Spiritually crippled society that MLK foresaw

February 24

GUEST: Adaner Usmani, assistant professor of sociology at Harvard University, and editorial board member of the Catalyst Journal of Theory and Strategy, talks about mass incarceration and the false narrative of its creation.

Did Liberals Give Us Mass Incarceration?

Why would anyone feel the need to create a false narrative about the creation of mass incarceration? Or to put it another way, wouldn't everyone in power over the last four decades want a little wiggle room? White America has extended and increased the suffering and gross injustices of Jim Crow for decades after the 1960s, the last time that our country tried to come to terms with its Black underclass. 

So what is not really being said about how our "land of the free" filled its jails with people of color? Adaner Usmani suggests that it has more to do with class theory than out and out racism. And he also finds more people to blame. The reality of our caste system was explored very thoroughly in the Kerner Report, a study initiated by President Johnson as part of his "Great Society." But the results of the report were staggering. To bring a large underclass out of poverty meant that things like wars had to be put aside. The United States could not fight wars abroad and remedy its poverty problems at the same time. Our country had to choose.

Martin Luther King had said the same thing, especially in the year before his assassination. And his warnings were as stark as his words. 

A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom.

Our country did continue its war in Vietnam. After all, President Johnson was always known as "Brown & Root's man in Congress." And Brown & Root was making tens of millions on supplying the war effort. The Military, Industrial Complex had already decided that the US would choose militarism over eliminating poverty. 

All of us have gone along with that decision every since. We have cheered our military adventures and turned a blind eye on our racially biased caste system. It is no wonder false narratives need to be created. We live in the spiritually crippled society that MLK foresaw so many decades ago. 

Welcome to the country with the most dead from COVID

February 17

GUEST: Joshua Frank, author of Big Heat: Earth on the Brink, and managing editor of CounterPunch, discusses how anti-vaxxers and Big Pharma are partners in crime.

Vaccines, RFK Jr. and The Science of Misinformation

How reason is often overcome! One would think that there was a segment of the scientific community that opposed vaccines. But there really isn't. Sure, there are a few podiatrist who make YouTube videos, morons in white coats. How could a large segment of the people believe such crap?

They are happy to buy hundreds of dollars in fake pills from these vaccine doubters as well. Where is their common sense?

Big Pharma is different. These companies rake in billions by making false promises and charging too much. We are the only developed country in the world that allows its pharmaceutical companies to advertise. So the public is sold millions of pills that they don't need, for diseases they don't have. It's a scam, of course, and another inditement of unfettered capitalism. 

So is Big Pharma pushing vaccines in the same way? Not really. These companies face the full scrutiny of our scientific and medical community when they offer these vaccines. It is not that these large companies are honest; they are just adequately regulated so that they can't lie about something this important. This is the subtile difference that anti-vaxxers don't get. There is a large scientific and medical establishment in this country that is mostly focused on improving patient outcomes and preserving people's lives. 

To be an anti-vaxxer then requires a leap of faith. And we have always had people willing to make that jump (see the cartoon from the 1800s). Smallpox was eventually eradicated by tracking down cases and by inoculating the public. It has worked that way in the past, but anit-vaxxers are even less interested in medical history. The believe because their friends believe. And it must be somewhat satisfying to be "in the know" when the rest of the world is supposedly being fooled. Ignorance compliments the psychological need to be important. Welcome to the country with the most dead from COVID in the world.

Crazy demagogue waiting in the wings

What happens when both the liberals and conservatives give up on our current form of government? There are all sorts of reasons why this may happen. The corrupt two party system is so riddled with corporate bribery that dealing with the most important issues of our day seems impossible.

Take global warming. The Republicans are marinated in crude oil cash. But Biden and the Democrats are addicted to the similar pay to play philosophy. The same is true for America's endless conflicts abroad. Biden and Blinken have moved Nato troops right to the very edge of Russia, while feigning an interest in negotiating peace. Two nuclear powers with troops facing each other is what our two corrupt parties have led us to. The future of our species is not as important as the mountains of cash our politicians get from the all important weapons industry.

And it is only going to get worse. The billionaires have expanded their wealth beyond anyone's comprehension, while an ever growing underclass has little or nothing. The anger at this fraudulent system is easily diverted to the hatred, of immigrants, Blacks, gays, and women.

We have seen it all before in the 1930s. When governments become paralyzed by the very rich and their huge corporations, there is always some crazy demagogue waiting in the wings. Then societies reap what they have sown, with book burnings, racial attacks, and armed uprisings. Maybe the evils of unfettered capitalism always lead countries to fascism, where every day is January 6.

Fred Nagel

Big Brother and your keystrokes

February 10

GUEST: Thom Hartmann, top rated progressive syndicated talk show host, and New York Times bestselling author of over 30 books, talks about his latest work, The Hidden History of Big Brother In America: How the death of privacy and the rise of surveillance threaten Us And Our Democracy.

