Tag Archives: democracy

Afraid to Predict?

December 29, 2021

civil rights, democracy, economy, education, elections, environment, history, politics, strategy, unions

Every New Years, I’ve tried to get people to make predictions. Hardly any of them will. The best I have received so far is a stock broker who called KNON. After I prodded him, he responded, “The rich will get richer.” That’s about the safest prediction I ever heard.

My 2022 Predictions:

Massive evictions will put millions into the ‘homeless’ category.
Vigilantes and illegal militias will flourish.
Political violence will become commonplace.
Police will tend to allow the anti-worker outrages to flame, while suppressing any activity of pro-worker forces. This was the precedent set in Germany in the 1920s and has generally held.
Poverty and hunger will grow, especially among children.
The formal educational system will continue to deteriorate as Republicans undermine them with schemes like “charter” schools and assaults on officials. More and more parents will begin to seek out internet solutions.
Big corporations will try to privatize the internet and everything else, including all utilities and municipal services.
Persistent inflation will force the federal reserve to cut back on “quantitative easing” and near-zero interest rates. Stocks and bonds will crumble but the “real economy” won’t be hit so hard.
Little if anything will get done about the environmental crisis. Freak weather disasters will increase and worsen.
As world economies teeter, governments will advocate new wars.
Omicron will hit early and hard. After it peaks early in the year, a solid majority of Americans will have some immunity from vaccination or from having already suffered through COVID. By late summer, it will no longer be the top of every news story
The democratic party will continue unraveling while the Republican Party will grow more homogeneous and harder.
Independent movements, particularly the women’s movement, will grow. We will see a revival of unemployed and homeless advocacy groups similar to those of the 1930s.
These independent movements will be larger, better informed, and better integrated than anything we have ever seen in history. This is because people are better informed and have infinitely better communications.
Unions will not initially lead these powerful independent movements. Unions will be drawn into the larger movement. They will play an important role in guiding and financing the movement.
The 2022 elections will show people voting increasingly for 3rd or 4th parties, Greens, Working Family, Democrats, and Independents.
One thing that the strong progressive organizations will agree on is this: vote for no Republican!
Americans will begin to experiment with the kind of political strikes that have been known in other countries.
And slowly, the way forward will begin to show itself.

–-Gene Lantz

I’m on KNON’s “Workers Beat” talk show at 9AM Central Time every Saturday. The program and a supplemental “Workers Beat Extra” are podcast on Soundcloud.com every Wednesday. My January 5 podcast includes these predictions. If you are curious about what I really think, check out my personal web site

Spain and Fascism, Then and Now

March 16, 2019

democracy, history, politics, strategy

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Book Review:

Taylor,F. Jay, “The United States and the Spanish Civil War 1936-1939,” Introduction by Claude G Bowers, United Printing Services, New Haven, Connecticut, 1956.

Fascist General Franco had a lot of help from his friends

The parents of monsters are not usually examined. Thus it is with the progenitors of World War II, who were in Spain. But if the fascist monster persists, and threatens world havoc again, such an examination is in order. I set out then, to read about the Spanish Republic, Mussolini, and Hitler in the few years leading up to the fascist holocaust.

Historians like to present unassailable facts and feign objectivity. Thus, this author reports only that the Spanish Republic attempted to assert democracy after centuries of monarchy and dictatorship. They were set upon by General Franco and his Moorish troops from Morocco while the “great powers” sat on their hands.

The Abraham Lincoln Brigade is still celebrated with their U.S. magazine

A few thousand untrained internationalists, as many as 3,000 from the United States, joined the fight for democracy. Fascist Italy and Germany supplied tens of thousands of trained soldiers along with modern tanks and aircraft to defeat them. England, France, and the United States went to great lengths to pretend neutrality. Thus, fascism found its military and psychological advantage in its first great step toward taking over all of Europe. The great war became inevitable.

Author F. Jay Taylor cannot completely avoid the same conclusion. On page 189, he says: “In any event, although Roosevelt had some misgivings concerning American Spanish policy, he refused to act and so must share responsibility with Britain and France in contributing to the advent of the Second World War by appeasing Fascist aggressors in Spain.”

