It is already clear to those of us who are alert to this sort of thing that the Trump presidency is not going to be like others within my lifetime.

Donald Trump, a person who is known to be a serial commiter of fraud, a racist who has used racism to discrimate against people of color, is now surrounding himself with racist advisors. His words have ignited white racial hatred and emboldened people who seemed tolerant, but who must have harbored racist intentions for years or even decades.

Donald Trump is acting out the fascist, autocratic playbook. While people on both the left and right have feared from leaderrs they didn't vote for, like George W. Bush and Barack Obama, that they would suspend elections, this has never been a real threat.

It is a real threat now. Donald Trump seems likely to bring actual fascism and its consequences to America.

What can you do about it?

RESIST.
Don't "give him a chance." Trump supporters are already looking to justify a registry for Muslims. As has been pointed out many times, Muslims make up a quarter of the world's population. If they were our enemy as a bloc, we would not be here.

There are a large number of Americans, who support and love America as a place of reedom. And many of them are Muslim. If we let the new admistration register Muslims, we are on the slippery slope toward a humanitarian tragedy.

NEVER AGAIN IS NOW.

If you're on Twitter, follow Sarah Kendzior @sarahkendzior  on Twitter to learn more. 

NO ONE IS PURELY RIGHT

I keep seeing people looking for someone perfect. No one is perfect. We all make mistakes. Those who are arguing over the details and not doing anything while they wait to find a perfect solution are hindering our chances of getting out of this with the least harm to the most people.

Look for common ground. Protect vulnerable people. That is at the core. Don't turn your backs when you see wrong-dping. America's strength as a country is in our diversity. We have, until now, shown the world how it's done. (We have done an imperfect job, there is no question. But we have been progressing. We must continue our progress.)

THE WORLD'S PROBLEMS

Three problems are exacerbating things: climate change, overpopulation (planetwide), and technological advances that make human workers less necessary. These problems are going to continue to worsen. We can do things to mitigate them, but we have to work hard to make this happen. The president-elect doesn't seem to agree. He has his own agenda and it is not one which will make America great (again?) unless by great you ean white, straight and full of hate. None of this is going to solve these big problems.

I hope we'll come together to work toward solutions. It's incumbent upon us as citizens of the world to do everything we can to get past this hump. Hump? Mountain, more like.

I was 18 when I began to think of myself as a socialist. I hadn't joined the Socialist Party or anything. I just read about the things socialism had made possible in western Europe and I liked them. Also, I have to admit that the word "socialist" was so maligned that at that age, thinking of myself as a socialist seemed a bit rebellious, a bit revolutionary. A bit heroic.

It took many more years before I actually got politically involved. I met other people who felt the way I did. Some of them were even members of the Socialist Workers Party.

It has only been during this election cycle, now that I live in Europe and have friends who grew up and lived in communist countries that I have developed a deeper understanding of the way the word socialist is perceived. Russians and former Russians equate socialism with communism. That's because The Soviet Union bore the socialist label although it was a communist dictatorship.

What modern left leaning Americans have done is reclaim the word socialist, snatching it out of the trash heap where it was tossed by McCarthy and many a  right wing (and unknowing) American since.  The problem with words like 'progressive' and 'liberal' is that there's a lack of clarity about them at times. Hillary Clinton can call herself a progressive, although economically she favors big business and her husband, Bill Clitnon, destroyed the welfare system in our coutnry. (Republicans' wet dream that they'd never been able to get through.)

Someone who is willing to call him or herself a democratic socialist in America most likely has at the heart of their values economic justice.

In a recent Fox News interview with Thor Halvorssen, the founder of Human Rights Foundation and a Venezualan who lived in a socialist dictatorship under Hugo Chavez, the reporter got a surprise. Watch below.

More information. In this article from The Atlantic,Bernie Sanders is not a Socialist and America is not Capitalist

 I'll start out by saying I'm a Bernie Sanders supporter. I've made, I think, four or five small contributions to his campaign, ranging from $3 to $27, the by now infamous average donation amount.

In 2008, after feeling torn between voting for Clinton and Obama for a while, I settled on Obama and never looked back. I have, in some ways, loved having Barack Obama as president. But he hasn't been perfect. He hasn't done many of the truly progressive things I've been hoping for.

I arrive at this election cycle having participated in grassroots politics many times before. Until I voted for Obama in 2008, no one I had voted for in a national election had ever won. I had even given up at times, deciding there was no point in voting because all the choices were ultimately going to do the same thing with very small, superficial differences.

