The Books of Bokonon

  Compilation of some of the footage of the no Kings protests across the US by u/oneoftheleastofthese in GlobalNews I was at one protest in my respective city and I was really happy with the turnout, which was bigger than a BLM protest held at that same location in town in 2020 after the murder of George Floyd in 2020. The level of energy was amazing. As I have probably stated before, showing up matters.

It's been a minute, but I want to get back to this series of videos that accompany Timothy Snyder's book, On Tyranny . This particular lesson strikes me as more common sense than anything else. Keeping in contact with friends and acquaintances from other countries strikes me as a sound idea, for more than a few reasons. One is that our peers often offer a perspective on how our nation is faring that can be quite illuminating, if we are willing to listen. Even better is the realization that our peers elsewhere across the world may have direct experience with authoritarian systems and know the importance of exercising our democratic rights and responsibilities. We can learn by studying other democratic systems and what aided their survival or led to their downfall. I also see the value in having a passport - partially to travel to see the world and experience new people and cultures, but also just in case something goes sideways. Snyder continues to repeat the importance of under...

It's been a minute since I put up another video in this series. If you have not ready On Tyranny , I would ask why not? It's a book that can be read in a single sitting and it's written by a professor who actually knows how to write like a regular person. You'll learn a lot along the way. Now on to our next video: This is a useful lesson. Find a cause or some causes that you value and contribute. Depending on your time and skill set, maybe you'll donate money. Maybe you can give some of your time. None of us can be everywhere at once. So we donate time when and where we can, and otherwise spare some change when we can.  I love the concept of civil society . I probably saw or heard the term civil society used around the late 1990s. I had no idea of its eastern European origins. Dr. Snyder can tell the story better than I can, so I hope you check out the video. Basically civil society includes various organizations (some political) made up of people who share some c...

I've been meaning to get back to this video series. The lesson here is one that was definitely practiced by numerous people in South Korea during what was my morning and then lunchtime and was essentially their overnight hours, when ordinarily most folks would have been asleep. This coup woke people up - literally - and got them outside, taking a stand, and making a difference. We see the same thing happening in the republic of Georgia as its ruling party is becoming ever more subordinate to Russia and ever more authoritarian.  Dr. Snyder is right that there is something to be said for unplugging - turning off the computer, putting away the cellphone, and being physically present, whether at a protest or civic organization meeting or whatever. The people you meet are not ones selected by an algorithm which turns out to be a good thing. He may well be right that the time many of us spent in social isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic paved the way for the crisis we faced toward th...

Like many of you in the US, I pretty much woke up to a developing news story that the South Korean President (Yoon) had declared martial law and was apparently in the midst of perpetrating his own autogolpe (a fancy name for a self-coup). I honestly don't know the intricacies of South Korean politics, so I'll leave all that for those who have legitimate expertise, but I get the impression that Yoon, who narrowly defeated an incumbent back in 2022 had become deeply unpopular and had led a scandal-plagued presidency. He also had to deal with a Parliament whose majorities were with the opposition, meaning he really was a lame duck. Thankfully for South Korea, Yoon apparently made a half-assed coup attempt that failed within a matter of hours. The members of the South Korean parliament got together, held a vote, and rejected Yoon's martial law declaration, which did force him to back down. What his future holds is hard to say. At minimum, I expect he will be impeached. I get th...

The title comes from an opening line from Gil Scott-Heron's song B-Movie . Over the course of his spoken word performance, accompanied by a wonderful late-1970s/early 1980s funk groove, Gil Scott-Heron broke it down that there was no way that a guy who got maybe around a quarter of all potential eligible voters, and that it boiled down to half of the eligible American voters didn't vote in the first place, whether due to apathy, dislike for any candidate on the ballot for President that year, or any of a number of structural barriers to voting (persons with disabilities, or who work and have no early voting options, etc). Reagan managed to win over 25% of the eligible voters and the rest who bothered to cast a vote did so for Carter or Anderson in 1980. So the case that Ronald Reagan did not have a mandate for his first term is very defensible.  So why go back into some funk and R&B history? Because we have a bigger problem now, and that bigger problem also does not have a ...

