Naomi Klein "This Changes Everything" - and she's talking about "Geo Engineering".

And a lot of parallels strike me between that discussion (is GE a reasonable approach - is there some level at which it is reasonable - what will happen should the world's feedback systems become a serious mess for human survival without it, etc.) and GMOs and the many concerns that they bring up.

I have many friends on both sides of both debates.

I feel like neither side is wrong, so much as both have something important to contribute if the other would just listen.

Naomi Klein's description of seeding the outer atmosphere with sulphur dioxide, and similar to the ocean, and more to seed clouds that we can help control the rain distribution, and so on, and i'm thinking "Hey, this is also the discussion about western medicine and its failures."

I know that my science friends will roll their eyes and dismiss everything that is essentially about creating health without using scientific interventions such as we commonly name "medicine" in the west. Pills mostly, but surgeries as well.

And I'm not saying that western medicine doesn't have its uses - it's amazingly wonderful aspects. On the other hand, I'm seeing my own body and many other people's become a mess with folks trying to figure out how to manage them with pills and surgeries and the medicines tend to be more and more and more. They don't seem to do a good job of ending, but rather one starts a medication to address one imbalance, only to then need another to address a new imbalance, only then to need yet another for another imbalance (each additional imbalance at least contributed to by the previous medications taken).

We all know it's true - we watch those godforsaken ads on TV about some new pill and then for two minutes straight some poor bloke is talking as fast as humanly possibly to squeeze in the endless list of side effects that may be caused by the pill in question.

---

My point, and Naomi Klein's point is that western scientific approaches tend to be very intrusive and dependency-creating.

So once we start with some form of Geo Engineering, we're likely to cause other imbalances (less rainfall in our best food valleys, for example), that then need additional highly intrusive GE interventions to try to manage, that then beget other imbalances.... and the cycle doesn't end until the patient is dead.

Now, yes, for a Human, the patient is always going to die anyway. But for Earth... this is ... a whole different ball game.

Instead of losing one patient, we're talking wiping out the Human race (at a minimum).

---

I'm tempted to wax philosophical here and remind myself that oh-well, if we all die we all die.

But honestly, I'd really rather not be the cause of the death of Earth.

And ultimately - the only reason we have for trying to intervene in all of these already balanced feedback loops we call the biosphere or weather or climate or nature is because we're already interfering viz. carbon emissions.

The solution isn't to ignore the root cause, and find new pills to shove down the patient's throat to manage symptom after symptom, but to address the original cancer - our addiction to carbon fuels.

---

Anyway, all of this has parallels with GMOs Yes, we can engineer various things - but will we ever end up with crops that are more robust in the long term, less energy intensive, etc?

I know my science-y friends are screaming "YES!" - but I'm worried about the unintended - the unforeseen consequences.

It would help enormously if I saw humanity as being responsible when things go wrong - saw us as having good feedback systems in our own societies that dealt with illness - in this case pollution or bad science or what not, but the reality I see is that as humans - our social structures are incredibly bad - awful - miserable at taking responsibility for when things go wrong and even worse at fixing them or addressing the messes they create.

So I am not - NOT - reassured about GMOs, nor about GE, nor about western medicine & pharmaceuticals, despite also seeing that all of these has great potential for good - the good is swamped by our long, long track record for irresponsibility as a species.

And to me, that's the part I need my science friends to become literate about.

Worst News Sources

Sick of the constant gawd-awful McCarthyism, Red-Scare, pro-Clintonista effluent that issues from these sites:

Neoconservative / McCarthyism / red-scare:

Fox
The Economist (might be more neoliberal than neoconservative, the distinction is harder to make these days)

Neoliberal / 3rd-way DNC / DLC / McCarthyism / red-scare:

ABC
CBS
MSN
NBC

NY Times
Washington Post - Funded by the CIA (literally, factually)

Media Matters for America - (see this for example)
Blue Nation in Review[1]
Daily News Bin[1]
Nation in Review[1]
Political News Review
Raw Story
The Daily Beast
The Independent
The Nation
VOX

Statist Propagandist Reporters:

Jeremy Diamond (CNN)

[1] These sites are owned by David Brock as part of Hillary's Super Pac.

