We are all aware of the Trump supporting domestic terrorists who stormed the Capital Building and trashed the offices of various politicians, with the visible help of the police. This event was a staged coup brought about by Trump, make no mistake about it. He riled them up, and like the stupid lemmings that they are, they obeyed him. When asked to send in the National Guard Trump refused to do so. Of course he did, because he wanted his gang of terrorists to hurt and possibly kill his perceived ‘enemies’. This whole event was meant to scare the politicians, and the American people, into submission so that he could hold onto his power, rather than get arrested the moment he leaves the White House.
I’m not scared. If anything this whole twisted event has galvanised me into making my opinion more widely known. Even before he was elected I would go onto his Facebook page and call him a racist lying fascist pig. There are those who say that he, and his staff, don’t read the responses to his posts. Well, about two years ago his staff blocked me from commenting not only on his posts but also from Pence, all of the White House staff and also his relatives pages. I had only ever commented on Trump’s posts so I must have really, really pissed somebody off big time. They also did the same thing to the press and others, so the ACLU threatened a lawsuit. Like magic I got my commented privileges restored. I wear all of this as a badge of honour and I’m proud as hell that I pissed off the fascist pigs.
Despite all of this the congress and the senate still confirmed Biden. That is except for the Republicans, over one hundred in number, who still contested the results in Arizona and Pennsylvania. These seditious morons took the side of the terrorists and gave them what they wanted. Every single one of these politicians who voted against a democratically elected candidate ought to be named and shamed and ejected from office. Sedition is not a difference of opinion, it is an act of treason that goes against the will of the people. I would like to point out the fact that these white domestic terrorists were only able do this because they had a massive amount of privilege. If they had been black, or any other colour that is not white, they would have been shot dead and there would have been a pile of bodies on the front steps. The difference between how the domestic terrorists were treated by the police and how the BLM protestors were treated by the police is stark as hell.
Do not let a group of terrorists scare you into submission. Fascists, such as Trump, only gain power when nobody speaks up against them. Speak your mind loudly and often. Fuck Trump, his Republican bootlickers and his domestic terrorist thugs.
For those of you who don’t know, I am a US citizen who now lives in the UK. Since I am still a US citizen I get to vote in US elections. I received my ballot a month ago and mailed it back the next day. I don’t like either candidate, they are both neo-liberals, but Trump is far more dangerous than Biden. If you can’t see the difference between them then I think you should learn how to critically think.
Just because I have voted for Biden doesn’t mean that I will sit back and let him make neo-liberal economic policies without any consequences. I will shout from the rooftops against him when he does such things as bailing out banks and letting drug companies charge outrageous amounts of money for covid vaccines. America is a failing empire in which capitalism rules over every single decision that the government makes. Even before covid appeared the capitalist system in America was in deep trouble. The pandemic has just sped up the downfall.
One of my proudest moments of the past few years was when Trump’s handlers blocked me from commenting on Trump’s, Pence’s, Ivanka’s and every single other White House associated Facebook page. No joke! I only ever commented on Trump’s page so I must have been seen as a danger to the whole lot of them. The same week that happened a whole bunch of reporters were also blocked from all of the White House gang. The ACLU and others, warned that legally Trump couldn’t block anybody from commenting because that was against the First Amendment. Guess what happened after that? I was unblocked. I have called him a racist and a fascist almost every single day on his Facebook page and it has been a bit cathartic.
If you are a Trump supporter I have two simple words to say to you. Fuck you. You are against the rights of women, people of colour and the LGBTQ community. You will more than likely be a white guy who is scared about soon becoming a minority in America. The centuries of power that white men have wielded in America are very close to being over. Rather than accepting this fact you vote for an openly racist and fascist wannabe dictator. When history books back at this time in American history you will be seen as a wannabe racist brownshirt. Tough shit.
I seriously hope that Biden wins because I don’t think that the democracy of America, which has always been deeply flawed, can seriously survive another four years of Trump’s hateful rhetoric.
