People, Do You Have The Power?

2025 Fight Back Year

Dec 11, 2024

The campaign trail in America never ends. It’s either the midterms or the big pineapple every four years, which is the battle for the Oval Office. Even from here, I was exhausted by the coverage and the incessant beating of the drums. I was even hoping for a bass solo. Yes, I do have the on/off switch and that is a personal journey I am working on.

How tired is the average American?

The average American spends 1,460 hours a year feeling tired. That equates to 62 days a year. When tiredness hits people tend to cancel social plans, miss exercise, or order takeaway.

You all know what tiredness can do to your focus, your motivation, your communication, and your relationships. None of it is positive.

November brings joy or sorrow or fear or happiness depending on who will be installed in the White House in January. Meanwhile, Christmas is coming and America is tired and beaten down and now they have to deal with the consumerism of Christmas. No one has any money, so more tiredness and stress.

More drinking. Or maybe more weed as America sure seems to be loving that legal freedom to inhale.

I reach for my second cup of coffee and wonder how my homeland's citizens will find the energy to protest, scream, connect and organise to make a stand against the billionaires/oligarchs in power.

My roots are showing even though my hair dye days are well and truly over.

The roots I speak of are of course the ones shaded red, white and blue.

My safety 10, 179 miles from Washington DC does not make me feel optimism for those citizens, my family and friends who still live within those borders. Here are some terrifying thoughts I have read recently:
For the first time in our history, we’re on the brink of having a convicted felon, adjudicated rapist, and “friend” of a foreign foe in the White House. But that’s not even the most terrifying aspect of our new reality. What should truly keep us awake at night is the unprecedented power wielded by a single billionaire who has direct access to the president and, alarmingly, to the Kremlin.

And, of course, it’s not just Musk. Trump’s nominated a rogue’s gallery of billionaires — along with accused sexual abusers, grifters, and friends-of-Putin — to the highest positions in the government of the United States, and claims to have Big Plans for our future.

The oligarchs are no longer just at the gates — they're moving into the White House. So far, a dozen billionaires and two multimillionaires have infiltrated Trump’s cabinet picks. And almost across the board, they are talking about gutting the institutions of America, something that would delight Vladimir Putin.

Do we, the American people, still possess the power and will to challenge this oligarchic takeover? Can the Democratic Party unite around a working-class consensus that rejects billionaires running our country for their own gain and at the behest of foreign dictators?

This is a call to action. We must organize populist movements — and reform the Democratic Party — in a way that awakens voters from their slumber before it’s too late. -Thom Hartmann (from The Hartmann Report)

And this from Robert Reich:

The person Trump wants to run the FBI is pledging a campaign of vengeance against his political enemies. The people he wants to put in charge of the military and the border are promising a mass roundup and deportation of undocumented immigrants. The billionaires he’s put in charge of eliminating “waste” are gunning for Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. The person he wants to run the nation’s health is a nutcase who doesn’t believe in vaccinations. And so on.

This time there will be few if any grownups around him to constrain Trump’s worst instincts.Yet I’m surprised at how many of the people I speak with are in denial. They tell me “Trump is just bluffing,” or “He’s not so stupid as to try these things.” Or they say “the Constitution is strong enough to withstand Trump.”

I fear they’re wrong. He’s nuts, he and his minions will try these things, and the Constitution is already near the breaking point.

But there’s little or no heat. Trump seems to be taking over Washington without a whimper of opposition.

I just heard from an old friend who’s also a U.S. senator, who writes: “The new administration isn’t as bad as we thought. It’s worse.”

I wish him well. We need people of integrity on the front lines to try to constrain Trump and his sicko sycophants.

Yet even those of us who aren’t on the front lines must be activists.

If you don’t want to watch the news, I understand. If you’re feeling frightened or furious or worried, you’re in good company.

But I hope you feel more determined than ever to fight the fanatics who will take charge in just six weeks.

Stand up to them. Call them out. Do not tolerate intolerance. We cannot compromise with cruelty. There is no middle ground between democracy and fascism.

Here is the President-Elect at his first interview this year. This should scare you.

America, the wolves are at the door of the White House, and in 40 days they will set up their den around the resolute desk.

Trump is a loose cannon now. He is about to press a button that is called “chaos”. He does not have to worry about being elected again.

The richest man in the world should be nowhere near the President of the US. How is this not a conflict of interest?

Where are the protests?

Mind control seems to have worked.

Where are the huge environmental rallies? Trump is going to drill, baby drill and the world slips closer to being uninhabitable.

Destruction seems to be the main tenant of this demonic administration.

Yes, we can laugh at the people appointed to his cabinet.

Laughter is a good thing, but America will need more.

And I’m not there so what can I do? Me beating a drum for 350 million people to wake the fuck up is not going to be heard.

Even the drums of the people mentioned above will only be heard by (mostly) people with the same bias.

America is going to need a movement.

America is going to need a revolution.

How does this happen? Do we need to advertise it like a Black Friday Sale? America sure pays attention to deals online or at the mall.

Come on down to Bernie’s for some domestic revolution, 50% off before the 20^th of January.

The recent shooting of the CEO for a Health Insurance Company in America certainly appeared to me to be a revolutionary act. There is a manifesto from Luigi that may be an antipasto to the main course of how the revolution may happen. There are enough guns to go around. I do not condone violence but who knows what people will be driven to as their liberties are removed and their friends and neighbours are deported.

The country certainly has more than enough firearms.

Norman Morrison set himself alight at the Pentagon in 1965 to protest against the War in Viet Nam. I wonder what folk heros will appear over the next 4 years and I do hope they are not moved to such a drastic approach.