The books’ introduction is by the American Ambassador during the period.

Claude G. Bowers is more generous with conclusions. He says that the purpose of the Spanish Republic was “aimed at wiping out the lingering feudalism in the land and the raising of the status of the workers to that of human dignity.” He also says, ““It is a sad commentary on human weakness that while the totalitarians made no secret of their purpose, we democrats did our best to cover it up.”

Having read the book 70 years after its publication, and having read other important sources about the fascist invasion of Spain, I am explicit in my conclusion: The great capitalist powers, including the United States, nurtured European fascism in its infancy because the fascists offered to destroy the socialist bogeyman for them.

They embraced fascism over democracy then and have done it since. Examples include Iran, Guatemala, Vietnam, Chile, Argentina, Brazil, and Congo, Their current target is Venezuela.

Can one conclude anything else?

-Gene Lantz

I’m on KNON radio’s “Workers Beat” program at 9 AM Central Time every Saturday. If you want to know what I really think, check out my personal web site

Play on Hughes was Sellout

March 11, 2019

art, civil rights, democracy, history, politics

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Stage West Theater in Fort Worth Texas sold all their tickets for the last matinee performance of “Are You Now, Or Have You Ever Been…” by Carlyle Brown. It’s about one of poet Langston Hughes’ testimonies to the McCarthy anticommunist committee in 1953.

“Are You Now…” in Ft Worth

People who attended because they wanted to get more insight into the great poet and his poetry, or people who just like to see a well-done one-man performance, were probably quite pleased.

Those of us who wanted to see an uplifting portrayal of America’s fight against fascism, or at least wanted to gather insight into what happened during the McCarthy period so we can avoid it now, were severely disappointed.

There were two acts. Djore’ Nance performed alone and made an effort to give an insight into Langston Hughes, his times, and his work. In other words, it was essentially a lecture. It was a very good lecture and well performed, but still a lecture.

In the second act, Christopher Dontrell Piper played Hughes’ lawyer and sat beside him while off-site questions came from, supposedly, Senator Dirksen, anti-communist spokesperson David Schine, top anti-communist prosecutor Roy Cohn, and the infamous McCarthy himself. Piper had about two lines, so the second act was about like the first, all Nance. The responses to the investigators were, apparently, mostly taken from the actual testimony in 1953.

Hughes did not stand up to Mc Carthism. He avoided any kind of confrontation. He didn’t defend his rights or anybody’s. He ended his testimony with a loving endorsement of the entire process. Yes, he probably had to. Dozens of otherwise good people caved in to McCarthyism and hardly anybody opposed it. But why make a play about it?

Why not, instead, make a play about Paul Robeson or Dashiell Hammett, or one of the others who fought back as well as they could and suffered the consequences?

The audience rose to their feet and applauded as the play closed, but they also headed for the door. I could hardly wait to get out of there. There was far more information, and more meaningful content, in the playbill than there was in the play. YouTube has dozens of more worthwhile works.

–Gene Lantz

I’m on KNON’s “Workers Beat” program at 9 AM Central Time every Saturday. If you are curious about what I really think, see my personal web site.

Judiciary Is Undermined Worldwide

November 22, 2018

democracy, history, politics, strategy

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Are these recent news articles related?

American Chief Justice John Roberts publicly strikes back against President Trump
Poland is forced to re-seat judges who had been forced out
Top political leaders of Brazil are forced out by judiciary

On the front page of the Dallas newspaper, Roberts is quoted: “We do not have ‘Obama Judges’ or ‘Trump Judges’ or ‘Bush Judges’ or ‘Clinton Judges.'” Trump insists that we do. Two main points take up the rest of the article:

Trump has consistently vilified Roberts and any other judge who disagrees with him
It is completely unprecedented for a Supreme Court Justice to fight back

Over on page 16, under the headline, “Poland: Judges Will be Reinstated,” we learn that the reactionary government of Poland has been forced to bring back their nation’s top judges after pressure from the European Union. A couple of weeks ago, we learned that an outright dictatorial fascist had been elected President of Brazil after their judiciary put his two most important political adversaries into prison. It’s more complicated, but it’s going on in Argentina, too.

