Fighting For A Rule of Law
Use it or Lose it!
I was publishing my most recent post on Medium but I had a few additional thoughts so I decided to modify the post by including them, thinking that it would be a simple task that would not take long but then the thoughts kept coming until the post felt very unwieldy and so I decided to make it a serial post instead.
Here is Part One on Medium, slightly modified from what I published here.
When I published it I decided to use “Petite Bourgeoisie” as a search term. Some say to use the most popular terms but I think it is good to include at least one lesser popular term and indeed “Petite Bourgeoise” is that as I am the first one to use it so I can watch it and see if it multiplies- or not.
We are in a new era. The Trump admin is surely trying to overwhelm us and it is working. In addition to whatever else we are focused on, we have a new cultural war to confront. So much is being thrown at us that we have to take our organizational skills up a few notches to develop a method for dealing with it all.
I dip into a conversation on Facebook in a group called We the People where there are so many people who believe that telling a person that they are stupid and brainwashed by the system is a debate skill, that I found myself blocking users frequently. If someone makes half a point beyond that I give them a chance.
In confronting MAGA one must have goals. One of my goals is to get this cult to understand that their bad manners do not help their cause. The way a MAGA cultist greets the rest of the world is “LOL! Are you STUPID? LOl! Lol! LoL” Can we break them away from that? That is the question.
I was feeling I was wasting my time but since I have a habit of starting things without a specific goal in mind and discovering in the course of action that there is a purpose, I identified the purpose as the intent to pierce the hold of disinformation over MAGA. MAGA cultists continually make assertions of fact which they rarely source. They “accuse” me of Watching CNN, which I rarely watch, and they rarely identify the source of their commonly shared disinformation. It is fair to assume they watch Fox News which was once my mainstay but I stopped watching Fox when it aligned itself with Trump. MAGA probably gets their disinformation from Truth Social and X where Trump spoon feeds them what to think
These people need to be exposed to fact-checkable information, which they will inevitably ignore at first but as they are continually exposed to information over a length of time it may have an effect. This is the point I made in my previous post in describing the long-term evolution of my interaction with the authors of the paper I was reviewing. Although one might not immediately perceive that one’s actions have an effect the long view sometimes proves otherwise. Don’t give up, patiently persist and see what happens because there is a window of opportunity now that may soon be closed if Trump continues to exercise his authority. Mark Zuckerberg is now one of Trump’s loyal oligarchs so free speech may not be tolerated on Facebook in the future. Is it a coincidence that most of the tech oligarchs aligned with Trumo are in the information industries?
The disinformation industry is powerful but it can’t deal with the grassroots so easily as large collectives. Qur conversations might be being tracked and incorporated by AI. I commented to a climate change denier about the melting Icebergs and soon thereafter a new disinformation meme about icebergs appeared in my stream advising not to believe the scientists, but to believe memes. If I start seeing memes popping up about the petite bourgeoisie, then I will surely be suspicious since I am the only one using that search term on Medium to date so I know it is way below the radar.
There is so much news, we can’t cover it all but I was glad to see that the government workers have filed a lawsuit against DOGE and posted the lawsuit on We the People. The response I received is typical and demonstrates another key feature of the MAGA mentality, the inability to properly distinguish the identity of one thing from another:
My response:
I think you misunderstand and I kind of think you are identifying DOGE as "the American People" and the federal employees as a private institution.
It is the government and the federal employees that represent everyday Americans.
The complaint states"
7. While FACA permits the use of advisory committees, it imposes various guardrails to prevent them from turning into vehicles for advancing private interest in the federal decision-making process and secretly influencing federal officials’exercise of policymaking discretion. Those guardrails include the requirements that advisory committee have a fair balance in viewpoints represented, that they do not meet in secret, and that their records and work product be made available for public inspection. FACA also prohibits advisory committees from meeting or taking any action until a charter for the advisory committee has been filed, specifying, among other things, the nature of the committee’s work and duties and the federal official to whom the committee is responsible"
The suit is saying that DOGE does not consult with the people in government and is leaving them out of a process in which they are supposed to be included.
The FACA act applies to transparency and freedom of information, which applies to ANY advisory committee and that includes DOGE. The Freedom of Information Act means the public does have access. The secrecy is not on the part of the government, the government say DOGE is acting in secret.
This is a very trying time for the USA but perhaps it will bring us back in alignment with our rule of law. We are witnessing what happens when that alignment has failed and has been failing us for a long time and at every level of government including the local level.
Perhaps in Maine, we can start enforcing the law that says the Maine Constitution and the United States Constitution are to be taught in our elementary public school system. That’s something we could make happen locally. I would provide the link to the law but although the Maine Statute search function appears to be working again, not so for Title 20, Education.
I was just yesterday about my US Government class in high school where among a few other things we read and analyzed the US constitution nearly word for word. The first word, unless maybe you include the title or subtitle "Preamble" is "We". Reading this word and discussing this and slavery and allowing non-Christians to participate in their government, i brought me to the place where "We" it is very inclusive. It includes all citizens and in most circumstances all residents, including law violators. Of the people, for, and by, is similarly inclusive.
Likely the constitution should have been included earlier, but this class was so well taught that I have no qualm with it. I remember the teacher appearing to me as dry and strict the first day. Likely I was responding to badly interpreted non verbal cues.
I think that people that consume too much propaganda lose the ability to think rationally. Trying to explain to them rationally why they are wrong seems a trap. But I think that the only way to cure them of what I used to call AM Radio Poisoning likely requires exposing them to rational thought. I am not good at this. I show too much disdain for the irrational.
I enjoyed reading this.