If you haven’t heard by now John Lydon, of The Sex Pistols and PiL, has openly announced that he is voting for Trump. Before this I had thought that he wore that one Trump shirt months ago to really piss people off. However he has fully doubled down on his support for the racist pig. This being the case I have decided to cut all ties with him.
You’ve got to understand that boycotting his music really pains me a lot because both the Sex Pistols and PiL were among the first weirdo bands that I listened to in the 1980’s. I literally deleted all of his associated music off of my computer yesterday and I got very close to tears because ultimately I feel betrayed by Lydon. The man who made the song World Destruction with Afrika Bambaataa is not the same man who is supporting an openly racist conman.
From what I have read, and understood, one of the reasons why he is supporting Trump is because he identifies with him in terms of being accused of being a racist. Apparently, after a Sex Pistols appearance in 2008 at a festival, some racist words were said backstage by the Pistols road-crew towards the singer of the band Bloc Party. This was witnessed by and confirmed by other members of several bands. On top of that Lydon also said nasty things to the guy. I had no clue about any of this until a few days ago and it totally blows my mind that Lydon refutes all of this and has the nerve to say that he doesn’t support racism even though he is willing to support Trump who is openly racist.
Lydon is actually still claiming that he is working class even though he owns two homes in the US and one in the UK. Sorry John, but working class people can’t even afford to buy one home these days let alone three in two different countries. I think he has gotten to the point in his life that he is just regurgitating the crap that he said over thirty years ago that doesn’t apply to him at all these days. Yes, his wife Nora is slowly dying from Alzheimers and that’s sad, BUT that doesn’t give him an excuse to act like a damn moron and go against things that he used to fight for.
He also claims that people shouldn’t get stuck in a set of beliefs forever. So, he is justifying his support for a racist prick by saying that it’s good for people to change their minds. Guess what John? It is never good to change your mind about the act of racism because in doing so you yourself become a racist. Racism is bad and is never something that should be condoned or excused. Don’t want to be called a racist prick? Then don’t support one. The really bad part about all of this is that his (step)grandchilden are of mixed race. I wonder how they feel about him supporting Trump?
Lydon is now dead to me and I will never listen to his music again. Fuck you Johnny!
Want to know what has been bothering me the last few days? The people online saying that we shouldn’t be happy that Trump is sick with the coronavirus. Seriously? It’s not right to be happy that a racist, homophobic, xenophobic, sexist piece of shit caught the very virus that has killed over 200,000 people in the US mostly due to his incompetence? Oh hell no.
There have been some very vile people in both the US and UK who have become the heads of state due to the sheer stupidly of the general public; Nixon, Thatcher, Reagan, Johnson, Trump. When Johnson was recently sick with the coronavirus I didn’t give a shit. You know why? Because he has been handing government funds to his Tory allies for nonsense projects that they are never going to do. That’s right, instead of helping all of the people out of jobs because of the pandemic he is lining the pockets of his friends with money. Trump has been doing the exact same thing. At this point both the GOP and the Tories are battling each other as to which one can make the most money off of a global pandemic. It’s disgusting.
Forgiveness and apathy for those who are ill, no matter the evil things that they have done, is a Christian concept. Since I am not a Christian I don’t have to adhere to those beliefs. It was announced today that the neo-Nazi Trump advisor Stephen Miller has caught the coronavirus, which actually makes me happy because he instigated the separation of families and sticking kids into cages among other racist type things. In other words he does not deserve any pity at all. I predict, that if he dies, people will probably literally party on his grave.
Screw Trump and every single person associated with him. I refuse to feel sorry for fascist sacks of shit.
I’m writing this because what is going on in the US is making me very upset. Seeing time and time again black people being murdered by the police just because of the colour of their skin, and said police not being punished for it. A slap on the wrist, some paid leave and then they are free to commit more crimes. Yes, this has been going on forever, but with the invention of the camera phone such murders are now getting the public attention that they had never received before. However, the police are still getting away with murder because the whole system supports institutionalized racism.
If you are a white person reading this and are working class/poor you have more in common with black people, and other people of colour, than you do with the wealthy of your own race. The US government doesn’t want you to find that out because they know that if all of the working class/poor in the US band together that they can take down the US government. Every single time a leader, or group, brings together people of all races they are arrested or assassinated; Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Fred Hampton and the Black Panthers.