Democracies Use Checks and Balances

The judiciary reviews the acts of other government branches. That’s what we’re used to in our 250 or-so years of limited American democracy. It’s no secret in America that much of our judiciary, including the Supreme Court, has been taken over by dark money so that they can hand power and wealth to billionaires. At the same time, Americans, including many of the judges, still believe that we have an impartial judiciary overseeing a fair democracy. Apparently, Chief Justice Roberts is one of those.

Whether we agree with him or just have some intellectual equivocating position, we need to back Roberts against Trump as part of our worldwide fight to save every scrap of democracy!

–Gene Lantz

I’m on KNON Radio’s “Workers Beat” program, 89.3 FM in Dallas, every Saturday at 9 AM Central Time. They podcast it on Itunes. If you are curious about what I really think, check out my personal web site

Counting Down on Democracy

March 29, 2018

democracy, elections, history, politics, strategy

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Republicans continue the countdown on democracy with their plans for the 2020 census. African American and Latino organizations are trying to stop them.

count2

The NAACP’s lawsuit says that the last census seriously undercounted African Americans, and preparations, or lack of preparations, for the 2020 census threatens to do the same. Latinos are especially upset by the Trump Administration’s plan to ask if they are citizens or not.

If the Republicans get away with it, they will be able to seriously diminish Black and Brown representation in government. Their anti-democratic redistricting would be made even easier for them.

Historical Context

This is not the first time that the parties in power have used counting as a way to undermine democracy. Bear in mind that the first constitution counted slaves as 3/5’s of a person so that slaveholders could amass more electoral clout, even though the slaves had no say about anything.

Political Context

The fight for a fair census is another part of the larger fight for democracy and against incipient fascism. Voter suppression laws from state governments are rampant. Redistricting has undercut the “minority” vote. Big money has won Supreme Court backing and is now free to dominate all elections without even revealing who they are. The Voting Rights Act has already been eviscerated.

Working families have to fight on every front to preserve the partial democracy that we have won over the centuries. Every front includes economic struggles as well as electoral.

— Gene Lantz

I’m still on KNON radio 89.3FM in Dallas at 9 AM Central Time every Saturday. If you look in the “events” tab of knon.org, you can find programs from the last two weeks. If you want to know what I really think, check out my personal web site

Hooray for NextDoor!

February 23, 2018

democracy

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The NextDoor social media service could be the core of a new democratic society.

council-big

I’ve written before about how important I think science fiction can be for clarifying the present and guessing the future. I write sci-fi novellas. Both the first one and the second one are posted online and free. I’m thinking up a third.

The Problem with Utopia

Almost all American sci-fi is dystopian, because those are the ugly trends we see. Star Trek is the major exception. All the problems on Earth are solved in Star Trek and they have to go running around outer space to find anything to fix. I like that version of the future and I think that some of today’s trends support it. I particularly like the trend toward more and better information. My sci-fi world tends toward the positive.

But what are the details of a utopian world? That’s what I have to confront in my new novel. The setting is “just after the revolution.” In the first novella, Commissioner Joe Torres gets a minor assignment in a backwoods area. In the second one, he gets a larger assignment, but still not one that is critical. I could go on writing those forever — letting Joe solve the little problems of a new society — but I decided to go toward the heart of the matter.

In the third novel, I intend to have the Commissioner get involved in setting up an ongoing government. The horrible emergencies are in a temporary lull. The family of war, want, and pollution have been traced to their Mama — capitalism — and halted. The oceans aren’t receding, but they’re not overflowing the beaches anymore. An ongoing structure for the new world society still needs to be created. I intend to have Joe Torres get drafted to play a small part in that giant project.

That’s where I ran into all the problems. If Joe has a say-so in building a positive structure that would benefit people and the planet long term, how would he go about it? What structure would he want?

Part of the Answer

I’ve been worrying about this for about a month. Yesterday morning, part of the answer hit me: NextDoor! It’s a social media service organized by neighborhoods. Most of the posts are about lost dogs and lawnmowers for sale. But what a potential it has!

