Bill Ayers

Step 11: Donald Trump—with the active active buttressing of his enablers in the comatose capitalist “press”—offers up tweet after bizarre tweet (If you burn the American flag, goddammit, you should face consequences—“perhaps loss of citizenship”) sending the media into a frenzy of elaborate reporting, “deep thinking” about the constitution and sober commentary about settled law, while behind the curtain he and his crew work tirelessly to steal everything they can get their hands on, and erase any semblance of the common good or the public square. But, what the heck, let’s just talk about the flag.

Step 12: Donald Trump nominated Representative Tom Price of Georgia—fierce advocate of privatizing Medicare and slashing Medicaid, repealing Obamacare and relying strictly on “free market principles” in all aspects of health care and wellness—to the post of Secretary of Health and Human Services.

Step 13: In order to fulfill his promise to “drain the swamp,” Donald Trump is offering donors a dazzling menu of options: for a million dollars (or more) you can get four tickets to an “intimate dinner” with the vice-president elect and his wife, and eight tickets to a “ladies luncheon” with the “women of the first family,” among other perks; for half a million (or more) you can get four tickets to the “ladies luncheon” plus more.

Step 14: Steven Mnuchin, Donald Trump’s campaign finance chief and a former partner at Goldman Sachs, will become the newTreasury Secretary, further “draining the swamp.”

Step 15: “Draining the swamp” continues with the selection of Elaine L. Chao—Washington insider, Republican functionary, and the wife of the Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell—was selected to be the new Transportation Secretary.

Watch “Karim Sulayman – I trust you” on Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/193125533?ref=em-v-share

Stand With Standing Rock!

https://www.thenation.com/article/this-is-what-life-inside-the-standing-rock-camp-looks-like-right-now/

Making America Great Again, Step by Step:

Step 6: Pressed about recent meetings with Japanese, Indian, and British officials in which business affairs were apparently discussed, Donald Trump opined that “The president can’t have a conflict of interest,” and “The law’s totally on my side.”

Step 7: Donald Trump told the British government who he would prefer to be their next ambassador to the US, and the British response was very British: “There is no vacancy.”

Step 8: Donald Trump thought Alec Baldwin’s portrayal of him on Saturday Night Live was one-sided and not funny, and so he asked NBC for “equal time.”

Step 9: Donald Trump felt that the cast of “Hamilton” was way out of line in urging from the stage that the vice president-elect, who was in attendance, adopt a more enlightened immigration policy than the campaign had advocated, saying the theater must be a “safe space” and issuing a demand: “Apologize!”

Step 10: Donald Trump appointed Michigan billionaire, hard-right wing public school opponent and voucher advocate Betsy DeVos, 58, to the post of Secretary of Education. The former chairwoman of the Michigan Republican Party, she was a driving force behind a failed 2000 ballot proposal to amend the state Constitution to create a voucher system allowing taxpayer funds to support students attending nonpublic schools. Her brother, Erik Prince, is the founder and former CEO of the security firm Blackwater Worldwide that was banned from Iraq after the fatal shootings of 17 Iraqi civilians in 2007.

More to come.

[DEMAND the IMPOSSIBLE! is available from Haymarket Books or any local bookstore. I thought I was finished a month ago posting excerpts from the book, but when I read to students and comrades this week in Roma, Bologna, Napoli, and Milano, Italy, and when the talked turned inevitably to the rise of a fascist movement, I felt compelled to share the following. Thank you.]

Here, then, is a partial diagram of the known world, a rough sketch of what is, but certainly not a picture of what could be or should be:

*  An empire unapologetically resurrected in a cauldron of deliberately constructed fear, and in the name of renewed patriotic nationalism.

*  Unprecedented military expansion, a state of permanent war and the creation of a war culture, a gulag that stretches the length and breadth of the country, where mass incarceration is a defining characteristic in the “land of the free,” and white supremacy reigns triumphant in the “home of the brave.”

*  Militarized police forces acting as aggressive occupying armies in poor communities, and the never-ending serial shootings of Black citizens.

*  The identification of opaque and ill-defined enemies—“illegal” immigrants, border violators, Muslims, Arabs, foreigners, queers, Black people, independent women, terrorists—as a unifying cause.

*  A panopticon-like existence in which we are all aware of being under constant surveillance—cameras everywhere, mountains of data from our purchase and travel patterns to reading and information preferences accumulating in some dark basement or shiny supercomputer—but have been forbidden from watching them watching us. We’re assured by the state and the media (as well as by our families and friends and neighbors on occasion) that if we aren’t doing anything wrong, we have nothing to hide, and should, then, have no objection to standing naked under the bright lights and ceaseless scrutiny of the state.

*  Ritual searches, ID checks, and pat downs (“Assume the position!”) at airports, train stations, and athletic events, which do little or nothing to enhance safety or security but serve a serious purpose nonetheless, functioning as metaphor and theater, a reminder that we are always at war, always at risk, and always observed—the threat level for many years a never-changing if ill-defined and meaningless “orange”—and as dress rehearsal for police and military actions that can override liberties and rights without constraint or objection.

*  The eclipse of the public, the frantic pace of privatization and the fire sale of the public square—the public schools and public housing, prisons and the military, and in Chicago, the bridges and parking meters—all of which represent the triumph of corporate power and a kind of fatal entangling of corporations with the state, leading to a thieves’ paradise in government with the arid ideology of capital and the “market” promoted as the truest expression of authentic participatory democracy.

*  Galloping disparities between the haves and the have- nots—the metaphoric 1 percent and everyone else— both at home and on a global scale.

*  A steady drumbeat of “public secrets”—obvious lies issued by the powerful like, “We don’t torture” or “We don’t spy on Americans” or “We shot him because he was a clear threat to the officer” or “We don’t bomb civilians,” whose purpose is both future deniability and evidence of power’s arrogant ability to have its way regardless of truth or evidence, law or popular will.

*  Disdain for the arts, for intellectual life, for reason and evidence, for historical insight, and deep contempt for the necessary back and forth of serious argument or discussion in favor of a nasty dialogue of the deaf.

*  Formation of “popular” movements in the streets, apparently spontaneous but in reality well funded and highly organized, based on bigotry, intolerance, and the threat of violence, all of it fueled by the demonization of targeted, distinct racial, religious, or gendered vulnerable populations and the creation of convenient sacrificial scapegoats.

*  Cataclysmic man-made climate change—hurricanes, melting ice caps, raging wildfires and deforestation, rising oceans, the shredding of the earth’s protective shield, and more—driven by unchecked extraction, reckless acquisitiveness, and the everyday operations of predatory capitalism.

Countless contradictions abound: appalling poverty and unprecedented wealth, acts of war and words of peace, liveliness and chronic social depression, hope and despair. Reality TV and then reality itself. It’s a land of wild diversity, extremes and opposites, conflict and contestation, moments of personal joy, happiness, and ecstasy against times of collective rage and anguish.

Still, the bullet points above—and I use the term deliberately— are pistol shots that represent a bright thread that is recognizable and knowable. The US juggernaut is headed for catastrophe, either a new and sophisticated—dare we say it?—form of friendly-looking and familiar fascism, or some other form of extreme social disintegration. Another world is surely coming—greater equality, socialism, participatory democracy, and peace are all within our reach, but nuclear war, work camps, and slavery are also possibilities. There are still choices and options, and nothing is guaranteed. Where do we go from here? A season of light or a season of darkness? Chaos or community? Barbarism or socialism?