November 2020

End of the Line

We are entering the post-Trump era.  Alevei* as Grampa Louie would have said. So, this is the last edition of the PY-O-MY Letter/Weinberg House Organ of the poisoned time and space he has commanded for almost five years. The damage he can do will only last 81 days.  So, I’ve come to bury, not to praise.  Here are some of my favorites of this dark era: 

*Translates as “It should only happen!”  Or, “Holy shit, I thought I’d never see the day”

    

 

 

       

 

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What’s a Psychopath?

Commonly accepted medical definition: “Personality disorder characterized by persistent antisocial behavior, impaired empathy and remorse, and bold, disinhibited, and egotistical traits.  The top ten signs of a psychopath: superficial charm, a grandiose sense of self-worth, pathological lying, manipulativeness, lack of remorse or guilt, shallow affect, callousness or lack of empathy, envy and jealousy.”

Arun D. Ellis, author of Corpalism and several other books addressing a dystopian future wrote:

Only a psychopath would ever think of doing these things, only a psychopath would dream of abusing other people in such a way, only a psychopath would treat people as less than human just for money. The shocking truth is, even though they now have most if not all of the money, they want still more, they want all of the money that you have left in your pockets, they want it all because they have no empathy with other people, with other creatures, they have no feeling for the world which they exploit, they have no love or sense of being or belonging for their souls are dead, dead to all things but greed and a desire to rule over others.

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Scare Tactics 2020

In that first maskless indoor rally in Tulsa June 21, he unveiled the underlying strategy for his reelection campaign.  I wonder how many people will vote for him because he has repeated it hundreds of times since then: “Left-wing mob, Socialists,  Communists,  Marxists, Antifa, Rioters, Looters, Bad People. Blame it on the Democrats who run the cities.” It’s calculated to play to the most base fears. 

It scares me that the message might have been so pervasive that it worked, even on people who ought to know better.  He’s proven he can do that. 

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Where’s Abbie When We Need him?

He died in 1989 but Abbie Hoffman was magical, a master manipulator of media and imagery.  Don’t think he was a clown, as he was portrayed mostly in the movie by Aaron Sorkin (Trial of Chicago 7) and played by Sasha Baron Cohen. He had fun and was always great for everyone around him (at least in those days). But the main thing is:  Abbie had substance.

I was in the courtroom for most days of The Chicago Conspiracy Trial, phoning in radio stories and writing for the first nightly Black News program on TV and many others. It was the first demonstration for me how people behaved in private and how it differs from their public persona as seen on TV. Being on TV has a definite effect on them. I called it “Media Burn.” The trial was 51 years ago and from then on, I’ve understood the need for radical political, racial and cultural change.  

Abbie’s testimony was portrayed in the movie as if he were taking the whole thing almost as a joke.  Nothing could be further from the way it happened.  

Abbie was the only defendant who testified.  He was asked by his attorney Leonard Weinglass about the demands he wrote for the Yippies before they came to the 1968 Democratic convention. This is directly from the transcript when he was on the witness stand in December 1969:

I will read it in the order that I wrote it. 

‘Revolution toward a free society,’ by A. Yippie.

This is a personal statement.  There are no spokesmen for the Yippies. We are all our own leaders. We realize this list of demands is inconsistent. They are not really demands. For people to make demands of the Democratic Party is an exercise in wasted wish fulfillment. If we have a demand, it is simply and emphatically that they, along with their fellow inmates in the Republican Party, cease to exist.  We demand a society built along the alternative community in Lincoln Park, a society based on humanitarian cooperation and equality, a society that allows and promotes the creativity present in all people and especially our youth.

Number one.  An immediate end to the war in Vietnam and a restructuring of our foreign policy which totally eliminates aspects of military, economic and cultural imperialism; the withdrawal of all foreign based troops and the abolition of military draft. 

Two.  Immediate freedom for Huey Newton of the Black Panthers and all other black people; adoption of the community control concept in our ghetto areas; an end to the cultural and economic domination of minority groups. 

Three.  The legalization of marijuana and all other psychedelic drugs; the freeing of all prisoners currently imprisoned on narcotics charges. 

Number four.  A prison system based on the concept of rehabilitation rather than punishment. 

Five.  A judicial system which works towards the abolition of all laws related to crimes without victims; that is, retention only of laws relating to crimes in which there is an unwilling injured party: i.e. murder, rape, or assault. 

Six. The total disarmament of all the people beginning with the police. This includes not only guns but such brutal vices as tear gas, Mace, electric prods, blackjacks, billy clubs, and the like. 

Seven. The abolition of money, the abolition of pay housing, pay media, pay transportation, pay food, pay education. pay clothing, pay medical health, and pay toilets. 

Eight. A society which works towards and actively promotes the concept of full unemployment, a society in which people are free from the drudgery of work, adoption of the concept ‘Let the machines do it.’  [The transcript skipped Number Nine. TW]

Number ten. A program of ecological development that would provide incentives for the decentralization of crowded cities and encourage rural living. 