High Integrity Journalists and other Sources of Information

Disclaimer: 

No author or journalist or site is ever going to be right or in-integrity 100% of the time, or even have an opinion or take on things you, or I, or others all agree upon.  Sometimes a source has excellent insight on some topics, while being foolish on others.

We are past the point where we can rely on mainstream news outlets or the integrity of well known journalists to be honest or to operate with a great respect for the institution of journalism and news.  Most simply have capitulated to the almighty dollar, or to pleasing a certain segment of their readers.

So it falls on us, each of us individually, to have to claw through this muck and find what is likely true and honest, and what is unlikely to be; and to share with one another what we can reliably trust and warn of what we cannot.

To that end, I am going to curate this post and update it as new information comes to me, and you and others offer constructive feedback on these or other worthy sources.

Please keep in mind that this is relative!  And things change over time, and with regards to the specific topic at hand.  Note: Since I posted this more than a year ago, Matt Taibbi joined the MSM chiore and wrote in favor of russiagate lies, but then about a year later returned to integrity and renounced russiagate as censorship and nonsense.  Jeffrey St. Clair has written similarly neoliberal schmaltz, Amy Goodman has revealed herself and Democracy Now! to be a gatekeeper against the truth of Syria, and a cheerleader for neo-McCarthyism and Russia-gate pablum.

Individuals with significant integrity:

Aaron Maté - Journalist, formerly of the BAR (q.v. below), fantastic voice of reason and insight into anti-racism, USA politics, geopolitical ethics, etc.

Abby Martin - Host of The Empire Files - "cuts through the false Left/Right paradigm set by the establishment & reports the hard facts."

Arundhati Roy - Author - Amazing human being - Social commentary & common sense.

Ben Norton - Independent Journalist and tweeter - Often tweets insightful things about the ongoing shenanigans of USA political theater.

Bill Moyers - Long history of deep reporting on corruption and society.  Gets significant funding from neoliberal groups now, so beware. https://billmoyers.com/

Caitlin Johnstone - Rogue Journalist - 100% citizen funded Australian wordsmith who is fearless and has a deliciously uncompromising way with calling bullshit.  Prolific.

Diana Johnstone - European politics and Western foreign policy. Honest, brave, uncompromising journalist in an often misogynist world.  https://www.unz.com/author/diana-johnstone/

Chris Hedges - Long history of reporting on American hegemony and its death-cult.  Has been inculcated into the trans-cult of late, but is good on other topics. https://www.truthdig.com/author/chris_hedges/

Dahr Jamail - Journalist - Middle east reporting and Global Warming.

Dr. Cornel West - Public figure who often speaks truth and common sense in a corrupt and foolish world. http://www.cornelwest.com/

Eva Bartlett - Independent Middle East Correspondent. Speaks truth about Syria.   https://twitter.com/evakbartlett

Edward Curtin - Independent Journalist - Existentialist, brilliant. http://edwardcurtin.com/

Glen Ford - Black Agenda Report executive editor - fantastic voice of anti-racism and common sense.

Greg Palast - Anti corruption, anti-american-hegemony, etc.

Guy McPherson - Ecologist - Global warming.

Henry Giroux - Social criticism "Critical Education for a Global Democracy"

Howard Zinn - Long history of exposing the fraud of propaganda that is taught in place of the actual history of the USA.

Hiroyuki Hamada - Artist, author, social and political awareness advocate and truth-teller.

John Pilger - Journalist "It is not enough for journalists to see themselves as mere messengers without understanding the hidden agendas..."

Keith Harmon Snow  - Independent Journalist - specializes in honesty about Africa, both indigenous and foreign manipulations, war crimes, genocide, psy-ops, business dealings, etc.

Margaret Kimberley - Journalist for Truthout, Black Agenda Report, ... - anti-American hypocrisy and propaganda, social commentary.

