The only way to end genocide anywhere is for the people to end it here in the imperial core, first, now. The genocidal armies here at home must be stopped. They include a fascist, racist carceral system made up in part by police, prisons, and property owners. To many ethical thinkers, the best and final act anyone can commit is against the equipment or apparatus of the oppressing carceral system.

You do not want fascism; it mustn’t grow. This ruthless weed is best nipped while at bud. Formerly, features of the fascism vine may have had the aseptic waxen veneer of that totalizing corporate profanation of the aesthetics of wellness and vitality. Leaves left long enough wilt into foetid piles, the weed’s dungy poison truth. Grasp it at its root and extract it at once. There may be much fibrous network for even but a single leaf; getting it all out will be a chore. This is by definition an upheaval; with dynamic systems in play doesn’t need be upsetting.

The formation of new alternative systems for solving social problems is key to the struggles surrounding antifascist work. These structures for radical community care and regulation put the resources and skills to employ them in the hands of those directly affected by social problems. What is an appropriate resource or strategy is self-determined on the front line, and supply and support respond in an agile way from among the crowd which is perhaps bounded by some rear lines. These are radical structures because they break down and distribute power without mediation by either violence, finance, or other coercive forces. They are done as a matter of achieving dignified co-existence with our siblings in the human organism.

Corporations would prefer to dominate provision for our corporal and material needs. Violently, financially, and psychosexually. Moreover they seek rents for this provision, and the ultimate form of rent seeking is charging for consumption of oxygen and water down to the molecule so the poor can only afford to die. Rent seeking for use of the hospitals, the pharmacies, the housing supply, other basic public health measures raises the price of life for workers while police, militia, crime organizations and paramilitaries enforce the toll on the lower classes. This is their vision for the full blown weed. The only way to kill it is to be prepared to give up everything it supplies for us–and so we prepare to supply ourselves with all we need.

Why does a society choose fascism? Is it some particular mixture of scared and humiliated? Certain and insecure? Who ever knows might write it in the clouds for us all to know and avoid. But without spending too much time diagnosing the pathology behind it, suffice to recognize it as pernicious and worth extra effort.

Let some others consider the manner and time for the murder of the Caesar; surely the corpse will also be burned and hidden according to the plans of yet some others. Here we prepare ourselves to fully consider the creation of new community structures, the replacements for those bygones whose time has passed. As passed is past.

We must feed each other.

We must speak to each other.

We must listen to each other.

We must care for each other, each as they need and as each is able.

We must care for our community, providing for common defense, wellbeing and beauty.

We must share the joy, sorrow and wisdom that is our only common truth.

These ends are a good set of goals to pursue in mutual aid of our fellows. Structures that seek these ends will be most likely to efficiently channel resources to meet need. That is because both the source and necessity are universal among human beings. Arranging ourselves to provide for ourselves unencumbered by any other social order is logically no less efficient than an indirect arrangement and seems intuitive, baked-in to the human condition.

Each of the areas described obliquely by the ends listed above is currently sick. This is not only a radical act of preparation for upheaval, it is also a radical act of healing. Creating these structures with our neighbors, siblings, and acquaintances addresses a symptom of a greater illness. It is detoxifying, re-sanctifying: Both a Banish and a Balm.

Once we have these channels created, the worst of our restraints have been removed. We are free to make serious blows to the beasts in the oppressive menagerie besieging us. Thud, down go the red-lining banks; thump, down falls the black snake, pipeline of a billion slick, tumorous deaths. With a groan, the entire legion of secret police – ICE and various bits of the armed DHS that we can call the American Gestapo – kicks up quite a bit of dust and thrashes on the floor. Boom! – arbitration clauses. BAM! – unlimited corporate political contributions. As each falls in turn, it becomes clearer that human kind is already standing up, finally up off its knees.

And in the meantime, there will be a moveable feast. Time for laughing and for dancing. The hurt will know wholeness, and the despised will find friendship once again. The bold and the beautiful will toil together as comrade or colleague, not competitors. It can happen here without spilling a drop of blood, without one innocent life lost. Every day under COVID we are reminded that the elites truly left us on our own. We have no one but each other, but many of us are finding that when we are together in solidarity we have more than we need.

Huddled masses of children sleeping on concrete pads under crinkled foil; chainlink cages teeming with unshaven, foetid men speaking a half dozen languages from as many different countries of origin; and poor, working Americans footing the bill for the operation. Tired of looking yet? Of caring?

This is a near complete inversion of the words engraved on our Lady Liberty. Their profanation; their defilement. It is the product of policy at US federal agencies. It is paid for with money that everyone earns, representing value that everyone creates, together.

