Sitting at me desk, trying to think if something to write is very hard with all the purpose-driven chaos caused by our government and the lack of appropriate media coverage of the damage being done by this corrupt government. It’s hard to stay positive, but I keep reminding myself, “This too shall pass.”
I am looking at my books by authors like Jack London (The Iron Heel), Eugene V. Debs (The Bending Cross), Peter Barnes (Liberty and Dividends for All), Thomas Paine (Common Sense Rights of Man), Samuel B. Griffith (edition of Suntzu’s The Art of War), Niccolo Machiavelli (The Prince) and wonder how many people have read these great works, and had our educational system taught the truths within the covers of these books would our country be in the mess we are in now?
We have a belligerent, insecure, devious, unintelligent, deadbeat conman in the White House bankrupting our country and throwing parades for himself like despots of other regimes, while our feckless executive branch of government does nothing either because they are complicit in the theft or outnumbered by the crooks.
Machiavelli’s The Prince should especially be read by all. It explains the different types of governments and how one can easily slip into another type, which we are witnessing first hand under trump. Machiavelli wrote there are countries are ruled as a republic or principality (family run), which we are succumbing to with trump and his spawn.
I believe and know that in these books lies the answer to what we have to do in order to keep what is left of the freedom here in the U.S. At this time, the corporations and a few very rich people run our country. They have the money that trump covets, they have control over the government as a result of trump’s lust, and they have the power over decisions effecting us little people as a result. The GOP continues to work at taking away our basic needs, such as what little healthcare we have, our Social Security, and even our freedom to protest in the streets.
As The Art of War points out, we need to know ourselves in order to win half of the war, but if we know our enemy, trump and the GOP, we can win the entire war. All should also read The Prince, especially page 160 in Chapter 2, to understand the types of governments and how one form can lead to a more destructive form.
Then we must understand the capital system, which our economic system is based on and makes us wage slaves. This is explained in Thomas Piketty’s book Capital in the Twenty-first Century, which explains how inequality happened and how the rich keep getting richer and richer through the inheritance of wealth. Under trump this inequality is spiraling out of control.
Communities might want to create think tanks to study and discuss these books together and outline ways to fight back using the knowledge learned from these authors and books.
There are labor history books, like Rebel Voices: an IWW anthology, and writings by Noam Chomsky, Walter Reuther to further your understanding and generate ideas. Most of these books will show how we have gotten to where we are in this country today. We can learn how to keep and better our lives, with healthcare for all, a living wage, free education, unions organization, prison reform, and taking measures to curtail the escalating climate crisis while dealing with the loss of jobs to artificial intelligence by implementing a universal basic income.
The bottom line is we can still win and keep a government that works for all if we educate ourselves, our children and our friends. It is still possible to have conversations with those supporting trump if is done without name calling or arguing, but with focused questions that have nothing to do with trump, but their lives and what they hope to achieve, why they haven’t achieved it and what they think is actually holding them back. If the conversation is done without judgment, the person will end coming to the realization on their own that they have been voting against their own best interests.
In 2012 more than a quarter of all political contributions came from just 30,000 people who represented the 1 percent of the 1 percent, 90 percent who spent the most won. Today, we are an experiment in either a democracy, which started in 1787 or an oligarchy, which is winning. The nonunion people, like Trump and Musk, have most all the tools in their pockets to destroy our unions. They have money, they have the courts, they have law enforcement, they have the media, and 50 percent of workers that don’t know this don’t know the history of the working class people. This is the perfect storm to lose all the gains workers have made whether they’re union or not, even our Social Security and Medicare, and the Affordable Care Act. So, now we will have to go way back to the late 1920s and ‘30s and dig up the old labor party books. One book, written in 1964, has the information, The Rebel Voices, an IWW Anthology by Joyce L. Kornbluh, educator, activist, and advocate. The history of our labor...
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