I didn't pay much attention when Bill Clinton was in office. I had never read much about Hillary Clinton. I had no preconceived notions about her. But during the course of this campaign, with my very wide open eyes to the ways of the political establishment, I started reading all the news about the election and researching the candidates. Eventually, by information I gleaned through reading and also watching the candidates speak and debate, I understood that Bernie Sanders is not just another politician.

Manufactured falsehoods about him, negative news stories by media who have shown their hands dozens of times already will have no impact on my choice. A president is not an island but a part of a team. He or she is surrounded by advisors who are experts. He or she has resources, attorneys to study laws, teams of legislators to work on issues. A president who is honest and wants to create big change has a better chance than one who is practiced at deception and wants to appear to make change while maintaining the status quo. That's the thing right there. Any person who can't see that the status quo is messed up big time is not the president we need right now. Any president who is, not just satisfied, but happy with  circumstances is not the president we need right now.

It is the duty of all of us who support the real change that Bernie Sanders is talking about to spread the good word. To learn as much as we can about his plans, to be able to answer questions about them. Especially the HOW of it all.

I've heard Hillary Clinton say a few times now that in this election, unlike in her run against Barack Obama, her opponent's supporters have been attacking her supporters. I don't think attacking is the right word.  I think it's overzealous attempts at persuasion.

Let's everyone try to remember the goal of this thing: To make things better. Even if we disagree, we need to be united in our overarching goal.

To that end, I think we are charged with educating people about Senator Sanders' record and his policies, not attacking Clinton supporters. At the same time, I don't think we can let history be forgotten. Hillary Clinton's record also has to stand up to scrutiny. As Robert Reich (Secretary of Labor under Bill Clinton) said, Hillary Clinton "she’s the most qualified candidate for president of the political system we now have. But Bernie Sanders is the most qualified candidate to create the political system we should have, because he’s leading a political movement for change.”

Bernie Sanders chose to join the Democratic Party and run as a Democratic because he doesn't want to see a Republican win the White House. He wants to avoid the scenario of 2000 when a third party candidate arguably caused George Bush to win. (Along with a bunch of other factors.)

We are choosing the kind of America we want to live in. We are choosing the kind of future we want to see. I don't know about you, but for me what we have right now is not good enough. What I believe Clinton will give us is more of what we've got. It's not bad, but it could be so much better.

The rules of the game:
Loyalty Cards are dealt to all the players and to the non-player characters (NPCs). These include Voters (players),  Campaign Donors, Corporate Lobbyists, Activists, Election Workers, Superdelegates, Delegates,  Big Media, Small Media, the RNC, the DNC (do not confuse these with Run DMC- that's a rap group.)

This is a COOPERATIVE GAME. In order to win, players must work with each other and non-player characters to make life in America, as well as life in the rest of the world, better.
On the front of each loyalty card, there is either nothing or the word "Traitor".

These cards should be looked at and turned face down. Therefore players only know their own alignment and not that of other players or non-players.  It is the job of the traitor players (and non-players) to deceive everyone else in order to prevent the goal being reached.

It should be noted that there are a lot of "traitor" cards in this deck.

I spent yesterday feeling completely distraught. Donald Trump, arguably the most visible of the GOP presidential candidates, thinks he's on reality TV. He's going for shock value. Or does he want to be Hitler?

What I know about Mr. Trump is this: If he had just taken the money his father left him and invested it, he'd have 10 billion more than he does. Four of his companies have declared bankruptcy, which may not be completely his fault, but it's at least partially his fault. And yet, he complains that America is in debt. We can't exactly declare bankruptcy. He has no experience running a country, and especially not a country as big and as involved in world politics as ours. Many of his answers to questions posed to him by media boil down to "I don't know" or "You're just asking me gotcha questions."

He's made many racist statements during his campaign, and instead of backing down from them when questioned, he's doubled down. He's changed his positions about certain things months apart. He's admitted that he has given money to government officials in order to get favors. (And he sees nothing wrong with it.)

The most worrying thing about Donald Trump, for me, is that he doesn't uphold any of the foundational values of American society.

This recent behavior looks as if he's following instructions from Goering (You know, the Nazi war criminal?):

"Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger."
-- Herman Goering at the Nuremberg trials

To the rest of the world, I want to say that he doesn't represent America. He doesn't believe in the values that got us here -- liberty and justice for all, equality, tolerance, helping each other. He is a horrible little man and no amount of money will ever change that. Right-thinking Americans must stand up against him, against what he stands for.

Below the front page of the Detroit Free Press this morning calls Trump's behavior what it is: "vile bigotry."

