Tag Archives: Alt-Right

The Usurper versus The Challenger: Trump vs Biden, 1st Debate

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Donald J. Trump and Joe Biden squared off tonight in the ugliest, most brutal, and cringe-inducing presidential debate I’ve ever witnessed. Many older journalists say it’s the worst such debate in U.S. history, at least in the history of television. The majority of observers pointed to one participant in particular for the emotional squalor and mean-spirited bullying, Trump, the man who kept harping upon his belief he “won” the 2016 election for president. Did he? A valid case can be made Trump usurped the American presidency. Trump hijacked the GOP as he bulldozed aside traditional conservatives, neocons, and libertarian Republicans alike. Trump barreled on to lose the popular vote by about 3 million people. The candidate and his Far Right base interfered with the Electoral College’s vetting of candidates, forced the states to ignore third party and independent candidates, and intimidated the Electors to vote for him. Faithless electors rebelled against having to vote for either Trump or the also-unpopular Hillary Clinton. Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party attempted to get votes recounted in controversial states in an attempt to move the EC towards Clinton. The EC certified him the winner, Congress then declares whom the EC certifies as the winner, and then the winner is inaugurated. Trump apparently saw far more people out upon the Mall before him on Inauguration Day than actually existed. And all of this without adding in election tampering by ex-KGB officer Vladimir Putin and the Russians. Yes, Trump is the Usurper, the Goliath in the house, and Biden stands firm as the Biblical David, the Challenger with a slingshot firing stones of truths thru Trump’s torrent of lies and distortions.

I’ve never felt such weird, unpleasant anxiety before a presidential debate before. Such debates are politically vital to the campaign, and they’re also regarded more as drama and entertainment rather than a serious debate over policy differences as to what are the best steps to address critical priorities. There was so much more at stake tonight than media-driven personality dramas. Trump pulled out his dirty mob boss attitude while Biden dug into this working class, small town, and suburban roots. Tonight’s clash proved ferocious. We stand at the brink of our own dystopian apocalypse, so if you’re one of those who doesn’t give a rip, wake up! Stop running around so oblivious and pay attention. If and once a fascist dictatorship is established, the tyrant often devours his own minions early on. Are you a minion? Or of the Resistance? Choosing doesn’t make you a “radical.”

The Challenger stood up to the Usurper in the White House tonight. A global pandemic rages as a recession worse than the Great Recession chews up our economy. Human-driven climate change is destroying our habitats. Gun violence, social justice conflicts, a partisan Supreme Court struggle, severe income inequality, an opioid epidemic, homelessness, underemployment, and Black Lives Matter versus the Police rips thru our neighborhoods like wildfire.

Perhaps conflating Trump with Goliath does a disservice to the Biblical giant. The Usurper in the White House built by Black slaves violated debate rules, ethics, morals, and boundaries. Trump demonstrated a stunning lack of respect for anything and everything. The man simply did not give a shit and delighted in throwing metaphorical turds. Trump was dangerously infantile and out-of-control as he narcissistically made the election all about himself even tho he bullied everyone around him including the moderator, Chris Wallace. There were several moments when Trump was so disrespectful and shamelessly rude Mr. Wallace, a prestigious journalist from Fox News who spent years prior with NBC and ABC, would have been justified to terminated the debate and send Trump packing. Either way, the real losers were not only the American people but people from all around the planet who deserved to hear the candidates present their platforms. Instead the world had ringside seats to witness a bully in action as a most unpresidential president attempted to hijack the first debate. 

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The Killing of George Floyd, Black Lives Matter Right Now, and Overhaul the Police Immediately

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Sing Kumbaya later. Here’s Four Primary Points to Reform our Police First.

George Perry Floyd, a Black American, was pulled out into the street, lynched, and murdered at age 46 by four police officers in Minneapolis, Minnesota. His killers were three White or European American cops and one Asian American cop. Mr. Floyd’s criminal background is not relevant here. The man had served his time in prison and served his Houston, Texas community for years as a volunteer. He finally moved north into the Upper Midwest to start life anew. There wasn’t one single thing George Floyd did or was alleged to have done that warranted his slow, brutal death by a man who taunted him at times with what sounded like sadistic glee.

Yes, we need major police reform now all across the United States of America. The entire United States, a constitutional, democratic republic, needs urgent reform now and desperately so. We must not abolish our police forces, but instead reform or replace them immediately in three primary areas.

First, we need community oversight that is also democratic and transparent. Every city, town, parish, tribal reservation, and county jurisdiction, if they have not yet done so must shift to democratic community oversight. This may include re-creating the role of police as defacto paramilitary enforcers to instead become community servants. Cops must live in the jurisdictions they work in as part of belonging to the community.

Second, defund, not abolish, the police. To implement what “Defund the Police!” actually means, i.e. to review funding and reallocate police resources to non-police agencies and departments such as health care, dealing with addiction, homelessness, affordable housing, public sanitation, public infrastructure, etc. Doing so will allow for a stripped down, leaner community-based police force more focused and thus more efficient on policing, i.e. to serve and protect the public. Indeed, police reform may require increasing the number of police to actually serve and protect the public while non-police agencies focus on non-police public health, housing, infrastructure, and other social services.

Third, demilitarize the police. Yes, we must move to demilitarize the police and stop the flow of military hardware from the Armed Forces to the cops. Yes, SWAT teams for certain jurisdictions, of course, but how many, where, and for whom? Reviewing the relationships between local law enforcement and the FBI, ATF, ICE, Homeland Security, etc., is a necessary aspect of such purview.

So, three reforms: democratic community oversight, defunding and reallocation of resources, and demilitarization.

There’s one more reform, one perhaps more serious than the other three and one that certainly presents difficult challenges: reports and allegations of police brutality shall be reviewed with serious efforts to break apart the insidious and unethical Police Code of Silence. This code of silence corrupts the Thin Blue Line between cops and their communities, allows for both corruption and brutality to go unchecked. Criminality and division results. Criminals, including crooked and abusive cops, must be brought to justice. Securing and upholding our individual liberties demand we all hold each other and our public servants accountable. Our singular freedoms work only if we also acknowledge and uphold our social responsibilities. One large city, Camden, New Jersey, abolished its police department largely in part to exorcise entrenched, endemic police corruption and brutality.

The latest round of killings of Black Americans by police are clearly acts of murder. Indeed, they are lynchings, abusive and hateful lynchings by those sworn to serve and protect. These murders have convulsed our country again. First Ahmaud Arbery was killed in Brunswick, Georgia on the 23rd of February this year. Then Breonna Taylor was murdered in a fusillade of bullets in Louisville, Kentucky on the 23rd of March. The sadistic, slow, asphyxiation of George Floyd on the 25th of May blew open a nation already torn apart. The deaths and injuries kept coming. They keep on coming, too. Tony McDade, a Black Transgendered man, was shot dead by cops in Tallahassee, Florida, on the 29 of May, 2020. David McAtee of Louisville, Kentucky, known as Yaya the BBQ Man, was shot dead by cops on the 1st of June 2020. The list keeps growing. Continue reading →