What Red State vs. Blue State Looks Like To An Ant

Just watching the two major-party conventions and seeing people now excitedly lining up on one side or the other like opposing Ninja turtle teams is both amusing and frightening.  We can count on the talking heads and modern media to regurgitate a story line familiar to devotees of Saturday morning cartoon shows to give substance to our political aspirations.  Unfortunately, the narrative is insultingly simple-minded and mostly a distraction.

With the nation divided into red and blue states, the news robots now have the solemn and putatively critical duty to keep us up to date on any shifting of allegiances and rebalancing of the color scheme, milking any incremental addition of a splotch of blue or dash of red for whatever drama they can generate, before cutting to a commercial break.

What has this got to do with the mounting crises we find ourselves in?
Here is a short list of profound challenges confronting the world:

• Potential for nuclear war and the annihilation of the planet.
• Climate change.
• Resource depletion.
• Desertification of shrinking tracts of farm land.
• Diminishing fresh water supplies.
• Acidification of the oceans and overfishing.
• Antibiotic-resistant diseases.
• Accelerating species extinction.
• Human trafficking and enslavement.

Here is a short list of critical challenges just to our nation:

• Destruction of democracy and rule by an oligarchy.
• Historical levels of wealth inequality.
• Loss of privacy and basic constitutional rights to the surveillance state.
• Corporate tyranny and plutocratic control of the economy.
• Almost 50% of Americans living in or close to poverty.
• As many as 29,000,000 still without health insurance.
• Rampant social and systemic racism.
• Crumbling of infrastructure and crippling of our social institutions.
• Militarization of society and seizure of power by the military-industrial complex.
• Police brutality and murder of innocent citizens.

Pundits and politicos in service to their oligarchic masters can generate all the wonderful spin they can.  But America's economy has been hollowed out from the inside, and due to a fanatic allegiance to a defective and extremely destructive ideology, the needs of everyday citizens have been ignored.  Anger and frustration mount.  Signs of decline and decay are all around us, behind the glitter and the glitz.  Worst of all, the U.S. as a world power is losing the mantle of leadership.  Its policies have inflicted so much chaos, destruction and death on the rest of the planet, the U.S. is losing its legitimacy and predictably is being challenged by Russia, China, and the non-aligned countries of the South.  Of course, with the myopia and desperation that characterizes a dying empire, what's America's answer?  More chaos, destruction and death.  We are involved in seven wars right now and the specter of World War III looms frighteningly on the horizon.

Everything comes back to what we as a people do to reverse this disastrous course.

Isn't it time to put away the gang colors and actually begin to solve some problems?

Is it possible?  I don't know.

I do know it's absolutely necessary.

Our survival as a country and even as a species depends on it.


[ This originated at the author's personal website . . . http://jdrachel.com ]


What Red State vs. Blue State Looks Like To An Ant

A Look At The Numbers

 

This references my previous article, The "I'll vote for Jill if you will" Pledge Campaign, which to my pleasant surprise has resulted in quite a bit of positive support.

Several commenters asked me how I came up with the numbers, and how realistic was it to think that we could get 50,000,000 folks to sign the pledge to vote for Jill Stein, the target for "activating" the promise to vote for her.  Meaning, if 50,000,000 voters took the pledge, they could all vote for her, secure in the knowledge that they would not be throwing their vote away -- a vote of conscience resulting in a victory by whichever major-party candidate they happened to despise.

I said that 50,000,000 would "guarantee" a plurality win?  How did I arrive at that figure?

Well, there are no "guarantees" in a system using unverifiable electronic voting machines, so we can just give this our best estimate:  There are 146,311,000 registered voters in the U.S.  In the 2012 election, 126,144,000 voted.  If we assume a very formidable turnout of 130,000,000 for 2016, 50,000,000 represents a 38% plurality. This would allow as much as a 12% spread between Trump and Clinton, e.g. 25% Trump and 37% Clinton.  Actually, some predict that it might go the other way, meaning as much as 37% for Trump and 25% for Clinton, on the expectation that Stein would be pulling the "progressive" vote away from Clinton.

I also said that 50,000,000 was realistic -- it was an achievable target -- and showed how the power of an exponential multiplier provides us plenty of time to get this organized and done.  At the same time, we should recognize that the arithmetic alone begs the question of whether there are people out there who are even receptive to a third-party option, who are sufficiently disgusted with the way this election is shaping up to jump off the major-party bandwagons.

Again, we can only speculate.  But a few factors are encouraging.

As cited in a Salon article, Gallup polls for the fifth year in a row indicate that over 40% of voters identify themselves as "independents", so disenchanted are they with the two-party system which has defined electoral politics for much of recent history.

