Wednesday, January 03, 2024
10 Things To Do To Defeat Trump And Save Democracy
What can the rest of us do between now and the election to help save American democracy?
Ten suggestions:
1. Become even more politically active. For some of us, this will mean taking more time out of our normal lives — up to and including getting out the vote in critical swing states. For others, it will mean phone banking, making political contributions, writing letters to editors, and calling friends and relations in key states.
2. Do not succumb to the tempting anesthesias of complacency or cynicism. The stakes are too high. Even if you cannot take much time out of your normal life for direct politics, you will need to organize, mobilize, and energize your friends, colleagues, and neighbors.
3. Counter lies with truth. When you hear someone repeating a Trump Republican lie, correct it. This will require that you prepare yourself with facts, logic, analysis, and sources.
4. Do not tolerate bigotry and hate. Call it out. Stand up to it. Denounce it. Demand that others denounce it, too.
5. Do not resort to name-calling, bullying, intimidation, violence, or any of the other tactics that Trump followers may be using. We cannot save democracy through anti-democratic means.
6. Be compassionate toward hardcore followers of Trump, but be firm in your opposition. Understand why someone might decide to support Trump, but don’t waste your time and energy trying to convert them. Use your time and energy on those who still have open minds.
7. Don’t waste your time commiserating with people who already agree with you. Don’t gripe, whine, wring your hands, and kvetch with other anti-Trumpers about how awful Trump and his Republican enablers are. Don’t snivel over or criticize Biden and the Democrats for failing to communicate more effectively how bad Trump and his Republican enablers are. None of this will get you anything except an upset stomach or worse.
8. Don’t decide to sit this election out or vote for a third-party candidate because you don’t especially like Biden and you’re tired of voting for the “lesser of two evils.” Biden may not be perfect, but he’s not the lesser of two evils. Trump is truly evil.
9. Demonstrate, but don’t confuse demonstrating for political action. You may find it gratifying to stand on a corner in Berkeley or Cambridge or any other liberal precinct with a sign asking drivers to “honk if you hate fascism” and elicit lots of honks. But this is as politically effectual as taking a warm shower. Organize people who don’t normally vote to vote for Biden. Mobilize get-out-the-vote efforts in your community. Get young people involved.
10. Don’t get distracted by the latest sensationalist post or story by or about Trump. Don’t let the media’s short-term attention span divert your eyes from the prize — the survival of American democracy during one of the greatest stress tests it has had to endure, organized by one of the worst demagogues in American history.
Tuesday, January 02, 2024
The Epidemic Of Gun Violence Continued In 2023 U.S.
The United States did not set records in the number of mass shootings or gun deaths in 2023. But it's nothing to be celebrated, because they came very close to both records -- 655 mass shootings (record 689) and 42,892 gun deaths (record 45,158). It's safe to say the pathetic gun bill passed by Congress early in the year did nothing to stem the tide of gun violence.
Congress (especially the Republicans) have shown they will do nothing to stop (or slow) the epidemic of gun violence. It will be up to the country's voters to stop it. Until voters make it a point to vote against those who refuse to pass reasonable (and constitutional) gun legislation, nothing will happen.
Monday, January 01, 2024
HAPPY NEW YEAR!
I wish all my readers a very happy new year. I hope 2024 brings you nothing but good fortune and happiness!
World Population Will Be 10 Billion In 2085 - Then Decline
The following thought-provoking article is by economist Sara Kodesh in The New York Times: Here is just a part of what she wrote:
Most people now live in countries where two or fewer children are born for every two adults. If all people in the United States today lived through their reproductive years and had babies at an average pace, then it would add up to about 1.66 births per woman. In Europe, that number is 1.5; in East Asia, 1.2; in Latin America, 1.9. Any worldwide average of fewer than two children per two adults means our population shrinks and in the long run each new generation is smaller than the one before. If the world’s fertility rate were the same as in the United States today, then the global population would fall from a peak of around 10 billion to less than two billion about 300 years later, over perhaps 10 generations. And if family sizes remained small, we would continue declining.
What would happen as a consequence? Over the past 200 years, humanity’s population growth has gone hand in hand with profound advances in living standards and health: longer lives, healthier children, better education, shorter workweeks and many more improvements. Our period of progress began recently, bringing the discovery of antibiotics, the invention of electric lightbulbs, video calls with Grandma and the possibility of eradicating Guinea worm disease. In this short period, humanity has been large and growing. Economists who study growth and progress don’t think this is a coincidence. Innovations and discoveries are made by people. In a world with fewer people in it, the loss of so much human potential may threaten humanity’s continued path toward better lives.
Whenever low birthrates get public attention, chances are somebody is concerned about what it means for international competition, immigration or a government’s fiscal challenges over the coming decades as the population ages. But that’s thinking too small. A depopulating world is a big change that we all face together. It’s bigger than geopolitical advantage or government budgets. It’s much bigger than nationalistic worries over which country or culture might manage to eke out a population decline that’s a little bit slower than its neighbors’. . . .
It would be tempting to welcome depopulation as a boon to the environment. But the pace of depopulation will be too slow for our most pressing problems. It will not replace the need for urgent action on climate, land use, biodiversity, pollution and other environmental challenges. If the population hits around 10 billion people in the 2080s and then begins to decline, it might still exceed today’s eight billion after 2100. Population decline would come quickly, measured in generations, and yet arrive far too slowly to be more than a sideshow in the effort to save the planet. Work to decarbonize our economies and reform our land use and food systems must accelerate in this decade and the next, not start in the next century.
This isn’t a call to immediately remake our societies and economies in the service of birthrates. It’s a call to start conversations now, so that our response to low birthrates is a decision that is made with the best ideas from all of us. Kicking the can down the road will make choices more difficult for future generations. The economics and politics of a society in which the old outnumber the young will make it even harder to choose policies that support children.
If we wait, the less inclusive, less compassionate, less calm elements within our society and many societies worldwide may someday call depopulation a crisis and exploit it to suit their agendas — of inequality, nationalism, exclusion or control. Paying attention now would create an opportunity to lay out a path that would preserve freedom, share burdens, advance gender equity, value care work and avoid the disasters that happen when governments try to impose their will on reproduction. . . .
Humanity needs a compassionate, factual and fair conversation about how to respond to depopulation and how to share the burdens of creating each future generation. The way to have that conversation is to start paying attention now.
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