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Letting Morality Guide You in the Age of Trump

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By Kerry Eleveld / Daily Kos

The writings of activist and author Masha Gessen instantly became must-read material when, following Donald Trump’s win, she penned “Autocracy: Rules for Survival.”

Gessen’s insights were driven by her experiences living in Russia under the rule of Vladimir Putin, and the piece enumerated six rules that serve as a gut check for right action amid the political drift of our time. But a second piece she published contemplating how much compromise could be too much compromise in a Trump presidency is also essential reading.
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Seize the Charities

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Private charity will never cure capitalism’s ills. Only working-class organizations can do that.

By Patrick Stall / Jacobin

The holidays are upon us. ’Tis the season of altruistic volunteers in Santa Claus hats ringing bells outside local Walmarts and synagogues hosting food drives. Toys for Tots bins will overflow with trinkets and teddy bears, and Christmas carols blaring from shopping mall speakers will extol the virtues of giving to the deserving poor.

This all seems perfectly appropriate. We are bombarded with images of starving children and pleas to help those who can’t afford to heat their homes in the winter. As Oscar Wilde remarks in “The Soul of Man Under Socialism,” it is “inevitable that we be strongly moved” by the plight of our fellow humans, and feel compelled to take immediate action against poverty and suffering. A dollar in the Salvation Army’s bucket or a monthly pledge to OxFam seems to be the least we can do when we’re surrounded by so much unnecessary human misery.

But, as Wilde notes, “this is not a solution: it is an aggravation of the difficulty.”   [Read more…]

Trump’s Attack on the Press: 4 Techniques of a Tyrant

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Robert Reich / RobertReich.org

Historically, tyrants have tried to control the press using 4 techniques that, worryingly, Donald Trump is already using.

1. Berate the media and turn the public against it. Trump refers to journalists as “dishonest,” “disgusting” and “scum.” When Trump lies – claiming, for example, “massive voter fraud” in the election, and that he “won in a landslide” – and the media call him on those lies, Trump claims the media is lying. Even televised satires he labels “unfunny, one-sided, and pathetic.”   [Read more…]

Why We Still Need Feminism

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Until recently, American women didn’t even own their own bodies.

By Jill Richardson / Other Words

From his campaign rhetoric to his transition appointments, our next president has placed himself squarely in a conservative movement calling itself the “alt-right.” That movement, the Los Angeles Times reports, “generally embraces and promotes white nationalism, racism, anti-Semitism, homophobia, transphobia, and misogyny.”

As a privileged, white, and heterosexual woman, I’ve never considered my rights under attack to the same degree as the other groups in that list. But to this incoming bunch, feminism is a dirty word.   [Read more…]

Movie Review: The Many Resistances of Rogue One

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By Daniel Gutierrez / Medium.com

There’s no doubt that the latest Star Wars film, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, provides an uncanny reflection of our own times. The movie was released at the tail-end of a year that saw the death of countless poets, the demise of popular democracy across multiple countries, and the increasingly visible reconfiguration of a nationalist tendency throughout the global north. Looking towards next year, with the coming elections in both Germany and France, it should be clear that 2016 was not just one unjust, anomalous year — rather, its the first bad year in a new cycle defined by injustice.

Likewise, Rogue One allows a preview into a world defined by a long cycle of injustice, where popular forces have been beat back for decades under the iron grip of authoritarianism. This long wave of loss is feelable throughout the film — the dirty surroundings that define the home-bases and the avenues of rebellious factions, the constant necessity to hide oneself and not cause attention, the constant worry of each and every character of having been fed yet another half-truth wrapped in deception.   [Read more…]

Homo Obnoxious: Is Toxic Masculinity Really Taking Over the Country?

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Maybe the real problem is a lack of positive paths to manhood

By Lynn Stuart Parramore / AlterNet

It wasn’t supposed to turn out like this. We were said to be approaching the demise of a certain type of swaggering, predatory masculinity: let’s call him Homo Obnoxious.

As men like Roger Ailes, Bill Cosby, Anthony Weiner, and Billy Bush scrambled unsuccessfully to find cover in the old-boy bastions of privilege, Homo Obnoxious appeared to be lumbering around like a dinosaur under the weight of his own cultural baggage. His habitat was shrinking: it seemed as if men who defined themselves by devaluing women, putting down men who didn’t think like them and treating sexual relations — and most everything else — as power-tripping performances might be ready for mounting in a Museum of Masculinity Past.   [Read more…]

Sanders Says Trump’s “Dangerous” Nuclear Arms Race Talk Must Be Challenged

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‘Presidents, Republicans and Democrats, have understood that our goal must be to reduce the number of nuclear weapons, not expand them.’