I grew up poor in San Francisco in the 1970’s. So poor that I remember my parents taking me to one of the Black Panthers free food programs for children on Haight Street. They didn’t give a crap that I was a little white girl, they only saw me as a hungry child. The Black Panthers are always depicted by the US government, and by a lot of the media, as thugs who didn’t give a shit about anybody except for black people. If that was the truth then why did the US government assassinate them and throw the rest in prison? The Black Panthers freaked the US government out because they were successfully reaching out to working class/poor white people and telling them that the government was the real common enemy, and to create change all of the people needed to work together.
Since I grew up poor in the US I have always felt more connected to others who are poor, no matter their colour, than to people of my own race who are wealthy. I was a teen in the 80’s who saw right through Reagan’s racist bullshit. Remember when he visited the graves of some Waffen SS soldiers in Germany and placed a wreath there? The Ramones sure as hell did and they created one of the best anti-Reagan songs to come out of the 1980’s; Bonzo Goes To Bitburg.
As you can easily guess I am not a supporter of Trump or of the GOP. The GOP has always used racist dog whistles to gain votes from white people who were too stupid to see that they were being manipulated. It was historically called the Southern Strategy, and it was used by Nixon all the way to Trump. Make white people scared of black people by stating that they are all criminals and deserve what is happening to them. Again and again you will see GOP politicians, and their white supporters, state that the police have the right to kill black people, because they didn’t cooperate with their orders. We all know that’s a lie, because there is footage proving otherwise, and yet they repeat these lies to their brainwashed adherents.
Why is all of this happening? The US government was set up by rich white men to work best for rich white men. Quite a few of the ‘founding fathers’ were slave owners who also thought that women were not equal to men. The country wasn’t founded on some lofty ideal of ‘freedom’. In fact the only reason why the American Revolution happened is because wealthy white businessmen did not want to pay taxes to Britain. Taxes that were lower than any other British ruled territory. Yes, the US was founded because of pure greed. They fail to teach this at school because if kids actually knew the truth about this they may not want to say the Pledge Of Allegiance every single day before class starts. By the way, I find the whole idea of having to say the pledge creepy as hell. In the 1940’s the Supreme Court ruled that kids could not be required to say it, so if you are a parent and your kid doesn’t want to say it back them up with that information.
Black lives matter, and the only way any of this institutionalized racism is going to stop is if the government is reformed from the top down. Every single person in the US regardless of race, creed or sex should be treated the same. The special privileges afforded only to rich white men needs to be stopped and everybody be treated by the law as an equal. If a rich white man cheats people out of their life savings they should be given the same kind of sentence as anybody who robs a bank. White collar criminals should be getting serious jail time instead of being slapped on the wrist and being told that they have been a bad boy. Many police departments in the US have been militarized and that needs to be pulled back and stopped. Also, the profiling of black men and women, and other people of colour, by the police needs to end. Finally, police departments need to be de-funded and in their place should be put social programs that actually help people instead of killing them.
The only way that the government listens is if a mass amount of people come together and protest. It scares the crap out of them, as it should. Also, I support all kinds of protest, peaceful or otherwise. It has been shown time and time again that sometimes the only way that the government listens to grievances is through mass insurrection. The protests against the Vietnam War and for the end of segregation were not all peaceful and it is foolhardy to think otherwise.
If you are in the US please vote. I just received my ballot yesterday and mailed it in today. Being a brat and saying you’re not going to vote for Biden because Bernie didn’t win the primary is going to get Trump elected yet again. I am a leftist who loves Bernie but I know that a vote for Biden is a vote for the chance to change the system. Do you think black lives matter? Then get off of your ass and vote.
Right wing presidential candidates, such as Trump, have loved to claim that if we elect them to office that they will make America great again. The simple truth is that America has never been great, except for the wealthy white men who have exploited both the people and the environment of the country. This is their nation after all, not yours.
