Chris Hedges’ Empty Chair Speech

Some good-quality videos of Green Party stuff are becoming available, and this recent one is something to hear, if you have the time:

So you have a choice.  You can take an hour to watch the video and then read my critique, or read my rant, with all the second-hand info about what’s in the video, and then watch it to see whether I’m full of it.

Let’s start with the fact that Chris Hedges obviously knows a lot, and has done some very good things, notably a good lawsuit against the feds, and much verbal defense of the Occupy movement in the media.  He’s visited a lot of places, and interviewed lotsa remarkable people, of which he doesn’t fail to remind us in his talk.  Such namedropping gets more frequent toward the end of the talk, as you’ll see.

Large parts of his talk are very worth hearing, for anyone who might not yet be quite aware of the authoritarian kleptocracy we live under and its shock-and-awe-inspiring power.  It’s when he tries to tell Greens what to do….

PANIC TIME!

Fair Warning:  The following is about the ups & downs of “third” parties in California.  If that’s not your thing, click over to my Link Collection for general education and entertainment.  I’m always adding stuff there.

My alert readers (both of them) will recall one of the evil effects of Prop 14:  that it eliminates one of two ways for a small political party to keep its access to the ballot.  We now, effectively, have only one:  to maintain a number of registrants above 1% of the number of voters that voted in the last gubernatorial election.  That’s currently a number a touch above 100,000.

Green registration in California, at last report, was about 113,000 and has been slowly dropping for the last few years.  This is a cause for concern.  To some people, it might seem to be a “Drop everything!  There is NO OTHER PARTY BUSINESS!” concern.  I’ll try to put it in perspective, for any noobs out there.  Vets are welcome to comment on anything I’m missing here, of course.

The last thing I would try to discourage anyone from is hitting the street to get some new Greens registered.  No organizing or authorization of any kind is required, just a person with some time.  There’s no need for Greens to even talk to each other about this much.  They just have to do it.  I’ve written about this before.

 It also might help to hit up
any friends you have who thought it was so all-frakking-important to vote for Obama or Kucinich or whatever in long-ago primaries to COME HOME, ALREADY and register in the only way that sends a message with your registration.

I would, however, question any panic reaction.  10-15% isn’t what I’d call a comfortable margin, but it’s not dangling off a cliff with the villain stomping on your hands, either.

To give you a broad overview, here’s a table of Green registration in California,

Our corner of the world ten years ago

On this anniversary of the beginning of the invasion of Iraq, a little nod to everyone who was with us on Feb. 15th, 2003,  the largest coordinated protest in the history of the world, which most American politicians chose to ignore.  In Orange County, we didn’t do much, but we didn’t do nothing, either.

We filled up the Orange Circle for a while, adding a couple of thousand people to the millions protesting that day.  Here’s to all of you, remembering better times.  Some are no longer with us.

Y’all remember?

MORE BAD LANGUAGE

My occasional posts about language have sometimes caused a little brush with what has been hyped as a “language war” between “descriptivists” and “prescriptivists”.  I don’t think it’s a real war myself, but more an excuse to write, for people with too little to write about.  People who like to write can get hung up on this sort of thing.  It’s one of those hazards of human behavior; to apply one’s own activity to one’s own activity.  It’s why we have a surplus of:

blogs about writing
books about literature
songs about music
movies & plays about show biz
PhDs in education

I got to this subject by writing about political activity; just trying to encourage my associates to think a little more about how to communicate effectively.  To that end, another rant.  But first I’ll try to cover some principles about the “descriptive” vs “prescriptive” non-war.  Let’s see how fast we can get through the obvious stuff.

My Triumphal Post-Election Unicorns and Rainbows Post

Betcha didn’t see that coming.

I’m the contracted “kitchen curmudgeon”.  I don’t often do unicorns and rainbows, to say the least.  But there IS an upbeat message here.  Gotta be patient.

You’re undoubtedly sick of seeing Dem triumphalism in post-election posts as you browse.  You won’t get that here.  You’ll also get no respect at all for the Reps.  You’ve learned that by now.

Let’s get the Captain Obvious stuff out of the way.  First,  Steven Hill wrote a pretty good editorial here:  http://www.sacbee.com/2012/11/16/4990045/california-electoral-reform-fails.html that bears out what I’ve been saying about the Prop 14, “top two”
primary.  The short version:

The Fight Evil Act of 2012

Good news, Californians.  This November, you have a chance to strike a real blow against evil!

“Great!… but wait…”, I hear you say, “Didn’t we eradicate evil back in the 90s after the Three Strikes law was passed?  Aren’t all the career criminals who were trying to kill Batman and Superman locked up to watch color teevee in our luxurious prison system?”

Ah, naïve little voter, didn’t you watch Dirty Harry?  Criminals have all kinds of legal technicalities that help them evade the law at every turn.  We need MORE LAWS, HARSHER LAWS!

Even with the NDAA allowing the gummint to lock up anyone, at any time, forever, without showing evidence to anyone, there still is evil afoot on a massive scale.  It’s called “Human Trafficking”.

Apparently, there is a large trade in people being kidnapped, beaten, extorted, defrauded, and generally abused by their tormenters, in order to sell their services, including sexual services, and often the victims are underage.  So forget about Bankers that own the government and rob you, mortgage scammers that

Are we as smart as Tasmanians?

My last post mentioned some unfortunate voter turnout numbers, and I’ve written before about the need to act like a citizen, if only minimally, but there recently came to me a blinding revelation about why some people are so intractable in their insistence NOT to vote.

Yeah, yeah, there’s that great Emma Goldman quote,

“If voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal.”

but if you accept her hypothesis, recent attempts to supress voting in some states are strong evidence that voting DOES accomplish something.

Then there’s the fear that registering to vote will make one subject to jury duty.  MYTH EXPLODED:  If you’re a U.S. citizen, they can get your name from any number of places for jury duty.  In California, they use DMV records, among other things.  I’ve known non-citizens who got jury summonses (and easily got out of them, of course).

No, I think it’s the lameness with which voting gets promoted in some circles.  Some people really give voting a bad name.

Most of you know by now that I do a lot of random surfing, just to see what’s out there.
My browser has a large collection of bookmarks about politics, language, personal blogs, all kinds of crap that I look through every so often.  Yes, much of it is stupid. Once in a while, the stupid is so dazzling and intense, so deep and unfathomable, that one must step back a bit, lest the abyss look back into you.