We'll help you get it done, Joe-- come join our one big unionExactly six months from today: Inauguration Day, 2021. Consider what the impact would be, over the six months until inauguration day (on January 20, 2021), and the subsequent "100 days," "10 days" and "1 day," if hundreds of organizations, supported by millions of people, starting next month (in August), publicly threatening and preparing for a general strike to start 72 hours after the inauguration, with these organizations agreeing, far in advance of the inauguration, to call off their general strike if the newly inaugurated President, within those 72 hours, signs executive orders tailored to jump-start a short list of major overdue federal actions.There is a need to prevent a strong Presidential election victory margin for the anti-Trump presidential ticket, from being opportunistically interpreted as a "blank check" for the unrepentant Biden/Democratic Establishment (not to mention their new comrades, in the emerging Democratic-branded uni-party, among the Romneys, Bushes, Bloombergs, Kasichs, etc.). There is an urgent need to pre-empt the reversion to federal austerity, which is otherwise baked in, as the Friedmanite elite reaction to the recent bailout binge. There is an equally urgent need to pre-empt normalization of the Pandemic-catalyzed Panopticon ("just for Pandemics-- of course") jointly run by the intelligence community and their new BFF high-tech oligopolists-cum-monopolists.Obvious is the need to encourage the Pentagon leadership (and their future employers in the "war for profit" industries), to decide that their recent position ("don’t send our troops to intervene in and deepen a domestic American civil war-- especially one destructive of risk race relations within the military") is prudent to stick with, even if the intervention policy is floated not impulsively and and divisively by Trump but instead under color of unifying rhetoric through customer elite consensus-building channels.Perhaps all of this will reassure-- and secure more votes against Trump from-- supporters of Bernie and local Green (and even Libertarian) candidates, policies and principles, and from the many non-voters who long ago became convinced that "my vote doesn’t matter because Presidents will do whatever their biggest donors tell them to do." The above proposal can enhance rhetorical framing, coalition building and activist mobilization, largely by:
• Acknowledging the fact, known to many and suspected by more, that legislative sabotage by lobbyists (and plausible "I tried" excuses for presidents and other elected officials abandoning their campaign promises) is the single output that our present system is best-designed to ensure-- especially in the short time period before substantive debate is drowned out by the rallying cry "compromise all to win suburban seats in midterms!"• Softening the otherwise sharp wedge being driven by Biden’s platform and position "task forces," and other backroom negotiations for endorsements, to deepen divides and acrimony between:(a) sceptics, and (b) those Progressives who see no path forward other than engaging in these processes, despite the long track record of money-drenched backrooms being weaponized to neutralize and discredit Progressive leaders.• Offering all Progressives, whether they now feel wedged one way, the other way, or chopped in half, new outlets (for their organizing and proselytizing energies) that are:
(a) more productive than engaging with Biden’s task forces and backroom negotiations, (b) vastly more productive than debating whether it is strategic and/or virtuous for Progressives to self-censor on Biden’s long career of (and his biggest donors’ embrace and reinforcement of) grossly anti-Progressive bugs and features, and (c) infinitely more productive than arguing about whether Trump’s electoral college prospects have any chance not only to overcome the Pandemic’s decimation and traumatization of senior communities and other prior Trump supporters in Florida and other swing states, but also to overcome a (vote lawsuit-deciding) Supreme Court that has ever-more reasons to perceive Trump as a threat to the very domestic system and global primacy from which the Court derives its power and prestige.
"I Can't Breath" by Nancy OhanianHow to go about all this? Start with a website and a peoples' plebiscite to determine the list and text of the executive orders which should be:
• collected on a website• ranked in importance by means of votes solicited from all U.S. residents (limited to one vote per Social Security number and probably per ISP address)• specifying (also by the above voting process) the minimum number, of highest-ranked orders, that most participants regard as sufficient to avert (or defer) the general strike.
Ready for action? Start just listening to some music... maybe dancing? Meditating? It's our country; no one else is going to save it for us.