We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Sunday, January 7, 2018

“An Idiot Surrounded by Clowns”: Why Trump (Still) Sits in the White House

Click here to access article by Paul Street from CounterPunch

I especially love his historically accurate final paragraph:
Now the U.S. and the world are saddled with a juvenile, stupid, pathologically narcissist POTUS who poses grave environmental and thermonuclear dangers to humanity. Thanks to the absurdly deified Constitution bequeathed to us by wealthy and anti-democratic aristo-republican slaveowners and merchant capitalists 228 years ago, it is hard to imagine him being removed from office except by death or (further) disability prior to January 20th, 2021.  We continue to be screwed by the Founding Fathers.  Hold on to your powdered wig.
However, in spite of their ongoing attacks against Trump I think that the ruling capitalist class is not going to remove him from office because of two reasons: 1) they want to punish the American people for voting the "wrong way", and 2) with their attacks on Trump they have turned him into a useful right-wing idiot to pursue agendas that they wouldn't dare to promote with a Democratic Party puppet in office.