As a lot of you know I am an American who has lived in Europe for about the last eight years. I spent my first 41 years mostly in the San Francisco Bay Area. Despite being one of the most left wing areas of the entire country schools still taught a lot of American propaganda. This is something that every single person in America has experienced in one way or another, you can’t escape it.
The very first thing you are taught is to repeat the Pledge Of Allegiance every morning before class starts. You stand in class, put you hand over you heart, say it and then sit down. During the pledge you may or may not be watched closely by the teacher. Some of them will get angry if you don’t say it and others don’t really care at all. If you don’t say it you will usually get crap from the other students for not loving America etc…The modern pledge added the words ‘under god’ in 1952, and legally you are under no obligation to have to actually say it. School districts that still make children say it are routinely sued by parents. The supreme court, in 1943, ruled that it is against the 1st amendment to be made to say it. By the time I was a teenager I mumbled it or changed the words. Countries that make their citizens say pledges of loyalty have been historically fascist and nationalistic in nature. Places in which not everybody is treated equal.
Next in this indoctrination comes being taught that America is the greatest nation on the planet that every existed. You are told this outright and in parables, such as George Washington never lied. I actually don’t remember being taught a lot about the slave trade and how America was built upon the backs of them. What I know about slavery and the Civil War I learned from reading books and watching the Ken Burns documentary The Civil War which aired in 1990, the year after I graduated from high school. I imagine that some schools probably show that documentary in history class, or at least I hope they do.
I remember a lot of time being spent leaning about WWII, and how America entered it because we supposedly hated Hitler and wanted to defeat Germany. Nothing could be further from the truth. The only reason why America went to war against Germany is because America declared war on Japan, their ally, after their attack upon Pearl Harbour. Germany felt obligated to then declare war on America because of this. The majority of Americans did not want to even enter WWII, partially because of the devastation caused by WWI and also because a whole lot of people actually liked Hitler. In fact there was a large group called The German American Bund who held a pro-Nazi rally in New York City at Madison Garden in 1939 in which 20,000 people attended. America was dragged kicking and screaming into war against Germany. Remember, this ‘greatest generation’ of people were also the ones that approved of segregation and largely didn’t want it to end.
The 1939 German American Bund Nazi rally that filled Madison Square Garden in New York City.
I also don’t remember learning that much about segregation, and how people gave their lives in order to end it. If we learn anything about that era of American history it’s usually about Martin Luther King’s ‘I Have A Dream’ speech and then how he was assassinated. We aren’t really taught about the long struggle that people of colour have had to fight against racial prejudice, one that they are still fighting today.
So, knowing all of this I have a question. When was America ever great for all Americans? The simple answer is that it has never been great for anybody besides wealthy white men. So, when Trump says that he is going to make America great again he actually means that he is going to help wealthy white men stay in power. Wealthy white men have been losing their grip on power because the white population of the country has been falling, and minorities are now more represented than ever before.
This doesn’t mean that wealthy white men are going to go down without a fight. They try to corral the rights and power of women by attempting to control their reproductive rights. They try to hold black people down by funding and condoning militarized police forces that openly murder and antagonize people in black communities. They try to stop immigrants, illegal and otherwise, from coming into the country by separating families and locking the children in cages. Remember, only wealthy white people from selected countries should be approved to live in the US because they are the sort of fine people who made America great in the first place.
America will only ever be great if every single person in that country is treated as an equal. When the blatant use of the ‘other’ isn’t used as a scare tactic to divide the underclass of society. Americans should be fighting against these wealthy white men in power instead of against each other. If the vast underclass of America was to openly fight against the policies that these wealthy white men create then things would change for the better for everybody.
In the very wise words of Public Enemy, FIGHT THE POWER.
Dystopian societies have been historically seen as purely fictional ways to depict the worst case scenarios that could possibly happen to a society if events go terribly wrong; a warning as to what could happen if we are not careful. These events include, but are not limited to, a fascist nationalsitic type state being born out of paranoia, destruction of the environment, the creation of a large underclass that is only kept alive to serve the wealthy, blaming the ‘other’ for all of a society’s ills, and the list goes on. A fictional dystopian society can suffer from just one of these events or several. Rarely are all present at exactly the same time. Why do all these events I have described feel so familiar? That is because we are in the midst of living in a dystopian society.