Even now, the Germans are ashamed of what happened in their country in the 1930s. Ordinary people allowed a terrible atrocity to happen. Some even participated in it. Very few tried to stop it Why? This the question the descendants of both the victims and the perpetrators continue to ask.

Theirs is not the only nation to be involved in such a terrible tragedy. Armenia, Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia all have seen the deaths of thousands of people based on religion or ethnicity. Thousands of Native Americans were slaughtered. Many African Americans were killed or wounded throughout the history of the United States.

We stand at the brink of two different futures. In one, we stand up for each other. We are one humanity and pit ourselves collectively against the struggles facing a planet with seven billion people on it. We have seven billion allies, seven billion potential friends. We see but do not discriminate based on cultural, linguistic, religious, or ethnic differences. We choose to do more than tolerate each other, but respect each other, support each other. We work for peace and justice together.

The second future is one of war, unending. With future generations divided by what we have done. We can teach hatred. We can teach bigotry. We can let greed and fear rule us. we can watch tragic history repeat itself and then deny responsibility. It was not us, we will say. We were not alive then. That was the past. All that matters is now. This future repeats itself, ad infinitum, without real progress. Without real hope. Unless we stand up and say NO MORE.

I know which future I choose. Fear and greed are the enemies. An enlightened people doesn't mass murder other humans. I choose peace. I choose justice.

So when someone asks a presidential candidate, "What are we going to do about the MUslims?" and that candidate says, "We'll be looking into it," --no one in the crowd seems to bat an eyelid at this -- I'm worried. The tragic future looms up. All that stands between us and that future is our humanity.

_________________________________________________________
Part II: Uri gets involved

Uri, as I mentioned in the first part of this piece, is a Russian-born Israeli. When we speak online, usually over some chat program, he's funny and clever. He works with kids and he has a lot of adorable stories about things kids say.

I know because of my husbands connection to RPGs, which Uri also writes, that certain American groups won't work with him because they think he's racist. Yet I in my very white, middle class progressivism, see something else in him. He's a foreigner everywhere he goes. He speaks great English, sometimes with a Russian accent, sometimes with an unplaceable accent, a mix of Russian and Hebrew that comes out more as a general "not native" kind of English.
He has the same problem with Hebrew. He is forever an outsider, and it shows in the way he quantifies the world, telling me that people are of a slightly different ethnicity, that he can detect the ethnic differences in various individuals we encounter when walking in the Spanish streets.

There is never any malice in his descriptions. Occasionally he will express mild fear. Once when he was alone here, he saw two men giving information about the Free Syrian Army. They had what he described as a Da'ish flag. (ISIL) He was curious and stood and listened, but he decided not to talk to them "in case it caused a scene." He said he regretted that he didn't stop afterward, because in hindsight he thought it would have been okay.

I long ago trained myself not to talk about race or ethnicity. Or maybe I just stopped needing to. He's 30, but seems younger. He has a university degree. (It cost €1200, a shock to me. My recent degrees have cost in excess of $20,000 a year.)

He does mention race and ethnicity more than I feel comfortable with, but I understand that he's not an American or a Brit. Race and ethnicity is openly a bigger deal where he comes from. (That isn't to say it's not a big deal in the US. Recent events have clearly shown that it is. But we're less open about it.)

When we lightly argue about issues, he does what most Americans don't do. If he knows nothing about an issue, he won't argue from a place of ignorance. But when he has an opinion, I can feel more than see him close down slightly when I say something that doesn't align with him views. We've been doing this for several years, mostly in writing. It always ends well. We joke and laugh. He tells me I apologize too much. I apologize.

We are more alike than he thinks, and yet there is a core difference between us. He claims apathy about the issues that I obsess over.

"You're very political," he tells me the day after he arrives. "Why?" The question catches me off guard. Am I political? I hate politics, but I've felt compelled in recent times to participate in issue discussions. Why? I find myself lying awake that night thinking about this question. And I ask myself, How could he not be political? His answer is that he likes to focus on the things he can control. Being kind to people he meets. Helping injured animals. Being helpful to others. Taking extremely good care of his gaming students (he plays Dungeons & Dragons with kids in school sponsored after school activity groups for a living).

But what about the bigger stuff? He asks me if I feel I've ever made a difference with all of my political talk. "Not by myself," I say. He is right in a way. I spend a huge amount of energy and spend a lot of time dealing with the dark emotions provoked by exposing myself continually to the way that people treat each other in the world and on the internet. He says, "Why don't you just do the things you care about?" That's the question, isn't it?