This involves not just money – again, money that we all put together, partly as a cooperation-pump fund that maintains the various associations we envision and enjoy under shared society and partly as a just-in-case fund that can help rectify any jackpots in the social and natural lotteries. Money, yes, but this case also involves transforming that money into profits for a few.

The situation refered to above is the result of policies. The policies are realized by people, many of them workers of all stripes, yes, but also investors, intermediaries and other business people. This class of people have taken an interest in receiving or directing monies – legally mandated expenditures from the public’s purse – entailed by the policy. But are these interested parties looking after what outcomes, guided by what virtue?

Evidence abounds sufficient to answer that query. A system that were focused on meeting asylum claims would, on inspection, offer a clear, consistent path to asylum, make it accessible at a scale adequate to the sheer volumes of humanity seeking relief, and expedite the careful process of growing the country amid the dual specters of declining birth rates and ballooning elderly populations. What we have describes rather something else, a system for obtaining profits, and quite a counterpoint description of one at that. The term “at all costs” can easily be ascribed to the case at hand. Every bed that is filled is a billable expense; fewer asylum claims processed means more desperate people filling detention center beds. Of course there is markup for providing the beds and the service of them – this is the rent. Rentseekers follow. An asylum policy that results in less asylum, or indeed an immigration system that results in less net immigration, obviously runs counter to a goal of growing numbers from without. And this seems, based in the public statements of everyone involved, to be by design. (Indeed the architects of the current set of policies are not shy about their fear of “replacement” which you can research on your own time. Wear a tinfoil hat for full effect.)

Of course any policy has to do with the exec leadership. However, recall an axiom of public policy: No policy, no funds. For all their bluster of hating government at any size, this administration is putting the US government in charge of youth detention centers kiddie concentration camps kindergulags. And Of Course this begets its corollary: No profiteers, no profits. So we have a circle described before us.

Capitalism is not wrong. The system and its parameters are fairly clear and nothing about them or their operation necessarily describes an engine of exploitation. But the capture of a globalized patchwork of trade and finance regimes by corporate entities via their political vassals in the halls of power that used to be nation-states; this does not seem on its face very much resembling capitalism. It most definitely engenders outcomes many tend to term not right.

Whatever the eff it is, the “rules” that “govern” this system are as arcane as they are mutable. And the whole thing relies in part on manipulation of capital costs, including and most importantly labor, requiring displacement of populations, artificial borders and border disputes, et cetera. Collusion is not capitalism. Nope. Zero. False.

And currently an externality of this system are kids in cages. Baby jails. Children too young to speak separated from their parents with no provocation, and lost – literally misplaced, their names and origins unknown – by a system with nothing for them but horror and privation.

Really, why can’t this be the wake-up call already? Capitalism came and went. It was great for many and very, very great for a very, very few who got ambitious about what might be possible for their children, godchildren and mistresses. We have flirted with some change in different areas around the world, and it seems to help matters for a lot of normal people without harming the ultra rich much if at all. It is time to explore the possibility that:

i. Capitalism is a wonderful system for distributing production output, and also tends to increase surplus

ii. Surplus tends to accrue, and this accrual tends to result in unequal distribution of inputs

iii. Inequality tends to beget inequality

iv. Social solutions tend to redress inequality

Therefore, Social solutions may be now necessary and prudent and in fact the only option.

Phew. Just saying, everyone around here hating a player instead of hating the game and letting the disgust flow in a productive direction.

Once more asylum seekers – the least among us, homeless on the road fleeing war and violence, poverty and illness – provide grist for the media mill. Everyday we see more of the xenophobic narratives. It is a trial.

There is nonetheless an interesting dilemma of sorts revealed through the issue. It seems there are symmetrical, yet contradictory claims being made, a claim honored as valid in the case on the one hand but invalid in the other. What deepens the puzzle is the differing scope of the recourse sought by the claimants in either case. The claimants are refugees seeking asylum to enter and reside in a new country, and the Trump admin claiming blanket clemency conferred by the Executive’s title.

Asylum claims are either legitimate, or not. Those fleeing their country of origin for the North are seeking relief from a climate of violence and instability at home. These are not “street gangs,” mostly these groups look more like paramilitaries – the military itself is often in on it. What emboldened these groups was working with the Americans to overthrow or destabilize the local state. So people in the territories caught in between seem to be making a claim, and that is that they have a right to seek peaceful lands. Thus, once they have arrived via extraordinary means, they ought have their extraordinary reason for flight recognized – specifically by way of suspending some rules for each individually considered case. Unlike smugglers or traffickers, asylum seekers have recourse for their claims.