I am 49 years old, and never in my life have I lived through such a year as 2020. This has become the year in which all of the cracks that have always been on the surface of society have finally appeared to those who had never paid attention to them before. Suddenly these cracks have been deemed important enough to now discuss and act upon, when before they were seen as issues not important enough to garner a lot of attention.
Before I go any further please understand that I will be discussing our dystopian society from the point of view of somebody who has lived in both the US and the UK. The countries are similar in some ways but very different in others. The Tories to date have been trying their best to copy the actions of the GOP in America so they may be carbon copies of one another in a few years time.
How would a competent leader of a country deal with a rampaging virus that is killing thousands of citizens a day? They would declare a national health emergency, mandate federal laws concerning social distancing and the wearing of masks, pay each citizen a monthly amount of money that can help them cover rent, food and bills, and offer absolutely free healthcare to those who are unfortunate catch the virus. Instead you have Trump ignoring all of the medical advice given to him, because in his mind he is more intelligent than actual scientists who study the effects of such diseases. While over in the UK you have Johnson behaving in much the same way, even after he caught the virus himself and was very ill from it. No compassion at all has come from either of them, and you get the sense that they probably both wish that all of those with pre-existing medical conditions should die already so that they don’t have to deal with the virus any longer. Only in a dystopian society would such actions be viewed in a positive light by a large percentage of the population. Both Trump and Johnson must know what is best since we put them in power, and we are never wrong!
Scene from the dystopian film Soylent Green.
Both Johnson and Trump are members of political parties, the Tories and Republicans(GOP), whose members have openly colluded with foreign powers in order to win elections. They were made Prime Minister and President in order to grant the wealthy even more power and money than they already have. Screw all of the people barely able to make ends meet because of the economy tanking and the virus making things even worse. In a matter of months there are going to be tent cities all over the US and UK because of the masses of people losing their homes since they can no longer afford rent or their mortgages because of losing their jobs. When you are down and out all you have to do to make yourself happy is think of all of the billionaires, such as Zuckerberg and Bezos, making record amounts of money during a pandemic. Remember making money off of the backs of the underclass is what makes both the US and UK such great places to live! Only in a dystopian society can the underclass be made to think that their underpaid jobs are actually just fine, and maybe through some hard work and luck they too will become very wealthy. If they don’t become very wealthy then it is their own fault because they didn’t work hard enough.
There has always been open racism in both the US and UK. Equality laws being put into place does not mean that people of colour were treated fairly from that moment on. Within the last few years there have been a lot of video recordings of the police, mostly in the US, openly killing black men and women. This sort of thing has always happened, it’s not a new phenomenon. The only difference right now is that these murders are being recorded by police body-cams or by bystanders who are witness them. Even though these cops know they are being recorded they go ahead and kill these black men and women anyway because historically they rarely get convicted of murder. In most cases they get paid leave and then go back to work a few months later, or even if they get fired they will easily get hired by a nearby police department. Only in a dystopian society are some people deemed expendable just because of the colour of their skin.
Another group being treated unfairly in both the US and UK are immigrants; legal, illegal, POC and Eastern European. Even though these immigrants do essential work, such as nursing and harvesting food, they are still looked down upon by large sections of a society who are told by their governments that immigrants are to blame for how shit their lives have turned out. Only in a dystopian society is the construct of this ‘other’ created. This is in order to placate the population whose unwavering support both the US and UK governments need in order to retain power. This white underclass in taught to hate the ‘other’, even though they have more in common with them that they do with white people who are wealthy.
I have touched on many of the reasons why I think we are living in a dystopian society and I can easily think of even more. Sometimes thinking really deeply about this scares the crap out of me, as it should. We are not living in normal times. Probably the best thing you can do is pay attention to all of the events going on around you. If you live in an area where there are ongoing protests against racism, and the government in general, take part in them. Also, if you are a US citizen please vote. Even though I am a US citizen in the UK I am voting by mail in the upcoming November election. If Trump is not voted out of office things are going to get even worse in the US during the next four years.
