We know all about Trump on the political level. But what does the emergence of Trump tell us about ourselves at the species level? Some thoughts on that here.
We write to resist. We do art to resist. We walk to resist. We engage in dialogue to resist. We teach ourselves and others to resist.
A paradigm shift does not occur without resistance.
Love and liberation,
Lee.
Banner image: Ludovic Hirlimann via Flickr CC BY-SA 2.0 Generic (cropped)
Terminus, the Roman god of borders and boundary stones, had a motto: I Yield to No One. In the old days, lambs and piglets died in blood sacrifices for Terminus. Today, nations sacrifice human lives in homage to their borderlines.
The most recent sacrifices include the due process rights of 200+ Venezuelans, sent to a sprawling pit in El Salvador from which nobody gets out alive, where warehoused human beings eat with their hands and sleep under lights, on bare metal racks. Meanwhile, Trump walks free, touting meme coins and flying to golf outings.
And then comes Bernie…
Continue reading the full piece, new today on CounterPunch.
CounterPunch opposes the Trump regime’s plan to excise the Council on Environmental Quality’s implementing regs for the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). Our comment is now visible at Regulations.gov.
Sometimes called the Magna Carta of U.S. environmental law, NEPA forces agencies to interrogate proposed federal actions before they begin. CounterPunch has a strong interest in the use of NEPA in protecting living communities and ecosystems, and in the work of environmental activists, lawyers, journalists, and others who hold agencies accountable.
Eviscerating the White House Council on Environmental Quality is a vile idea. Oppose it.
The published comments is linked in today’s CounterPunch newswire.
Can we use the F word to describe the subordination of nonhuman animals by humanity?
Feel free to add your thoughts to mine, friends.
I woke up today to Google’s gumbo banner and the shrimps and the crab and the chicken stood out. All are living, feeling beings with eyes. Their eyes witness their doom from inside the scene of their deaths. Two of them are in midair, the first one looking at two fellow shrimp who’ve already been tossed into the simmering pot…
Cats returned to the outdoors may seem free, but they don’t really live in a natural bio-community on their terms. Most suburban “strays” are ultimately picked up by animal control officers and killed.
On the other hand, as long as they stay in a home, they are dependent. Sprite seemed to find this acceptable. Sprite adjusted so well to our indoor life that I couldn’t bear to follow through with the “R” phase of TNR. It would feel unfair.
If I’d decided to keep Sprite inside, Elf would also stay. The two cats loved each other. Separating them wouldn’t do.
So they’d have a roof overhead for life. And I got used to having Elf as a dissatisfied lodger. We’d never touch each other, and I’d live with that.
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Banner photo source.
Here’s today’s post in the Studio, on the purpose of writing and resistance.
Why write about racial fairness? Because all oppression is connected, no matter who is being oppressed in the course of category-forming and othering (white-or-minority; male-or-female; human-or-not). The issue is oppression, and why we human primates can’t seem to stop it.
So this article in the weekend edition of CounterPunch is about how the Philadelphia region’s transit system (in its current state) perpetuates an unjust social hierarchy, and how people in the suburbs are implicated.
They say it’s just not possible to take the bus out here. You’re really car-dependent.
Behold our inherent vulnerability in a social system focused on the primacy of private cars over public transit.
Car-dependent.
And still, somehow, the bigger your car, the tougher you are. Are you? Take the bus, buttercup. Sit down with folk who make your lifestyle possible every day…
Read the full piece, now on CounterPunch.
Isn’t it a beautiful thing that the sun shines equally for all living beings? Celebrate the Solstice today.
First things first. I can’t accept the making, possession, or use of guns by any human ape. The whole point of a gun is that a body gets shot. I am committed to the peaceful resolution of disputes, grievances, and grief. Not threats, not retribution, not stalking, not killing.
That clear, I also believe people who maximize value for shareholders at major insurance companies are implicated in deaths and financial calamities that embitter and shorten people’s lives. Some people avoid lucrative jobs like the job Brian Thompson had, a job that relies on cold, algorithmically achieved profits as measures of success while cancer patients are denied coverage in response to those algorithms.
What are the heads of insurance corporations paid to do? To put their soulless software to work, so they don’t have to pull away critical care with their own bare hands. Then, to brandish their earnings on Wall Street.
While we’re on the subject, do you know that the US Climate Vegan Exchange-Traded Fund (VEGN ETF) keeps UnitedHealth Group among its top 10 investment holdings? Those holdings help keep an insurance corporation’s capital high. How does that help anyone promote vegan values?
Our government needs to admit there’s a problem with the privatization of something so vital as medicine. The answer is a single-payer medical system. We don’t need to live with the unsympathetic ghosts of Reagan and Thatcher policies.
As we all know, the Democratic Party has repeatedly pushed Medicare for All off the platform. To be frank, that’s not working out for them, and it’s not working out for our lives, and it’s certainly not working out for the grieving Thompson and Mangione families.
So much torment. All avoidable. Taxpayers’ saving accounts are raided mercilessly for military spending. War—a vicious, disgraceful, anti-health pursuit—evidently takes precedence over everything else.
Luigi Mangione—assuming law enforcement has the right person—gave up a safe and privileged life to take part in a microcosmic war, using warlike language about what “had to be done.” And this brought certain realities to the surface, rippling through social media and everyday conversations among friends. Needless to say, I don’t think Luigi (notably caught at McDonald’s) had the whole picture.
The Mangione family owns multiple right-wing talk radio stations, including WCBM (a channel with an “official gun range” that promotes hunting; foments anti-trans sentiment; and connects listeners with a bevy of Fox News and Newsmax personalities). Not exactly a font of tranquility and healing.
This brings to mind the animal-rights activists who will endorse threats on the lives of CEOs—but won’t engage their family members about their use and consumption of animals.
Meanwhile we have Trump walking free and indeed retaking the most privileged position in the country. We don’t have universal healthcare. The dominant political parties are funded by profit-focused insurers, including UnitedHealth. And our government is consuming the fruits of our work without taking our needs seriously.
We do have each other, and that matters. Every example of community and mutual aid matters. Let’s stay strong. Let’s stay engaged in the struggle for real change.
Love and liberation,
Lee.
Banner photo: Steve Rhodes / Flickr (CC-BY-NC-SA 2.0).
Vegan Place 