More specifically, deep dissatisfaction with the major-party choice of Trump vs. Clinton is evidenced by historic levels of unfavorability ratings.  Clinton is at 55% and rising, Trump is at 70% and could go either way.  But just taking them at these current levels means that there is a minimum 25% of voters who strongly disapprove of both.  This 25% translates to more than 36,000,000 registered voters -- a huge number of voters who apparently prefer to vote for neither.  If they can be directed Jill Stein's way, this is a big head start toward our goal of 50,000,000!

Lastly, Jill Stein has taken a bold and powerful stand on an issue which garnered much favor and enthusiasm in the Bernie revolution, that of free college education.  Currently, some 42,000,000 college graduates are saddled with onerous debts, just trying to obtain skills and credentials which will give them a fighting chance for a decent job in our highly competitive and compromised job market.  Jill Stein has committed to a full forgiveness of student loan debt if she becomes president.  Talk about reaching out to young people and appealing to them to vote in their own interests!

I don't have to tell you that I think the "I'll vote for Jill if you will" pledge idea could be a real game-changer.  It risks nothing, demands little of voters other than a few minutes of their time and a commitment to attentive, fearless voting, should the campaign succeed, yet offers the possibility of a paradigm shift in electoral politics.  Finally, the stranglehold of the two major parties will be broken, and a new broad range of potential solutions will be brought center-stage to the national conversation.
But good ideas are not automatic.  Good ideas only get traction if people take the time to understand them, then actively share their understanding with others.  The language of the pledge makes this necessity clear:

"I will now contact two other people who I respect and trust, let them know there is a real alternative to the Clinton vs. Trump political spectacle, explain that if we frustrated voters join together, we will not be throwing our votes away, we can elect a great president, America’s first female president no less."

The corporate-controlled main stream media did everything it could to marginalize and destroy the Bernie Sanders campaign.  It has also been completely successful at keeping Jill Sanders an invisibility on the political stage.

Therefore, it's up to us:  Each person tells two others, who each tell two others, who . . . 

It's the power of numbers.

It's the power of people over plutocracy, the voice of individual citizens shouting down the mind-numbing mantras of the 1%, mouthed by their brain-dead talking heads and political puppets.
There are 61,450,000 "independents" out there somewhere.  There are 36,578,000 voters who think neither Clinton nor Trump should be president.  There are 42,000,000 students struggling to pay for their college education.

We have work to do!

[ This originated at the author's personal website . . . http://jdrachel.com ]



A Look At The Numbers

The “I’ll vote for Jill if you will” Pledge Campaign

Vast numbers of voters are frustrated and angry!  It’s come down to Hillary Clinton vs. Donald Trump?  Can this be happening?  These are the two most unpopular candidates in the history of presidential elections!

Of course . . . there is an excellent alternative.  But understandably voters are afraid of “throwing their vote away”.

Here’s the solution:  We join together in a person-to-person pledge campaign, the “I’ll vote for Jill if you will” initiative, supporting the presidential bid of Dr. Jill Stein.  And together we’ll elect the first female President of the United States, one who will do a phenomenal job of putting America back on track.  Here’s how . . .



Step 1:   After you take the “I’ll vote for Jill if you will” personal pledge, just let us know by officially signing the petition at one of the sites listed below.  (The petition reads exactly as the pledge does.  We are "petitioning" every registered voter in America to join with us in rejecting the anti-democratic charade the two-party system has become.)

Step 2:   You find two other people who you respect and trust -- friend, neighbor, relative -- let them know about Jill Stein if they don’t already, get them to take the “I’ll vote for Jill if you will” pledge, and make sure they let us know, just as you did, by going to one of the listed sites below to sign the petition.

Step 3:   These two people likewise will each solicit two others to take the pledge and add their names to the growing list of pledge takers.  The new ones will each find two more.

Step 4:   When and only when we reach our target of 50 million pledges, we will vote for Jill Stein.  

Why 50 million?  Because 50 million voters will guarantee a victory by plurality for Jill, thus we will all know with absolute certainty we’re not throwing our votes away, that indeed our votes will go toward electing a great president!

50 million may seem like an impossible goal.  But it’s all in the math.  If one person tells two about this tomorrow, then the following day those two each tell two more, and so on and so on, how many days does it take to get to 50 million?

The answer might surprise you.  2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 . . . believe it or not, in ONLY 27 DAYS, we'll have 67,108,864 pledges!  (Go here for a full explanation.)

It’s the power of numbers!

It’s the power of people!

It’s the power of joining together and declaring:  NO MORE LESSER EVIL VOTING!

Remember, there’s nothing at risk here.  We honor the “I’ll vote for Jill if you will” pledge only if we get to our goal.

On the other hand, there’s an awful lot at stake . . . a better America for ourselves and our children!

It’s up to you.