Mat Blumenthal - Independent Journalist - exposing the Venezuelan coup for what it is.

Michelle Alexander - Professor - author of "The New Jim Crow" - anti-racism, current affairs.

Morris Berman - Contemporary American Historian - Major critic of Americanism and documentor of the fall of America.

Naomi Klein - Canadian author - Green revolution, socialism, global warming, humanitarian.

Paul Craig Roberts - Blogger - Geopolitics, Economics - gloomy realist.

Pepe Escobar - Brazilian journalist at Asia Times - Geopolitics / economist / analyst.

Rania Khalek - Journalist & Political commentator - Israel-Palestine conflict.

Richard D. Wolf - Professor of Economics - Post capitalist economist / analyst.

Robert Fisk - Writer & journalist - Geopolitics & middle east correspondent for The Independent, based in Beirut.

Robert Parry - Journalist - Consortium News.

Stephen F. Cohen - Professor emeritus of Russian Studies and Politics at NYU - US-Russian Cold War and geopolitical analysis.

Seymour Hersh - Investigative journalist, old school, politics and international affairs.  Broke the My Lai Massacre story from the Vietnam war.

Shaun King - Writer & anti-racist - Senior justice writer for the New York Daily News, and a political commentator for The Young Turks.  Be warned that the young turks is mostly neoliberal garbage.  In fact, Shaun has become more and more of a neoliberalist and cannot be trusted on politics.  His outrage at racism is on-point and, in my opinion, insightful.

Stephen Kinzer - Former Central America correspondent for NY Times - anti CIA, anti American hegemony, etc.

Ta-Nehisi Coates - Author - Anti-racism, contemporary racism, injustice, black American experience, etc.

Teodrose Firke - Independent Journalist - American politics and culture, especially focusing on the lie of two-party politics in America and our need to overcome racism and prejudice and work together as we-the-people against the 1%.  He now has his own website and publishes other independent voices there: https://ghionjournal.com/

The Saker - Blogger - Anti-American-Hegemony, Geopolitics.

Thierry Meyssan - Political consultant, President-founder of the Réseau Voltaire (Voltaire Network) - Geopolitics.

Vanessa Beeley - Journalist - Middle east independent correspondent and truth teller.

William Blum - Author, Blogger - US Geopolitics (https://williamblum.org/).

William Engdahl - Author - US Geopolitics.

YahNé Ndgo - Founder and Chief Visionary Officer at Deep Blu Womyn Company - Feminist & anti-racism, youth advocate.

Fairly Trustworthy Sites:

21st Century Wire - Where Vanessa Beeley, Patrick Henningsen, etc. publish real stuff on Syria, and Middle East generally.
Black Agenda Report (BAR) - anti-racism, black consciousness, and a great deal of common sense can be found here.
Common Dreams - Progressive issues, political commentary, etc.
Consortium News - American news, politics, etc.
Counterpunch - Ostensibly progressive but known to be strident and foolish.  Read with caution.
Free Thought Project - Often has excellent articles, but can be quite sensationalistic, and somewhat clickbaity.
Greanville Post - Anti-Imperialist news & commentary.
Guns and Butter - Investigates the relationships among capitalism, militarism and politics.
Land Destroyer Report - Geopolitics
Mint Press News - Progressive issues, political commentary, etc.
Moon of Alabama - Geopolitical analysis and political commentary.
Naked Capitalism - Critical look at capitalisms constant genocide and ecocide.
New Eastern Outlook (NEO) - Fantastic resource for geopolitics and international perspectives.
Radio War Nerd - A podcast by John Dolan, history and real politics.
RT - Formerly "Russia Today" - an international news channel available on internet.
The Duran - Independent reporting.
The Ghion Journal - Independent journalism founded by Teodrose Fikre.  Covers racism, US politics, Zionism, etc.
The Gray Zone - Independent web site with a plethora of top-notch independent journalists covering a wide range of geopolitical stories, including the plight of Palestinians and the current ongoing coup attempt against Maduro and the sovereignty of the Venezuela people.
Truthout - Progressive issues, political commentary, etc.
Wikileaks - 100% real source emails and other secret documents to expose criminality and chicanery in our governments.
Zero Hedge - No-nonsense political insight and criticism.

