Maybe, today, on a holiday where the president is spending millions to clothe himself in meaningless militarism, would be a good day to imagine what the world would be like if we hadn't spent all our money on endless weapons and directed our brightest minds on destruction.
But don't take my word on it, here's Republican war hero president Dwight Eisenhower: "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies...a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed."
Also, Eisenhower said the theft of militarism included "the sweat of...laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hope of its children."
Imagine what scientific advancements we could have had. What kind of humane economy we could have had. What diseases we could've cured.
We speak of our wars and our military endeavors as if they were destined, as if they succeeded simply because the world didn't end. But we never stop and talk about what the world COULD have looked like, how much better society could have been.
We don't speak of the consequences of an entire country dedicated to war. We don't speak of all the endless trauma, what it's done to us as a people, to our lives, to our minds and spirits. It's time to imagine the world that could have been so we can start to make it real.
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People are rightfully feeling a ton of anxiety about the election.
We must take these last few days to calm and fortify ourselves, recognize the control we have, replenish ourselves, and decide how we will continue the fight to make the world better.
This podcast tries to provide strategies to overcome election anxiety and ground ourselves in reality and focus on what we can do to combat authoritarianism beyond Tuesday.
We need to take this anxious energy and convert it into actionable things.
Combating authoritarianism is exhausting. It’s systematic, weaponized abuse designed to ground you down.
We have to find the moments of calm to replenish ourselves so we don’t burn out, so we don’t fall into despair the way authoritarians want us to.
One of the biggest issues of the 2024 Election is going largely unreported.
Elon Musk has used his wealth to buy the shambling, decaying corpse of Donald Trump and MAGA in order to seize control over the government without ever appearing on a ballot.
Everyone knows Trump is in decline, and Musk recognizes a prime opportunity to install a puppet who will rubber stamp his agenda while handing him unmatched and unaccountable control over the functions of government.
This is a major, major threat.
Trump as a spectacle soaks up so much attention, but the donors behind him and the oligarchical Musk are pulling the strings with only light scrutiny.
We are watching the co-opting of the presidency in real-time, and if it’s allowed to happen the consequences would be dire.
It’s time for people to understand that Republicans and MAGA aren’t actually interested in curbing immigration.
They want to profit off fearmongering tethered to white paranoia and create an environment of sheer terror in which immigrants are more easily exploited.
The billionaires puppeting the GOP rely on immigrant labor as a means of maximizing profit and circumventing regulation.
What they’re pursuing is a country where immigrants have a huge, brutal system over their heads to keep them from challenging anything.
As resources are more scarce and conditions worsen, the Right will absolutely brutalize immigrants. They have created a subsection of people who are vulnerable and exploitable and expendable.
That’s it. The whole ballgame. And the framing everyone accepts is disastrous.
The episode of The Midnight Kingdom is out and explores our present crisis, including the rise of authoritarianism, attacks on democracy by the wealth class, and what we must do to get out of this mess.
The five part series is now complete. Please share.
The series tracks modern history, explaining how the powerful have used racism, religious mythologies, and weaponized conspiracy theories to control us and expand their power.
It's a reconsideration of where we came from and where we are.
Episode 1 starts with the merging of Christianity with Roman power and dissects how religion was used to create "Western Civilization" and a feudal empire where control was almost total, which is where many Right Wing ideologues want to return to.
Last night JD Vance was allowed to lie and present himself and Trump as moderates.
It was repulsive and dangerous. Winning this election, and defeating MAGA as an authoritarian movement, means breaking this facade and communicating how extreme they are.
It is disgusting how Vance, who has hundreds of hours of available podcasts and videotaped interviews, wasn’t confronted by his antidemocratic, misogynistic, and wildly authoritarian and extreme positions.
Instead, he was allowed to say time and again that he and Walz agreed.
It’s bad enough that CBS dropped the ball in one of the most embarrassing debates we’ve seen in awhile, but Tim Walz had two jobs: communicate how dangerous MAGA is and provide an alternative.
He didn’t do that. And that should serve as a wake up call for the campaign.
There’s a real Roman-Empire-Telling-Britain-They’re-On-Their-Own vibe to everything right now.
Only it’s now this weird, hard for some people to explain caveat of capitalism having fully possessed the US and overtaken its process for the purposes of system operation that just makes everything worse and very difficult to grasp for people who haven’t been taught about it.
Watching what’s happening in Gaza and Lebanon with the backdrop of worsening climate change, infrastructure collapse, austerity, and intentional inequality, leaving people drowning and suffering and roads and bridges and dams collapse is just…awful.