If everybody were computer literate and had a good computer, they could join NextDoor. If the service were run by the people, it could be the basic element of a democratic society. Immediate problems in your neighborhood would be solved on-line. Representatives from your neighborhood would be elected to higher bodies who work on problems affecting larger geographic areas. Specialty committees and interests groups could be created and meet, like the core elements, on-line.

There wouldn’t be a Congress. There would just be a NextDoor group of representatives from all over the world. None of the higher bodies would be able to enact legislation. Their job would be to process problems and propose solutions. The solutions would then be voted on by the people affected.

The fundamental right of initiative, referendum, and recall would operate at every level.

It’s Not Exactly a New Idea!

Except for the computer part, this isn’t exactly new. The Cubans and Venezuelans tried to set up “revolutionary circles” that were to be the fundamental element of their governmental structure. The Russians in 1917 tried to govern through grass roots committees. The Russian word for “committee” is “soviet.” I think computers and social media make success for total democracy more likely.

Up until the time I’m creating with Commissioner Joe Torres, a state has always conformed to the ancient definition: “a body of armed men.” That is, whoever controls the army and the police control just about everything. In Joe Torres’ world, the army and the police are already disbanded.

We can surely do better in our future than we’re doing now!

–Gene Lantz

I’m still on KNON radio 89.3 FM in Dallas at 9 AM Central Time every Saturday. If you are curious about what I really think, check out my shaggy looking personal web site

Why Am I Such a Pain in the Butt?

January 4, 2018

civil rights, democracy, education, history, politics, strategy

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I feel that I should explain, especially to those people who avoid me. It’s true that I’m incapable of cordial conversation. In no time, I turn almost every conversation into an “ask” for this or that. Sometimes I’m after contributions to the retiree cause, sometimes I want people to come to something, sometimes I ask them to “make a few calls.”

me-sanantonio

Here’s my excuse: I have an urgent sense of history unfolding.

We Think We’re in Normal Times

In normal times, things go on pretty much as they have. There are no sharp changes in normal times. We think it’s “just the way things are,” and the inference is that they have always been that way.

But there are no normal times. Nothing is static, everything is constantly changing. When little, barely noticeable, changes start to accumulate, then giant, sudden changes occur. I saw one of those little changes in my e-mail today. It said that Republicans are proposing another $492 million cut in the Social Security Administration’s budget. It’s just one of many relatively “little” changes that undermine the American standard of living. It’s been going on since 1980.

I also saw, today, that the latest Texas Voter Suppression law is going into effect. I saw that President Trump is saber-rattling, again, against North Korea. He added Iran this past week.

These little changes undermining our standard of living and taking away our democracy so that we can’t fight back, are likely to add up to a big change. It’s impossible to predict when, but it’s foolish to ignore the truth that the big change is looming more likely.

Two Big Changes Ahead

If the coalition of big-money funders and ignorant reactionary pawns continues to get its way, America is going fascist. Who would deny that incipient fascism is already upon us? Who would fail to admit the direction they are taking us? Who would fail to notice that fascism, the total extinction of democracy with working people completely under the thumbs of corporate masters, is exactly what they intend?

The other big change that might occur is a defeat of the big money funders and ignorant reactionary pawns. An enlightened and activated populace may yet join together into an irresistible progressive force that will regain the upper hand for democracy and begin a new path to peace and progress.

Pick One

Those with an urgent sense of history know that one of those big changes is coming. You can have one or the other but you can’t have neither. You can’t have “normal times.”

That’s why I ask people to study and to get active in the most meaningful way. That’s why I’m such a pain in the butt.

–Gene Lantz

I’m still on KNON radio 89.3 FM in Dallas every Saturday at 9 Central Time. If you want to know what I really think, check out http://lilleskole.org

Are We Fit to Govern?

May 18, 2017

chauvinism, democracy, politics, strategy, unions

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I have two reasons why we aren’t fit to govern, one reason why we are, and a firm belief as to whether or not we ever will.

voteclass

Why Americans Can’t Govern Themselves

The first reason is obvious: Americans aren’t even trying to govern ourselves. In my town, we just finished critical local elections with about 5% turnout of eligible voters. “Eligible voters” is the electorate plus the large percentage who didn’t even register.