Special Mention:

Jimmy Dore Comedic Video Blogger on US Progressive Issues
The Sane Progressive - Video Blogger on US Progressive Politics
H. A. Goodman - Video Blogger on US Progressive Politics
Brain Spank - Satirical Blog on US Insanity
Guns and Butter - Pod Cast on Geopolitics, Interviews, Pediphelia, Domestic Politics, all 100%
Lee Camp - Comedian and host of "Redacted Tonight" - a humorous look at the news and world events.

Mixed:

Amy Goodman - Once a stalwart of progressive honest journalism, has become a liar for US aggression and wars in Syria, as well as a gatekeeper regarding global wars of American Hegemony.
Glenn Greenwald - "It's complicated". Arguably manipulated Snowden for his own purposes (receiving quite a few accolades for his efforts from the establishment), and recently has gone on with Amy Goodman to claim that the latest accusation of chemical attacks by Assad against his own folks on the eve of his victory have some merit (essentially repeating statist propaganda that has been twice debunked in previous incidents).
Jeffrey St Clair - Likes to bash on women and Caitlin Johnstone in particular.  A bit of a chauvinist and a fool.
Jeremy Scahill - Gaslights about Syria.
Matt Taibbi - Went full neoliberal apologist earlier in 2017 with russiagate, but has since (early 2018) done a 180 and is now decrying the chilling effects of russiagate hysteria and anti-journalism that "fake news" and other government censorship initiatives are engendering (nice to have him back, for as long as it lasts - he's quite a good writer).

Democracy Now - Along with all of NPR and PBS has become neoliberal and untrustworthy but was once upon a time an excellent source, and for non-war-related and non-politics related things, might still be.
NPR & PBS - State funded neoliberal propaganda outlets.  For fluff pieces may still show the occasional moment of journalistic integrity.
The Guardian - Brit publication that sometimes gets it right.
The Hill - US domestic political reporting with somewhat neoliberal leanings.
The Intercept - British publication with neoliberal leanings, but also has good commentary and reporting.  Better than The Hill, and broader scope.
Truthdig  - Political commentary but with sloppy neoliberalisms amongst more factual or honest reporting.  Often quite sensationalistic.

Specific Books or Publications or Documentaries or etc.:

Howard Zinn - A People's History Of The United States
Elizabeth Kolbert - The Sixth Extinction
Stephen Kinzer - Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq
David Talbot - The Devil's Chessboard, Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America's Secret Government

Other Lists:

Woke People & Orgs - https://nickvasey.com/woke-people-orgs/

Power Corrupts, but some people never weren't...

I agree with the basic premise that absolute power corrupts absolutely.

I wish I could be more on the "Obama was a good man who was corrupted by the system" bandwagon! I really, really do! It would make my life SOOOOOooooo much easier with my family and liberal friends.

But... I cannot. I daresay he was corrupted as a senator - and very likely well before that.

I say that because his very first decisions after winning the general were to hire wall street execs, and lash out at progressives for being too nosey about his administration's early choices and decisions - exactly the opposite of what he said he'd do (run the most open administration in history - nothing like GW).

Pelosi announced that investigations were off the table.

He started the health care negotiations by PUBLICLY walking backwards BEFORE the first CLOSED meetings with Republicans.

It was like he punched me and all progressives squarely in the gut non-stop for the first two years of his administration.

Excuse after excuse about not floating progressive legislation.
Excuses for not using the supermajority he / the Dems had.
Excuses for not even using single payer as a bargaining tool against the rethugs.
Sidestepping racial justice issues.
Actually admonishing POC for not being good boys & girls in the face of various rank racist incidents at the time.
Blaming his / the democrats massive hemorrhaging loss in 2010 on progressives!!!! On the very people he shut out and told to fuck themselves instead of have some sort of rapport with.