The Hidden History of Big Brother In America

Activist Radio has been lucky enought to have Thom Hartmann on the program for a number of times over the last three years. This time we talked about the emerging surveillance state and how our democracy is withering under the assault of Big Tech.

Hartmann shows us the roots of Big Brother in the early history of our nation, from the whipping of Quakers, through the horrors of the slave trade. This background helps readers understand why search engines and other internet sources of personal data have become commodified and weaponized. Big Brother is a seeker of power, and in the internet age that means spying on all of us.

In fact, Orwell's novel 1984 employs a similar form of domestic spying, a two way TV screen in every room that is almost impossible to avoid. The internet goes about its spying in a much less obvious way. Simply by collecting every keystroke we do day after day, large corporations and our government can collect the minute by minute thought processes of almost everyone. Then comes AI (artificial intelligence) to make the data for each person into a whole, so that each of us can be studied and in the end manipulated. Some of the best thinkers of our time describe the power of AI as an existential threat to our species, in addition to being a tool to destroy our democracy. 

So instead of coming up with crazy ideas about vaccines putting computer chips in people's arms, we ought to be focusing on how to keep our internet lives out of the hands of corporations. It would make sense for AI to create these crazy conspiracies so that we don't hold corporations and our government accountable. For every battle about wearing masks, there is less attention being focused on the collection and manipulation of our data trails. But conspiracy theories have long been a tool of the state. Create enough crazy ideas and no one will be able to organize around anything. 

Read Thom Harmann's Hidden History to understand how we should be protecting our democracy in 2022. 
 

Realizing the power structure that actually exists

February 3

GUEST: Coco Das, member of the National Editorial Board of Refuse Fascism, talks about why white nationalists and racists have to be resisted in the streets as well as in the election booths.

We Refuse to Accept a Fascist America

Will there be a time when the far right in our country simply take control? Trump's plan certainly had a chance of overthrowing our government, by creating chaos, and then taking control using the National Guard. The pieces hadn't quite been put in place, however. His vice president wouldn't go along, nor would any number of top brass in the Pentagon. But it was closer than most of the media will admit. 

Perhaps the establishment (white, well connected, rich and privileged) couldn't really see any advantage in capturing Congress and driving a stake through the US Constitution. Why bother with all that uncertainty? The elites of our nation already control the government and the armed forces. Billions are still coming into their offshore bank accounts, and their grip around the throats of working class Americans just keeps getting tighter. Any drama on the streets only calls into question a century of carefully planned class war. 

Coco Das is talking about another way. From a left perspective, the violence of the right and the neoliberalism of our economy are but two aspects of the same fascism. After 1928, the most powerful German industrialists worked closely with Hitler's Nazi Party. In fact, they funded it, much like the Koch Brothers and other billionaires have paid for the Republican white nationalist movement. 

Das sees an emerging left that will challenge these fascists in the streets. And perhaps she is right. Our Constitution was broken long ago, and only exists as a fig leave to cover a very destructive rule of the rich.   Change will only come when a majority of our citizens realizes the power structure that actually exists, rather than the one our corporate controlled media paints for us. 

Handling this gross inequity on the cheap

 

January 27

GUEST: Tracy Givens Hunter, Director of Public Policy and Education Fund of New York Navigator Program, Board DEI Co-Director for NYCLU, and organizer for Black Lives and End the New Jim Crow Network, talks about the Justice Roadmap and the evils of mass incarceration.

Tracy Givens Hunter "Undoing Racism"

Justice Roadmap

The Justice Roadmap makes interesting reading. The report delves into all the ways that the criminal justice system targets poor and Black people. Many of the ways aren't well known, so it is more like a primer on injustice for the rest of us who have never been incarcerated.

The Kerner Commission Report that came out in 1968 was also great on details. This voluminous study was a roadmap for the future, with a dire warning that injustices would continue to fester unless certain steps were made. But the steps were not little ones. It called on a massive infusion of resources and funds to bring the nation's Black population out of Jim Crow. 

“White society is deeply implicated in the ghetto. White institutions created it, white institutions maintain it, and white society condones it.”   -Kerner Coommission

Without this monumental effort, the report warned that society would "fracture" into two radically unequal societies, one for African Americans and the other for whites. President Johnson, who had ordered the report, ignored it. So did the general public. Perhaps today's incarceration nightmare is more about handling this gross inequity on the cheap then it is about oppressing the nation's Black population. 

We have Adamer Usmani coming up as a guest. He is assistant professor of sociology at Harvard University, and we talk about his article in the Jacobin, "Did Liberals Give Us Mass Incarceration?" Stay tuned to Activist Radio!