Repetition Alert ~ I have written at least half a dozen essays saying that the only way forward is for the immediate implementation of Ranked Choice Voting, so if you’re tired of me beating that dead horse, you can bail now.

     We are in such an incredibly deep hole in this crazy country, and our fearless leaders are furiously digging deeper as fast as they can.  There is so much that needs to be done ~ go ahead and shout into the wind about all the things that need to be done immediately to stave off the imminent collapse of the whole shebang.  The biological health of our planet is plummeting rapidly to that looming flatline, and so many policies need to be reversed at “war-time speed.”

     What an unfortunate metaphor !  And here is our President, paying out $1 billion incentives to companies to abandon their wind power leases and agree to invest instead in oil and gas.  Donald Trump says that our country can’t afford to pay for Medicaid, food assistance, Social Security, or day care because every dime has already been allocated to the war effort.  And then some.  (“It’s not possible for us to take care of day care, Medicaid, Medicare, all these individual things.  They can do it on a state basis.  You can’t do it on a federal.  We have to take care of one thing: military protection.  We have to guard the country.”)

     Where do you think that $1.5 trillion dollar war budget is going to come from ?  Not to mention another $200 trillion to pay for the immediate needs of the Iran war?  It is tossed onto the top of that gigantic mountain of debt that is just breaking $40 trillion.  Finally, a few economists, here and there, are beginning to admit that debt actually does have some sort of reality, after all, and a $40 trillion debt is beginning to be just a little bit scary.  What if, between Trump’s asinine tariffs and catastrophically stupid and criminal war in the Middle East, other countries drift away from the Almighty Dollar and embrace the Almighty Yuan instead ?  What if China says, politely, while drinking tea, “When may we expect payment for these loans we have given you, Donald ?  No; many thanks, but we have decided not to renew our investment in your Treasury Bonds.” (funny paper)  

     Oh, but I don’t want to go down the list of all the things that have to be done before lunch ~ I don’t have the time, the space, or the stomach to tackle such a list.  But the problem is that identifying problems, and even identifying solutions is totally useless absent some sort of plan for implementing those solutions.  Here we are under the thumb of the man Noam Chomsky called “the greatest criminal in human history” (Chomsky, interview with Truthout, 2020), and “The Republican party is the most dangerous organization in human history,” and “Has there ever been an organization in human history that is dedicated, with such commitment, to the destruction of organized human life on Earth ?  Not that I’m aware of.” (Chomsky, Democracy Now! 2017).  

     So Trump and his Ship of Fools are trying to do whatever they can to subvert, delay, or suspend the mid-term elections, but even if elections are allowed to happen at all, the Democratic Party is almost as wretched at the Republicans.  Both parties are heavily entrenched in the pay of Big Business.  The whole system stinks, and our once proud democracy is now auctioned off to the highest bidder.  

     So what we need is Something Altogether Different !  And that’s not going to come from the Democratic Party.  Paul Street (and plenty of others) are calling for a mass uprising to bring down Trump’s fascist takeover of the country immediately.  He says we should take to the streets and shut everything down until we finally force “regime change” upon the whole cabal of Donald Trump and his Congressional toadies and his packed and subverted Supreme Court.  Sure; I’m in ~ let’s do it.  

     Paul Street (The Paul Street Report) says it is way too little and way too late to rely upon anything so feeble as voting.  Vote the rascals out, and a whole new gang of rascals come waltzing in, with big smiles on their faces and their pockets stuffed with cash in envelopes from their “supporters.” The problem is more fundamental than that.  The whole system is corrupt, and has been for this little while (at least the last seventy-five years or so).  

     So, here it comes again ~ the only way to break out of the deadlock (death-grip) of the two-party system (Tweedledum and Tweedle-dumber) is to implement Ranked Choice Voting.  The whole essence of Ranked Choice Voting (“instant runoff election”) is that you can vote for more than just one candidate at a time, so if your first vote is out of the running, your vote automatically moves down to your second choice.  What that does is free up your vote so that you can actually vote for the person you really favor, not the person who has the best chance of beating the devil incarnate on the opposition.  Of course the entire Establishment is dead set against anything like this, because it undermines the death-lock of the two corrupt and useless parties and opens up the political horizon to Third Parties !

     Here is just one example of how it could work ~ I live in California, and they want us to vote in a primary election for governor and some other offices.  Because the two persons with the highest vote count will be on the final ballot, we could end up with (horrors !) a Repugnant Republican for governor because there are so many Democrats on the ballot that the Democratic votes will be scattered like buckshot while the Republican votes will be focused on a narrower field.  But if voters could vote for their top five choices, ranked in order, there is a much more reasonable chance that a decent candidate might rise to the top.  

     But with a wide open field, a voter’s first choice could be for anyone ~ any wild-eyed reformer on a soapbox could articulate an entirely new program moving forward, and anyone would be free to cast their first vote for that person, and their second and third votes for other promising reformers, saving their last couple of votes for the Stop the Demon vote as a last resort.  But at least such an election outcome could allow for some New Voices to rise up out of the muck of the government swamp, paving the way for a rising tide of support behind some of these new voices.  

     So, yes, we need to stop waging wars all over the planet and plant trees instead, fund Social Security, restore environmental protections, and follow China’s lead on solar panels, wind farms, and electric vehicles, all the while taxing Big Gas and Big Oil and Big Bigness out of existence.  But first we need to vote out the current crop of rascals and try to find some new choices to reinvigorate our government and restore democracy to this country, while there is still a chance of that happening (and that chance is vanishing fast, in case you haven’t noticed).  

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