Take the pledge.  Let us know by signing at one of the petition sites.  Then have two others take the pledge.  Make sure they go to the petition sites as well.  Here are the sites:

Sign at . . . MoveOn.org
Sign at . . . Change.org
Sign at . . . RootsAction.org
Or sign at . . . iPetitions.com

Sorry, Hillary and Donald.  The people will have spoken.

We intend to celebrate Dr. Jill Stein as the 45th President of the United States!



[ This originated at the author's personal website . . . http://jdrachel.com ]



The “I’ll vote for Jill if you will” Pledge Campaign

Throwing My Vote Away?

The presidential election of 2016 -- if you only consider the presumptive nominees of the two major political parties -- is like choosing between being brutally beaten to death by a street gang and mercilessly Tasered to death by the police.

It's a masochists game.  But I've never viewed voting as a game, no matter how minor the stakes or ridiculous the choices.

Maybe in the past, having a lower tolerance for deception and corruption, I've mirrored Ralph Nader's decades-long warnings about and battle against the corporatization of our society and the tyranny of an oligarchic elite which would inevitably result.

Perhaps until now, this appeared to be driven by a heady, theoretical, ivory-tower world view, an approach distanced from day-to-day realities.

Perhaps such abstractions seemed frivolous or self-indulgent, even dangerous.  Need we revisit the spurious judgment that voting for Nader threw the election and set the stage for eight years of George W. Bush?

Perhaps all of my histrionics about the disappearance of democracy, the corruption of our Congress, the takeover of our government apparatus by self-appointed autocrats, the need for replacing at bare minimum 450 senators and congressmen, my railing at the duplicity of Obama, my warnings about the subversion of his allegedly "progressive" leadership, yes all of this may have been dismissed as hyperventilation and raving lunacy.

But with the treachery and abysmal hypocrisy of Bernie Sanders' endorsement of Hillary Clinton for president this past week, it couldn't be clearer where things stand.

Nor could it be more evident how broken our two-party political system is or what a trap lesser-evil voting has been all along.

Don't anyone dare tell me that by not voting for presumptive nominee Hillary Clinton or presumptive nominee Donald Trump, I am throwing my vote away!

Voting for either of these privileged-class monsters is the definition of throwing away my vote, of surrendering my right of choice, of rendering voting a meaningless exercise.



[ This originated at the author's personal website . . . http://jdrachel.com ]


Throwing My Vote Away?

The Hands-Down Ultimate Super-Bowl of Showdowns!

 

Hey, fight fans.

Here it is! 

The one you've been waiting for.

It's going to be the battle of the ages!

Nothing like this has ever occurred in the history of the world.

Yes, folks . . . it's a showdown that will reverberate till the end of time!

No, they'll never stop talking about this head-to-head clash of the greatest titans EVER!

Are you ready to rumble?!! 

Have you got your seat belts fastened?

Are you wearing your rubber diapers?

In this corner, coming off two decades of undefeated combat with environmentalists and eco-scientists, teary-eyed tree huggers, Al Gore, and other addled acolytes of Gaia . . .

CLIMATE CHANGE!

And its opponent, veteran of decades of terror struck into the hearts of citizens across the globe, a warrior whose very name brings vision of untold desolation and suffering . . .

NUCLEAR WAR!

Which one will leave the battle, its opponent curled up and writhing on the edge of death, humiliated, beaten, savaged by the overwhelming power and cunning of the competition?

Remember . . . This is a fight to the death!

 

What's at stake?  Ha!  This is not some girlie-boy contest, a phony reality show, another froofy sport like hot-oil wading pool arm wrestling, three-legged gymnastics team dancing, or naked Ken and Barbie ping pong.

This is serious business, lades and gentlemen!  As in . . . DEAD SERIOUS!

Only one of these ferocious fighters will lay claim to the ULTIMATE TITLE, and be able to say with the blood lust pride of a true warrior, a barbarian who embraces no moderation, a heartless amoral killer who knows no rules, feels no compassion, and has no conscience: 

"It was I who destroyed the human race!"

Will it be Climate Change turning the Earth into an uninhabitable pile of dust, dead fields of dried withered stalks, rotting corpses, extinct species, desiccating trees and shrubs -- a barren wasteland where cockroaches frantically run wild looking for something to eat?

Or will it be Nuclear War turning the Earth into a radioactive pile of dust, dead fields of dried withered stalks, rotting corpses, extinct species, desiccating trees and shrubs -- a barren wasteland where cockroaches frantically run wild looking for something to eat?

OH YEAH, BABY!  This is going to be truly awesome!

So stay tuned, folks.  Watch this battle AS IF YOUR LIFE DEPENDED ON IT!

And remember.  You can only get it here, exclusively on . . .

The Apocalypse Channel!




[ This originated at the author's personal website . . . http://jdrachel.com ]


The Hands-Down Ultimate Super-Bowl of Showdowns!