The claims of the Trump administration seem similarly to seek safe harbor via exemption from the normal operation of certain Laws. The Trump cadre’s claims have been, all along, “Yes, we might have-probably-maybe-wouldn’t have-but-totally broke the rules – howeva – because of the context – winning Republican primaries, defeating Hillary, running the country from a branded bucket of breaded meat – the rules can be suspended for us in this specific case.” In fact a direct quote from Mr. Trump himself is that it was “very cool” to perhaps commit election fraud or even worse crimes.

The end portion of the claim – “in this specific case” – is the most revealing, as any specificity clause must by nature be limited to individual acts or agents. The admin talking heads trot this claim out regularly following every new revelation. That these claims seem to come ‘fast and thick’ serve to illustrate the limited applicability of specific decisions on one claim to many other cases. This feels akin to the bank robber pointing at a previous bank error in his favor that the bank decided not to follow up on as cause for a blanket suspension of rules. It certainly doesn’t seem like the same kind of claim in operation, anyway. The case, above, differs from the current one in that the scope of recourse sought is specifically applied to individual cases. Only. And that is precisely why our and other states seek to honor such decisions – bending the rules cannot be exercised on an open-ended basis. The rules cease to be universal, and anarchy follows in the nth consideration. Bank robbers would try!

Heckling Secretary Nielsen and shunning Secretary Sanders seemed to me at first a bit brusque, even misguided. What good ever comes from shouting at an extremist? After all, we know they only tend to double-down on the convictions at issue. That the two events occurred at two different stakeholder levels – in the first case it was fellow patrons of the establishment and members of the public, while the other involved the business’s owner – will be important considerations in a minute. But they both seemed a little empty to me at first.

However, neither case is analogous to confronting any mere supporter of the administration’s policies. The persons occupying these appointed positions are in fact enablers of those same policies, ones which many see as anathema to American legal, political, and cultural mores. By confronting these persons, there is an element of Truth to Power involved. Heckling and even shunning seem then mostly justified.

The true irony of the situations is what makes both acts so meaningful. As has been noted plenty of other places, this administration and the party that it has hi-jacked, the GOP, trumpet the ability of business owners to refuse service based on their beliefs about others’ behaviors, practices, and lifestyles. The primary focus of anti-immigrant hysteria is on Mexico. Sanders was “86’ed” for her practice of spinning lies, corruption, and other crimes, and Nielsen was caught at a Mexican repast, respective to these outrages. Doubtless, whether the targets appreciated the message, certainly We, the People, are able to appreciate the subtext for what it is. Supreme dissing of policies.

However, I think this should help clarify that the Truth to Power in these acts is not directed at the officials themselves. Yes the acts were focused on these person. However no one expects either person to budge having been impacted on by the public’s enthusiastic suasions. In fact, no one considers these persons to be legitimate holders of their offices or competent wielders of their official capacities and authority.

Well, no one who retains an ability to recognize characteristics such as competence or legitimacy. Many have been effected by the media-lead social-engineering campaign of the past 36 months (!).

Social engineering? What? Mm-Hmm. You know that trope, the one that says the other side is trying to destroy the country? And says every member of Teh Other Side is a pawn, brainwashed, incapable of engaging in intelligent, considered conversation, and generally ridiculed, that trope? Yeah, that is social engineering. The old way of thinking was not like that. It involved a sense that compromise, mutual concession, and forced cooperation were important elements of the game. That people’s political beliefs could be discussed, even influenced, by each other, in ways that made the whole more than the sum of its parts. It was me and you and us.

But then, lesser of two evils. And, never so-and-so. But, resistance and deplorables. An administration and its media opposition. Dealmakers and deepstaters. Us and them.

We lost some important things. Let us all work on getting them back (and oh it’s gon’ be hard and no guarantees).

But back to the discussion at hand: Truth here is being spoken to the People. To remind us all of the truth that it is US who hold the Power right now. When there is an illegitimate State, the People have their Duty. And that Duty right now seems to include asserting our community standards. Letting our sense of justice put right what has been knocked a’kilter. Which case sounds more effective to you? Which case spoke to you? Would you heckle? Would you shun? Why?

The 2017 Freedom March for Justice, Sanity
The law, regularly under attack by corporate law hounds, is joined now by real people, battling to regain control of their legislators. They believe the law ought to help them hold on to their Constitutionally protected rights. The march was hundreds of miles. Many different countries saw marches like this in 2017.

Here were folks out for Sanity & Survival in March prior to that.

And here they were in the streets  after Charlottesville terror attack.

So, there are great things out there, too; here’s the racial justice syllabus focused on making sense of and responding to white male gun terror. Another set of resources is at the March for Justice page.