No, he was a colossal asshat from day 1. I cannot. I will not. I shall not forget, nor make excuses for the POS of a failure of a human being to do what the fuck he was elected and preached about doing.

He rode a progressive wave of enthusiasm similar to Bernie's - but was FAR less honest about his positions than Bernie was. Bernie may not be ideal, but I honestly believe Bernie believes in the common American.

Obama was an elitist pretending to be a populist - saying just the right things - smiling that big white-toothy smile, and looking damn good on camera with that twinkle in his eye.

I feel fucked by a high-priced hooker that I thought really wanted to be with *me*, not my *money*.

I do respect your opinion...

See, the thing is, we can disagree about what we want, what's best, who we like, what we think may happen under what circumstances.... that's all fair, and nobody can say for certain what is going to be or honestly assert that their preferences are "better" (they may be better for them, or theirs, or under some circumstances, etc.)

But we cannot really disagree for a real length of time about what is actually in existence, or what actually happened, unless there is no evidence whatsoever.

Because facts, truth, reality; these things are real. They're not subject to one's likes and dislikes at the level of changing because of your stance on them. (you are welcome to take whatever stance you wish).

But at the end of the day, we either sent astronauts to the moon, or we did not. Our CIA ousted Salvador Allende in a military coup, or it did not. We are engaged with bombing 7 other nations currently, or we are not (or the number is 6, or 8). These things are not opinions, they are facts that can be proved or disproved.

Americans are currently wildly gullible and unable to have these conversations in a truly honest manner because we have been lied to for generations. We are daily exposed to lies on NPR, or CBS, or MSNBC, or FOX, or Washington Post, or NY Times, or a public address from President Obama, or a rally from Trump, or a shyster on Oprah channel.

And these lies use our prejudices, our biases, our preconceived notions to stroke our egos, to appeal to our wants and desires, to reinforce our fears so that we don't think too hard or long because it is - genuinely - scary and disturbing.

American propaganda is a well-oiled, mature, efficient, seasoned machine of epic proportions with nearly limitless funding. It's adverts are slick, compelling, emotional, and manipulative as hell. As manipulative as our best psychologists and studies have been able to become. We have engineered the world's best device for deceiving and manipulating large numbers of human beings.

But I'm asking you. I am begging you. I am on my hands and knees - please - for yourselves - for your children - for your loved ones - for the future that might yet be - I implore you to become deeply suspect of the US government and all - every - single - thing - it claims to be true.

Precious little that comes out of either political party and their extremely well paid PR firms has more than a fleeting association with reality. It's all there to blow smoke up your derriere. Smoke tuned to just the right texture, temperature, scent as to be most pleasing to you as an individual who believes that part of who you are is a member of a certain identity - a grouping - such as "I am a proud liberal" or "I am a proud American" or "I am a proud Republican"

Such affiliations are - well - we can have that discussion sometime - I eagerly await it. But for now, just know that they're using the connection between who you believe you are - "I am a good person because I am for social justice as are all of my liberal compatriots" to twist your view of the world. To hide from you the evils committed by democrats. To hide from you the evils committed by the American apparatchik. The evils done in the name of business and profits and global trade and international relations.

You, and I, and everyone we know are just a game that they're really, really good at winning.

To turn the tables - we have no choice but to stop playing by their rules, believing their lies, and failing to see how we are literally pawns on their board.

I am not your enemy.

I am not insulting your "intelligence."

I am your friend. I am your brother. I am your comrade. I am asking you to put aside your ego - that false house of cards - long enough to be brutally honest with me - not just about who we are - but about what the world really - in _fact_ - looks like - and why.

And through that, I honestly believe, we have a chance to change things for the better.

Not lie to each other about how it will all be okay.

But really enact changes that cause actual changes in the world for the ultimate betterment of what actual is and will one day actually be. Truth. Indisputable, factual, actual, reality.

The truth can set you free.
Nobody is truly free until everyone is free.