I realize over the course of thinking about it, that these things are what I care about. But as we talk, sharing clearly the same kind of open attitude to discussion and a similar curiosity about how things work and what has happened in various places, I can see that our processing of the information arrives at different conclusions. I have hit this level of interaction before, the layer of assumptions, the base knowledge that we all gain as part of growing up in our particular cultures when I moved to England, I country I once thought of as America with an accent. It can't really be replicated if you go to a culture as an adult. If you're very open, you can glean some of it. But you can never time travel back and put in all the "history as it happens" information you would need to fully grok a very different way of life.

Our mistake when we try to discuss issues with people from other cultures, is in ignoring the basic building blocks of our different upbringings. The beliefs we don't even know we have until thrust into a situation where we have to form an opinion or choose a path. The other mistake we make is thinking someone from a different place should reach the same conclusion we do. Americans have this way of believing that they are always right. Our progressive beliefs are the right ones. (I think conservative, read more traditional Americans feel the same way.)

We judge people by our own standards instead of trying to understand their standards.

Uri and I talk briefly about the Green Party of the United States trying to write a platform policy regarding the Israel/Palestine issue. Instead of asking me what the policy was, he asked, "Why would you do this? What business is it of any American's?" My answer was that as a political party we were expected to have a policy. This caused a lot of spluttering and a tirade about how even though he looked white he was not white and we were appropriating things that we had no business appropriating. I think I understood what he was really saying. Why are outsiders always trying to decide what is best for us?

We have talked before about that. He feels that whenever outsiders get involved any conflict is prolonged. When they have a squabble with a neighboring country and fight it out, it ends very quickly. I can't argue with him there as I don't know. I do know that as long as America fuels itself mostly with Middle Eastern oil, it will be invested in the relative peace in the region.

I don't approach the topic of all the Palestinians killed by Israeli soldiers. I don't mention the check points. It feels rude to talk about things like this with a house guest, when it won't do any good. Yesterday I talked about how I once told some Palestinians that I was Jewish in order to stop them saying bad things about Jews. When I told Uri this story some time ago in writing, he seemed upset. "Why did you do that?" he asked.
"I was hopeful," I said.
"That was stupid. What happened?"
"Nothing much."
"Did they still talk to you?"
"Yes."
"I can't believe you did that. That was a terrible thing to do to them."
"I was young," I said. "I didn't know any better."

I didn't mention to him that I had once told some Israeli friends that I thought we should boycott products made in Israel for human rights violations. He will probably read this and then we'll talk about it and he'll tell me I'm being stupid and it's none of my business. And then we'll talk about history and food and travel.

And then he'll go home and leave me to think.

by Salomé Jones

This week my husband and I are hosting a visitor. He's a Russian-born Israeli whose grandparents lived through Stalinism and whose parents fled Russia for Israel when they got the chance. He is Jewish, living near Tel Aviv. His name is Uri. He and I have been friends for  four or five years over the internet.

We've spent a lot of time chatting about issues in the past, but as is always the case, when you meet someone in person, you learn new things. In this case, in addition to the things I'm learning about him personally, I'm also made to remember that people are not superficial in their beliefs. 
_______________________________________________________________
Part I: Me

I grew up in the United States in a time that was still influenced by the Cold War. I've never heard a bomb explode. My father was an ex-military rifle instructor and we had a house full of guns. My father was also quite racist when I was young. Openly racist in a way that wouldn't be tolerated now, except perhaps in the deep South.

I grew up mostly in an area where racism was directed at Native Americans rather than Black people (because there was a reservation nearby, and there were perhaps two Black people in the whole city.) My mother, in her seventies, still insists on telling everyone in advance in a Black person is going to be visiting. I suppose she thinks they might be shocked otherwise. I don't know.

Perhaps by my own nature, or perhaps because when I was an under ten, we lived in a place where I had plenty of Black peers, I grew up feeling strongly anti-racist. My dad and I used to get in huge arguments about race. I believe I threatened him with the possibility that I would marry someone who wasn't white, and he threatened me back with being kicked out of the family.

I was always fascinated with other languages and cultures, and I took every language class I could in high school, including using my study hall to sit in on Spanish classes.

My first serious boyfriend was from Saudi Arabia. My father and I didn't speak to each other for a few months after I left home to live with him. Eventually my parents met him and it was perfectly okay. Somehow. I think he won my dad over by giving him a rifle he'd bought that he couldn't take back to Saudi Arabia with him

I was also very interested in different religions. I had read most of the holy books starting in high school. I was trying them on, trying to see if any of them seemed truer to me than any other. Of course, what happens when you do that with an open mind is that you see some nice things, and you see some things that are provably wrong. And you realize that either these books are not divinely inspired , or they are books of their times, and can only be used in spirit but not in letter.