One of the patterns that began to emerge in 2023 was the fall of majority parties and coalitions in practically every advanced democracy on the planet. That trend has continued throughout this year. Even those cases where a majority party stays in power, it has tended to be a considerably weaker majority than before. India comes to mind (smaller majority limiting Presidential power), and Ireland's governing coalition appeared to survive this weekend's vote. I've been following other elections in Iceland and Romania this weekend. Iceland just voted out its governing party and voted in a social democratic party as its governing party. All I have right now with regard to Romania's parliamentary elections are exit polls as of this writing. It appears that the social democrats will have the largest plurality, but the far right has made some noticeable gains.  If you ask if there is any ideological shift globally, it seems to me difficult to see any coherent pattern. Arguably...

I have been meaning to return to the remaining lessons in Timothy Snyder's book, On Tyranny . If you haven't read this book, make a point of checking it out at your local library or purchase it at a local bookstore. It's a brief book and inexpensive.  This lesson on social denunciation has both positive and negative implications. On the negative side, Dr. Snyder reminds us that when a nation descends into fascism, it is crucial to be aware of how the people in your life change as events change. So this becomes more a matter of survival. Cues in our social environment can tell us a lot about whether or not something is about to go sideways. If your neighbor who has greeted you for years suddenly stops speaking to you, there may be a problem. That's why it's a good idea to have your passport and go-bag ready (Snyder doesn't mention that last bit, but I think we can say it's implied). On a more positive note, making eye contact and small talk can provide much-n...

 Here is the second installment in the series from Timothy Snyder's classic book: This seems like a timely lesson, as institutions will not protect us unless we actually take care to protect them and make them part of our identity. Those remaining intact in the US need our help now.

There is a channel I follow on Telegram called Military & Strategic, and is typically signed by a blogger who refers to himself or herself as The Analyst. The primary topic is the on-going Russo-Ukraine war, but US politics gets mentioned from time to time, which is very pertinent to the Ukrainian cause. Here is one of The Analyst's most recent posts , which deals with the prospects for the Harris/Walz campaign's success in November: GROWING CONFIDENCE IN A DEMOCRATIC VICTORY We all know how important the coming election is in the US. We are quite literally faced with a fork in the road - one side takes us down a dark and dangerous path towards a semi-fascist autocracy and the other is the real America that despite its many flaws is a decent and honest democrat at its core. It’s a truly shocking difference in possible futures. However I am ever more certain that Kamala Harris will win the presidency. I am growing more certain that the Democrats will regain the House, and ju...

This will be more of a personal reflection post than an explicitly political post, but it's also got a healthy dose of politics involved for good measure. You've probably noticed, if you have encountered me here or on some social media that I really really hate dictatorships. Did I mention I really hate dictatorships? Okay, I think you get the point. Where did that energy come from? Some if my animosity toward so-called "strongman" leaders and authoritarian and totalitarian governments certainly originated in what I was reading as a preteen, teen, and young adult. I read my share of books on WWII history and oral histories of the Spanish Civil War (thanks mostly to my dad's collection) as well as works of fiction (Orwell's 1984 and Animal Farm , Huxley's Brave New World , just as examples). But the rest of my disdain for dictatorships comes from having met some of the survivors who managed to find refuge in whatever community I might have been living in a...

Jeff Jarvis has this wonderful post that should be must-reading . The US normally doesn't have a popular front or grand coalition. In fact I have never experienced such a phenomenon as a citizen. We hear of grand coalition governments in parliamentary democracies, especially under circumstances where the more mainstream parties find the need to band together either just to have a functioning government because no party commands a majority or because the largest minority party just happens to be a threat to democracy and there is a justifiable need to freeze the fascists out of a functioning coalition government. Grand coalitions can and do work just fine. The requirement for all parties involved is a willingness to put aside a lot of partisan differences in order to serve the greater good: protecting the democratic institutions that so often get taken for granted. And once a threat to the democratic order is vanquished, a grand coalition can be dissolved, and we can go about our mo...