By John Queally / Common Dreams

Sen. Bernie Sanders has made it known that Donald Trump should not go unchallenged by his congressional colleagues as troubling comments by the President-elect about nuclear weapons this week sparked alarm across the United States and the world.

Following an initial out-of-the-blue tweet Thursday saying the U.S. should “expand” its nuclear arsenal followed by “clarifying” remarks Friday to MSNBC in which Trump said, “Let it be an arms race,” Sanders responded: “It’s a miracle a nuclear weapon hasn’t been used in war since 1945. Congress can’t allow the Tweeter in Chief to start a nuclear arms race.”   [Read more…]

Standing Rock Thanksgiving Pilgrimage – A First Hand Account

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By Maria Brown / UrbDeZine

When we are little, we are taught that Thanksgiving is a commemoration of the first meal the Pilgrims and Indians shared. It is a story of strangers working together to survive that first harsh winter in a foreign place, our Native brothers and sisters helping us with their knowledge of the land.

While the origin remains disputed, the “Day of Thanksgiving” was made official in 1637 by Governor John Winthrop. The day was to celebrate white men coming back safely from conquering the Pequot people in Mystic, Connecticut where they had slaughtered upwards of 700 indigenous men, women, and children.

Native Americans mourn this day not only for the repeated massacres and injustices taken against their people since colonization, but also as the loss of their sovereignty.

With the No Dakota Access Pipeline water protectors in the news and images of peaceful Native Americans contending with police brutality, including the use of dogs and water cannons, thousands of us pilgrims could not sit idly by.

We took to the roads departing from a hot and sunny San Diego with the back of our camper proudly displaying a fist clutching flowers with NO DAPL painted underneath. The entire driver’s side stated, STAND WITH STANDING ROCK in tall red and black letters. We were headed to North Dakota.   [Read more…]

The Real Cause of Climate Change: Deforestation!

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By Chuck Burr / The Feed Magazine

It occurred to me what the biggest contributor to climate change was while teaching a unit in our Permaculture Design Certificate (PDC) course. The greatest driver of climate change or global warming is not fossil fuel greenhouse gases!

I was teaching a permaculture course unit called, “Trees and Their Energy Systems” AKA “We love trees!”. Our PDC course is held late July in southern Oregon where summer temperatures average the mid 90s˚F (35˚C). We teach under two large willow trees to avoid the direct heat of the sun. Its cool and comfortable in the shade under the old trees. If you step out into the direct sun, temperatures jump 12–15˚F .

Then it dawned on me. All 20 students could smoke cigarettes, run their cars and have a camp fire and temperatures would not change. But step into the direct sun from under the shade of mature trees and the temperature rises immediately and significantly. It feels warmer, the soil is warmer and drier with less biology.(1)   [Read more…]

Ilyse Hogue on Our DNC Chair

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Ilyse Hogue / Medium

There’s nothing quite so unglamorous as announcing you are not doing something. So I won’t bury the lede: I am not running for DNC Chair this year.

In speaking with leaders and party members over the last month, it’s become clear we have two mutually-reinforcing needs. First, the Democratic Party faces a historic challenge — to build an inclusive, durable, fifty-state electoral infrastructure to support not just one candidate or constituency in the next election cycle, but all democratic-minded people for years to come. This means growing and optimizing a big organization, tackling everything from digital infrastructure to branding to local best-practice sharing. This infrastructure is all critical to building power, and it can’t live anywhere but the party itself.
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Floppy’s New Wheels

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By South OB Girl / OB Rag

Over the years you may have seen the Welsh corgi Floppy at the side of his owner, Steve Mallory, who is the owner of Mallory Furniture on Newport Ave.

Recently you may have seen 16-year old Floppy in his new “ride.” A shopping cart which was abandoned in Mallory’s parking lot, with no markings of Vons or Ralphs or any business name. After asking police officers if using the cart would be okay – Mallory has transformed the cart into a portable bed to take Floppy out on strolls. As quite tragically, Floppy now suffers from a genetic disorder, canine degenerative myelopathy.   [Read more…]

Explaining the Cult of Trump

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By David Dillard-Wright / AlterNet

When researchers show experimental subjects a photo or phrase that reminds them of terrorism, war or death, this triggering actually changes voting preferences and political opinions among the study participants, as confirmed in several experiments going back to the early 1970s. Specifically, research subjects preferred authoritarian figures over more knowledgeable or skilled politicians when they had previously been primed with visual or verbal cues (photos of bombings say, or World Trade Center or 9/11) related to violence or threat, whether the politicians were real-life political figures or invented ones. Solomon and his colleagues apply terror management theory in a forthcoming chapter in a book explaining the Trump election.   [Read more…]

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