I like the ritual parts of religions but not the dotrinal parts. I like the feeling that by participating in religious rituals, a person can commune with people throughout the history of that religion, walk in their shoes so to speak. I have experimentally practiced Catholicism, Islam, and Judaism. I have tinkered with Buddhism and Paganism. I never managed to settle on one of them. Instead I have taken a sort of Joseph Campbell approach to spirituality.

When I was nineteen, I was sitting at a table in the student union with a bunch of men from different Arab countries. Some of them were Palestinian. After hearing them say bad things about Jewish people, I claimed to be Jewish on my dad's side. This led to momentary discomfort, but in the end it didn't seem to harm anything. I liked to think that perhaps I created an opening for peaceful thoughts.

In a way, I grew up believing that everyone wanted peace and justice.

For some reason, I'm extremely sensitive to people's subtle signals. Maybe because as a person who sought out people from other cultures, I had to be especially aware of not violating their customs. I made my share of mistakes on this front. Once an Arabic instructor from Syria stormed out of class because I put my feet up on a chair with the soles facing him. I had no idea I was insulting him and I spent hours sobbing at my own mistake, afraid that he might not return to class. He did. I kept my head down and it was never mentioned again. But I learned from it.

Many times I've been in a store with someone I cared about, a good friend or a partner who was not white, and I saw the subtle looks that clerks gave them. You can read a lot in a person's face when they're unguarded. I have seen white people judging some of the most incredibly nice people in the world based on their accents or the color of their skin. And the people I was with? They didn't even seem to notice it.  Of course now, with more life experience, I realize it was what they were used to. They had long ago registered it and put it into a category that allowed them to continue to live and be happy. I, on the other hand, had not.

I need to get to work, but I'll write more tomorrow. Hopefully I'll get to the conversations with Uri and what I have come to realize because of them.

Peace out.

For quite some time we've been worried about the fate of Greece. You can read about it in detail all over the web, so I won't go into great detail here. The details seem to obscure the facts anyway.

In Greece's negotiations with [German banks], the negotiator originally included a demand for Greece to turn over €50 billion to him personally. Read that again.  The negotiator originally demanded that Greece turn over FIFTY BILLION EUROS worth of resources to him  (via a company he heads.)

This is how far it has come. The masks are being removed. There is no longer even a semblance of people being in charge of their own governments, nor indeed of governments being in charge of corporations including banks.

In this not in any way post-money society we have wrought, where we've decided to let capital be more important than life itself, we are now reaping the results.

This is what the battle over net neutrality is about. They don't want us to be able to widely disseminate the truth without their filters. They being not just the 1%, but the .001%. It sounds mad, really. We've been taught to ignore messages like this as "conspiracy theories."

Alexis Tsipras, the Greek Prime Minister, described the negotiations as "fifteen hours of mental water boarding."
He left them with a document that still includes turning over €50 billion of Greek public resources, but to EU forces, part of it to remain in Athens for now. Who knows if Greece even has €50B of resources to turn over.

This is not the kind of planet we live on. Is it?

At last something good happens.

Overnight the Whitehouse shown with rainbow colors after the Supreme Court of the US ruled in favor of marriage equity for all.

There have been few times when I've been proud of my country's actions. One was when Barack Obama was elected. In this, I know I was joined by many others. President Obama's time in office has not been filled, strictly speaking, with actions I felt happy about. There have been many decisions that I felt were terrible. I do give him credit for trying, and I do know that the President can't always do the things he promises because he has to work with a bunch of other people. (I held myself back from saying "goons."

But yesterday I could not stop crying happy tears because the right thing happened. The right thing was made to happen by so many. Reading the decision of the Supreme Court made me cry. Really, it was the first time I felt the Justices were actually human. The language of the law does an amazing job of concealing humanity in its formality and precision. But love and empathy could not be disguised, even by legal language, in this decision.

Justice Kennedy wrote: "It would misunderstand these men and women to say they disrespect the idea of marriage. Their plea is that they do respect it, respect it so deeply that they seek to find its fulfillment for themselves. Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization’s oldest institutions."

Often as a progressive American, falling near the lower left of the Political Compass, both socially and fiscally liberal, I feel like no one wants the kind of future I want. It's very isolating at times. Watching from outside my country, I often feel utterly foreign to it and ashamed of it. I feel afraid to share my beliefs in actual freedom, freedom that is for people instead of for money. But yesterday was not one of those days.

Yesterday was magical.