The issues were really big and really clear. The establishment was lined up on one side and the people on the other. Everybody had a big stake, but hardly anybody responded.

The other thing against our ability to govern ourselves is the crippling divisions between those few of us who have shown that we give a damn. Example: my group called a rally last Friday, then had to try to reconcile with two other groups calling conflicting activities. We were able to come together with one of them, but the other wouldn’t budge. Here’s a laugh for you, the two groups most divided, most sectarian, least concerned about building a unified movement, were factions of “Indivisible!”

The divided progressive organizations make little effort to work together. They may call for “unity” all the time, and they do, but their idea of “unity” is “everybody follow me!” Very few of our disparate groups have a coherent strategy that makes any sense.

Hardly any of us recognize the central role of the working class in any effort to make progress against the 1%. If we did, we’d be working hard to stop Congress and the State Legislatures from undermining organized labor, but we aren’t.

Why Americans Can Govern Themselves

It’s all relative. I just made a couple of points explaining why the American people can’t govern ourselves, but I didn’t mention that we are far better prepared than the people who are running things now. One could start clicking the days off the calendar before the rich capitalists destroy all of us, including themselves, with their wars and pollution!

So the American people may not be very fit to govern, but we’re miles better than the present rulers!

Who Will Win the Contest?

Our side will win. It’s only a matter of time. Human history can be thought of as a struggle between knowledge and ignorance, between reason and superstition. In the long arc of history, knowledge and reason are the winning side.

In my fifty years of activism, I’ve seen extremely hopeful trends developing. People are better educated, smarter, and more capable than before. Much more! Major organizations like the AFL-CIO have re-invented themselves and now promote progressive unity. Old divisions like racism and homophobia are much less effective than they were.

Folks worry today that the capitalists will soon choose to govern through fascism rather than the time-honored American method of limited democracy. I’m one of those worried people, but even a dreadful period of fascism would be temporary. The capitalists cannot solve the problems they caused that way or any other way.

Given time, the people will prevail. I just hope we live that long.

–Gene Lantz

I’m still broadcasting on http://www.knon.org/workers-beat/ at 9 Central Time every Saturday. Join me and call in 972-647-1893.

Straight Voting?

May 10, 2017

civil rights, democracy, elections, politics, strategy

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A lot of Republicans in the Texas Legislature and the editors of the Dallas Morning News have teamed up to oppose “straight party ticket” voting.

ballot

By now, everybody in the United States, and especially the Texans, should begin to worry when Republicans talk about “electoral reform.” They’ve already deformed our elections beyond recognition with crazy redistricting, outright voter suppression, and opening the floodgates for big money to buy every candidate.

Now they want Texas to join the states that have already outlawed “straight ticket” voting. I laughed out loud when I read the Dallas editors’ reasons. The main one was that the change wouldn’t make any difference because people could still vote straight ticket, they would just have to put a bunch more marks by each candidate on the ballot.

If it doesn’t make any difference, why do it?

And, anybody could turn the argument right around on the editors. If it’s true that people could still vote straight ticket AFTER this “deform,” then isn’t it also true that they could NOT vote straight ticket NOW? They aren’t offering to give people another choice, they’re offering to take one away!

Straight Ticket Voting Makes Sense

I’m not sure what it’s like in other states, but in Texas we have to elect almost everybody that has anything to do with government, from dogcatcher through all the judges and on up (or down, as the case may be) to the Governor and President. Nobody can keep track of all these candidates — then they throw in a bunch of undecipherable propositions and amendments at the end of the ballot. A person is supposed to have all this clear in his/her head before we enter the voting booth, but everybody knows we can’t.

Party Polarity Is On the Grow

The growing polarity between the two capitalist parties makes them more distinct than ever before. When I was a kid, I used to hear people say that they couldn’t tell the difference between the two capitalist parties. Nobody says that now.

For working families, the Democrats’ party platforms sound like Hollywood dreams, and the Republican party platforms come straight from the hallways of Hell.

Like the “local control” issue, the “straight ticket” issue is a smoke screen to hide the intentions of big money as they rob the workers and deform our democracy in order to undermine our ability to fight back.

–Gene Lantz

Find me Saturdays at 9 Central Time at http://knon.org