Humans vs Institutions

One of the many difficulties with being a natural person, as opposed to an institution or a corporation, is that conception is terminal. Sooner or later, we all die. And, it seems that every generation has to learn anew about politics and politicians. Yes, we have taken some received knowledge from our elders, but part of being human in the U.S. seems to be rebelling against our elders when we are young and mocking our elderly after we replace them as the generation in power (e.g., "Get off my lawn!"). This is especially so as generations move away from each other physically, instead of three or four generations living in the same Victorian or triple decker.

Maybe, the internet will change that some as so many of us become "published political writers." (I can dream!) Meanwhile, however, institutions have many advantages over humans. Whether it's organized religion, the Bohemian Grove, Bilderburg, Koch Industries, the Republican Party, the Democratic Party, the Rockefeller Foundation, or whatever, institutions have the advantage of longevity, of organization, of receiving collective wisdom, of long-range planning, etc. And money, old and new and counting (literally and figuratively).

For a century and a half, conservative Democrats played the long con of turning the Party of the New Deal into the Republican Party. That process is now complete, thanks to acceleration by a wiley, conniving, admittedly dishonest grifter from the red, red state of Indiana named Al From and his two best-known and perhaps most personally ambitious disciples, accomplices and beneficiaries, Bill and Hillary Clinton. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_From

We slept too long as Sodomcrats and Gomorrahcans robbed us blind and made us impotent. It's time to head elsewhere without looking back longingly at what was, what might have been, if only we had been more awake, more vigilant and less willing to co-exist with, and enable evil. Just ask Lot's wife.

However, we must take the hard lessons of the past with us. Jews went from Babylon to Egypt to Israel to the Diaspora to fleeing from both Hitler and Stalin and then back to Israel. Somewhere along the road(s), they learned very well a very hard lesson: the one thing "they" can't take from you is what you've learned, both your formal education and the painful lessons that your past taught you.

For us, forgetting was never an option. Remembering is a noble and necessary act. The call of memory, the call to memory, reaches us from the very dawn of history. No commandment figures so frequently, so insistently, in the Bible. It is incumbent upon us to remember the good we have received, and the evil we have suffered.

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Elie_Wiesel

The Old Testament directed Jews to celebrate Passover every year to remember. And five or six millennia later (but who's counting?), Jews, for better or worse, are still celebrating Passover every Spring (by the lunar calendar) by reciting and reenacting the events of the night they fled Egypt.

While celebrating Passover at a seder that Christians have come to call "The Last Supper," Jesus supposedly took the unleavened Passover bread and wine, as observant Jews still do. However, he added a new commandment, "Do this in remembrance of me." (Luke 22, KJV) And two millennia later, give or take (but who's counting?), for better or worse, Christians are still taking "communion." Such is the power and long memory of institutions. Unfortunately, due to global warming caused by both us and natural forces, we no longer have the luxury of millennia.

If only we had been less willing to accept evil because someone (or many someones) cleverly convinced us that we had to vote for Democrats lest the Republicans annihilate us and the rest of the planet, also known as voting for "the lesser evil." Well, guess what, Mrs. Lot? Thirty years after Al From incorporated the Democratic Leadership Council with financial help and direction from the Koch brothers and corporate donors, we are further up the creek of evil than ever. Every Democratic think tank is a derivative of the neoliberal Democratic Leadership Council, the neoliberal Progressive Policy Institute and the neoliberal Third Way. New Democrats have shredded social safety nets and stopped supporting unions, but have done little to nothing to fight Republicans or slow global warming.

The current standard bearer of the (New) Democratic Party is a Goldwater Girl and the only female founding member of the Democratic Leadership Council. She tells more lies than the wooden child, only she somehow gets away with lying while her nose somehow gets smaller . http://caucus99percent.com/comment/174457#comment-174457 That is what voting for the alleged lesser of two evils has given us. For the love of everything mundane or holy, stop voting for evil and spread the word to others, now and in the future. Donate, volunteer and vote for Jill Stein (and get ready: another election will be upon us in two years.)

Never forget or allow your kids or grandkids to forget. (Maybe we should devise a secular ceremony at which we re-enact every Tuesday morning how the one populist in the 2016 primaries out of maybe thirty or so politicians lost to a Goldwater Girl and then endorsed her?) And, since this post somehow evolved into a mash up of bible stories and politics, I'll wrap it up accordingly: Act fast. The End is Near. (For real this time, given global warming.)

All comments and suggestions for action are most welcome.

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earthling1's picture

For this reason alone they should never be considered "people too".
John Roberts is a first class traitor to the American people.

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Neither Russia nor China is our enemy.
Neither Iran nor Venezuela are threatening America.
Cuba is a dead horse, stop beating it.

Just for completeness, the case from the Roberts Court that decided that corporations were people for purposes of the First Amendment was the infamous Citizens United case, the subject matter of which was a film adversarial to Hillary Clinton's candidacy in 2008. The majority opinion was written by the Republican Justice who has been the most helpful to the left in other cases, Justice Kennedy.

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Shockwave's picture

Some "institutions" support him;

Evangelical Support for Trump Was Preordained

I hate the DLC but Trump does scare the heck out of me. He may be the Antichrist;

Is Donald Trump The Antichrist of the Christian Bible?

We are in very uncharted waters. As I always say, Hillary is like a slap on the face, the Donald is a kick in the balls.

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The political revolution continues

than recovering from a Democratic Party that will not only not fight back against Republicans, but will get out ahead of them in ending social safety nets, leaving unions twisting in the wind, lying to Americans, etc. Lesser evil voting has been worse for us than voting for Bush the Dumber.