Eleven. A program which provides not only free birth control information and devices, but also abortions when desired. 

Twelve.  A restructured educational system which provides a student power to determine his course of study, student participation in over-all policy planning; an educational system which breaks down its barriers between school and community; a system which uses the surrounding community as a classroom so that students may learn directly the problems of the people. 

Number thirteen.  The open and free use of the media; a program which actively supports and promotes cable television as a method of increasing the selection of channels available to the viewer. 

Fourteen.  An end to all censorship.  We are sick of a society that has no hesitation about showing people committing violence and refuses to show a couple fucking. 

Fifteen.  We believe that people should fuck all the time, any time, wherever they wish.  This is not a programmed demand but a simple recognition of the reality around it. 

Sixteen.  A political system which is more streamlined and responsive to the needs of all the people regardless of age, sex, or race; perhaps a national referendum system conducted via television or a telephone voting system; perhaps a decentralization of power and authority with many varied tribal groups, groups in which people exist in a state of basic trust and are free to choose their tribe. 

Seventeen.  A program that encourages and promotes the arts.  However, we feel that if the free society we envision were to be sought for and achieved, all of us would actualize the creativity within us; in a very real sense we would have a society in which every man would be an artist.”

And eighteen was left blank for anybody to fill in what they wanted.  “It was for these reasons that we had come to Chicago, it was for these reasons that many of us may fight and die here.  We recognize this as the vision of the founders of this nation.  We recognize that we are America; we recognize that we are free men.  The present-day politicians and their armies of automatons have selfishly robbed us of our birthright.  The evilness they stand for will go unchallenged no longer.  Political pigs, your days are numbered.  

We are the second American Revolution.  We shall win. 

YIPPIE!”

From his testimony, you get a clear sense of how he mixed deadly serious politics with ridiculously joyful satire and idealism. I won’t elaborate here on why the movie pissed me off for not reflecting the people as they were.  Voices and costumes were done well (not Tom Hayden’s or Dave Dellinger’s) but the characters didn’t ring true to the actual people I came to know over those five months.

I’ve experienced this many times over the years: what I lived through was not portrayed in movies or TV as it felt to me when it was happening. It’s important that the movie was made and seen because most Americans weren’t around in 1968-9 (median age now is 38). It’s an important bit of history that needs to be understood. 

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I couldn’t resist including this:

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Change the System?

Once the election is finally over, we can and hopefully will, make fundamental changes in two ways: campaign finance and the electoral college.  

 $14 Billion will be spent on 2020 Federal Elections for President/Vice President and Congress, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. That’s more than 2012 and 2016 combined!  Most of it goes to pay for commercial time on TV and online. Biden and Democrats spent more on paid advertising than Trump and Republicans.  Spending on President/VP races was about equal to the Senate/House contests. More individual contributors gave money in 2020 than ever before, but the PAC money and corporate contributions are through the roof.  

The House passed H.R. 1, For The People Act of 2019 last January, the first legislation of the new Congress. It never was allowed to reach the Senate floor for a vote. It was an attempt to answer the frustration people feel about all these things: voting suppression, partisan gerrymandering, ethical lapses, conflicts of interest in Washington, attacks from foreign actors on our infrastructure, foreign interference in our election, super-PACs and dark money, and the inside crowd that bankrolls elections.  “It calls the shots,” the sponsor Rep. John Sarbanes (D, MD) said. “It’s a big bang response to grievances of the country.”  Maybe sometime, that bang will be able to silence the runaway influences that have grown geometrically since the Supreme Court ruling on Citizens United in 2010.   

I was surprised to learn recently that reforming the Electoral College is well underway.  The goal is to make new laws in the states individually, without the difficulty and time to pass an amendment to the Constitution.  It’s a kind of workaround system for choosing electors for the Electoral College.

The states have the authority to set rules for elections. A nonprofit independent organization has been working to get states to legally commit to have all its electors required to vote for the candidate who wins the national popular vote.  So far, legislatures from states with 196 of the needed 270 majority needed have passed the so-called Winner-Take-All provisions.  If/when states with another 74 electoral votes pass the amendment, the popular vote will finally determine how Presidents are elected.  They’re aiming for the 2024 election. 

It would end the modern reality that battleground states decide the outcome.  Campaigns will have to target all states, not concentrate on Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and a few others for their swing electors.   

Barry Fadem and John Koza are California founders of the National Popular Vote, Inc. Fadem asks, “Why is Florida so relevant in an electorate of 150 million?”

Great question.  If they can pull it off, it would be a fundamental –and absolutely necessary – change.  It might take a while, but it could happen.  If and how it would be challenged in the courts is yet to be determined but it will take commitments from several more states to make it real.   Let’s hope…it’s nuts the way it works now.

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Enough Politics…It’s Halloween!

For the COVID-19 no-contact version of Trick or Treat, the grandkids dressed up and got piles of candy, as usual. But the neighbors put the candy on clothespins and the kids went from house to house, gathering the low-hanging sugar goodies.

Here’s to peace and sanity starting November 4 and to love every day.