Author: The Activist

What could possibly be more absurd than hordes of American people and their legislators spending a lot of anxious time worrying over whether Russian agents injected game changing, Trump promoting “fake news” along with highly persuasive algorithm-informed bot-ature into the American election? Of course, the Russians tried to influence the American election toward what they felt would be a more favorable to them candidate. My gosh, how much did the Americans spend in trying to dispose the elected government of Ukraine? How much did they spend on killing to get the government they want in Panama, El Salvador, Honduras, Angola, Congo, Cuba, Iraq, Yemen, Sudan, Vietnam, Cambodia, Chile, Guatemala, Brazil? How much are they spending to sabotage the government of Venezuela and support/install the murderous govt of Sisi in Egypt? On one level I see why the US is worried about interference in their election—they must be terribly worried that Karma actually exists! I would like to think that we can blame this tsunami of “fake news” and misinformation bullying on social media.  If it were just social media, we might be able to do something about it. Unfortunately prevarication has become so technologically enmeshed, persuasive, pervasive and ubiquitous that it is difficult to begin imagining a path to any kind of public veracity.  The abject/desperate/this is the fabric of my being addiction in the transfixed eyes and body...

I went out for a walk today, New Year’s day—along the river, through Ruth Masters Greenway, along the powerline, by the river. Broken soft white clouds dotted the balmy blue sky. The warm sun reflected off a crunchy few centimeters of snow as white and fresh as the clouds. People smiled in passing and even the dogs seemed friendly. But I was brooding. The news isn’t good. I’ve been watching a documentary on the rise, violence and violent end of the Nazis in Germany. The parallels between the 1930s rise of Hitler and the Nazis in Germany  and the rise of the extreme Republicans under Trump(let’s call them Trumplicans) in the early twenty-first century are terrifying in the least. Both Nazis and Trumplicans are so utterly embedded in their own jingoism and fake news they have no idea of a reality that reflects any kind of objective fact. Clearly Trump had no reason to believe his Birther propaganda about Obama. The only truth that mattered to Trump was that “alternative facts” got an audience by proclaiming blatant lies over and over. Both Trump and Hitler began their terms of office with a relentless war against truth as camouflage for illegal and unbearable affronts to civil society. Both Nazis and Trumplicans blatantly manipulate xenophobia as the solidifying glue of their extremist ideology. The stories Trump manipulated during the election about...

“… Gross National Product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them. It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and counts nuclear warheads and armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities. It counts… the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children. Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play.  It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.” Robert Kennedy  University of Kansas, March 18, 1968   A United Nations audit of the Paris Agreement on international efforts to curb emission of greenhouse gasses found that even if signators keep their pledges the Earth will heat to at least three degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels by 2100. But we aren’t on track to...