As far as the antichrist, I usually leave that type of determination to others. However, now that you have raised it, I am not at all sure which characteristics of the biblical description of the antichrist you are basing your comment on. Given the biblical account of what the antichrist will do, I'd have to go with Hillary.

From played a prominent role in the 1992 election of President Bill Clinton – and served as Domestic Policy Advisor to the Clinton Transition – prompting USA Today to write: "The ideas at the crux of the Clinton candidacy were largely drafted by the DLC."[15]

Today, many of the ideas that comprise the core of the Democratic Party's agenda come from work done under From's leadership at the DLC. National service, an expanded Earned Income Tax Credit, welfare reform (aka ending welfare as we know it. HW's note), charter schools, community policing, expanded trade and re-inventing government were all championed by scholars and analysts at the DLC before becoming public policy.[16]

In 1998, with First Lady Hillary Clinton, From began a dialogue with British Prime Minister Tony Blair and other world leaders, and the DLC brand – known as The Third Way – became a model for resurgent liberal governments around the globe.[17]

In April 1999, he hosted an historic Third Way forum in Washington with President Clinton, Prime Minister Blair, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, Prime Ministers Wim Kok of the Netherlands and Massimo D'Alema of Italy.[18]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_From

And then, there's her love of the TPP.

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RantingRooster's picture

so I can incorporate myself. Yep, gonna incorporate so I can enjoy some of those "rights" that corporations enjoy, and humans don't. "But officer, I'm a corporation, you can't take me to jail...." That will really will go over well.

I've been reading our country's history and how it has treated corporations, usury (interest) and such things. I haven't study enough to give you a great reply, but know enough to say, we as a people didn't like corporations when we first started out as a country and somewhere along the way, I think somewhere around the time of Union Pacific vs Santa Clara county the "foundation" was being poured, and that this "idea" that corporations are people began to solidify.

When I read "Common sense" by Thomas Paine, if you think about it, and use a little common sense, corporations are the new monarchy of our times. They shape our government. Their “associations” (A.L.E.C. And others) write the legislation they want in our government, which is not in the best interests of the people.

They decide our employment fate by arbitrary, non-human considerations, with maximizing profit the primary driver, which if you think about it, was the key driver of monarchy, money and power. Especially with and particularity in collusion with religion that help cement into the mind of the “common” folk (pheasants) monarchy knows best. Much like corporations and their bought and paid for government representatives of today.

“THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated. “ Thomas Pain – The Crisis

Summer Soldier = Limo Liberal
Sunshine Patriot = Cocktail Party Progressive

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C99, my refuge from an insane world. #ForceTheVote

pswaterspirit's picture

Allowed a large group of anarchists to become a town in 1910. By the corporation owning the land and them "renting" they protected themselves from seizure laws.

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The only town I've heard of before where homeowners rented was Ocean Grove, NJ. There, the church or religion or whatever owned all the land and everything but first responders shut down on the sabbath. Very different from anarchists.

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pswaterspirit's picture

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I used to have this vision of all anarchists as wild-eyed creators of chaos. More and more, though, I think they were way ahead of the rest. They certainly were the most pro labor. We now have this insanely expensive, non-representative federal government with holders of elective office doing little other than serving their own self interests.

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pswaterspirit's picture

He owned the paper there.

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When Home was plotted in 1901 it had increased in size to 217 acres (0.88 km2) and had become home to anarchists, communists, food faddists, freethinkers, nudists, and others who did not fit in with mainstream society. Elbert Hubbard, anarchist Emma Goldman, and national communist leader William Z. Foster visited and gave lectures.[5]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home,_Washington

Feminism and sexuality
Anarcha-feminists at an anti-globalization protest quote Emma Goldman.

Although she was hostile to the suffragist goals of first-wave feminism, Goldman advocated passionately for the rights of women, and is today heralded as a founder of anarcha-feminism, which challenges patriarchy as a hierarchy to be resisted alongside state power and class divisions.[180] In 1897, she wrote: "I demand the independence of woman, her right to support herself; to live for herself; to love whomever she pleases, or as many as she pleases. I demand freedom for both sexes, freedom of action, freedom in love and freedom in motherhood."[181]

A nurse by training, Goldman was an early advocate for educating women concerning contraception. Like many feminists of her time, she saw abortion as a tragic consequence of social conditions, and birth control as a positive alternative. Goldman was also an advocate of free love, and a strong critic of marriage. She saw early feminists as confined in their scope and bounded by social forces of Puritanism and capitalism. She wrote: "We are in need of unhampered growth out of old traditions and habits. The movement for women's emancipation has so far made but the first step in that direction."[182][183]

Goldman was also an outspoken critic of prejudice against homosexuals. Her belief that social liberation should extend to gay men and lesbians was virtually unheard of at the time, even among anarchists.[184] As German sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld wrote, "she was the first and only woman, indeed the first and only American, to take up the defense of homosexual love before the general public."[185] In numerous speeches and letters, she defended the right of gay men and lesbians to love as they pleased and condemned the fear and stigma associated with homosexuality. As Goldman wrote in a letter to Hirschfeld, "It is a tragedy, I feel, that people of a different sexual type are caught in

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emma_Goldman

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bane of the left. I say that because the tiny little sandwich shop whose owner, kids and products you love, is probably incorporated. And the Clinton Foundation, while theoretically a charity and and not a corporation, is probably a lot more your enemy than the sandwich shop. Also, big business is not always incorporated. Sometimes, it's a trust, a partnership or a limited liability company. I will not consider you my enemy after you after you incorporate yourself.

One little comment on your research: If you come across a quote by Jefferson condemning corporations--and you probably have--please know that it is probably misattributed. No one can find anything that shows that Jefferson actually said or wrote anything like that. Besides, in my opinion, even if he did condemn corporations, anyone who owned his own kids had no room to talk.

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