Day: December 6, 2024

The Legacy Of The War Party

The party that I am talking about is the democratic Party….in recent years it has become a neocon party of war policies.

I recently wrote a piece about the Biden legacy before the election…..

The Biden Legacy

The Party has proven that it is a pro-war party vote after vote in the Congress….and the legacy that it is leaving behind as it vacates the White House and Congress is strikingly horrible….

When a political party loses its legitimacy, its traditional priorities and moral compass, its candidates lose elections. Opting not to hold an open convention, which would have tested political viability, the DNC (acting on the President’s recommendation) invited Kamala Harris to replace Biden on the ticket.  For many Democrats, the lack of a competitive primary undermined the legitimacy of process.

In a misguided effort to attract anti-Trump Republicans, Harris  enlisted conservative Republican Liz Cheney  to join her on the campaign trail. This  strategy  failed.  The Republicans stuck with Trump or voted third party.  In the effort, Harris alienated many core supporters who saw her cave on such  issues as  fracking, immigration and health care.  Her policy backtracking was another blow to party legitimacy.

An even more delegitimizing strategy was to take for granted the support of working-class voters and labor unions. Both UAW President Shawn Fain and  Senator Bernie Sanders were noticeably absent from Harris’ campaign events, which included instead entertainment celebrities and Cheney.  Commenting on the election outcome, Bernie said it “should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them.”

The possibly heaviest, blow to party legitimacy was the large defection of progressives and other Democrats who were horrified by the ongoing genocide in Gaza and by the continued transfer of U.S. weaponry to Israel for its wars in both Gaza and Lebanon. Harris lost the popular count by five million votes. At the same time, she finished 12 million votes below the 81.2 million votes Biden received in 2020. Where did those missing Democratic voters go?

https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/11/20/the-democratic-war-party-and-its-loss-of-legitimacy/

I have watched the party slide into the clutches of the defense industry (the war cartel) for the last decades, pretty much since 1992, and now it is the paid agent of the industry of war.

Sadly I do not foresee any changes on the horizon.

Thoughts?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Could It Happen Here?

That magical time again when the Old Professor drops some history for those that shy away from it.

Recently the president of South Korea imposed martial law stating there was ‘anti-state’ forces at work…..it did not end well he had to rescind the order and now he is facing impeachment proceedings (you know what that is, right?)

Someone was glad that that is not an option here in the land of the free….or is it?

Yes Irene it can happen here….and it has numerous times in the past….

Naturally, and perhaps in light of endlessly rising political divisions within the U.S., events in South Korea have left some Americans wondering if the same could happen on U.S. soil. Acting as both bad news and good news: Yes, it could happen and has already happened 68 times across the United States’ roughly 250-year history. The Brennan Center for Justice has a full breakdown of the causes behind each declaration of martial law, who declared it, who ended it, how long it lasted, whether it happened on the state or federal level, and even if any civilians were tried by military tribunal as a result.

There’s a lot of general confusion regarding the definition of martial law and what it actually entails in terms of powers granted. There are an enormous amount of rules and details in the books regarding U.S. martial law, defined in the journal Law and Order in 1989 as, “the temporary substitution of military authority for civilian rule and is usually invoked in time of war, rebellion, or natural disaster,” per the U.S. Department of Justice. And yet, as an explanatory brief on the Brennan Center for Justice says, martial law has “no established definition.”

Twenty-nine out of 68 times, martial law was declared in response to disputes between workers and employers/industries. Examples include martial law in Pennsylvania in 1877 over a “general strike,” an 1892 miner strike in Idaho turned violent, and the “Colorado labor wars” lasting for more than two months in 1904. Riots were the next most common cause for martial law (11 times), and war the least common (twice). Fifty-two times, it was state governors who enacted martial law on the state level.

A lot of the confusion and complexities of martial law in the U.S. boil down to various divisions of power, like state vs. federal government and civilian law enforcement vs. military intervention. The president is the “commander-in-chief” of the U.S. military and adopts that role if federal-level martial law is declared, and yet the president must be a civilian. Furthermore, the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 prevents the military from intervening in civilian law enforcement, in general. So what is the military’s role if martial law is invoked, then? The Brennan Center for Justice says that the military usually supports local law, but has sometimes taken over for them, anyway

Read More: https://www.grunge.com/1729417/how-many-times-martial-law-declared-united-states/

So could it happen again?

We have elected the perfect person to test the waters with martial law if something arises that he can sell as ‘anti-state’.

I wait and watch for the possibility to arise.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”