Self-Interview on Venezuela and Socialism

     1Q: What is the definition of socialism? Is it a political system, or an economic system? Does socialism always lead to communism?

     1A: Socialism is social ownership, or worker control, of the means of production. The means of production include factories, farms, and workplaces. Some socialists may also want to socialize land, and/or railroads, energy, or other utilities. Marx, Lenin, and Khrushchev wanted socialism to lead to communism, but some socialists are more reformist and gradualist, and don't expect communism to come to America. Socialists oppose the personal and private ownership of things that make more sense to own collectively, namely, things that are occupied and used collectively, like housing, workplaces, public utilities, common lands, etc..

     2Q. People say that Cuba, China, Vietnam, Laos, and North Korea are the best examples of communist countries. Do you think that is true?

     2A: Cuba, China, Vietnam, and Laos all have markets, so they are not communist (by most accepted definitions of communism). They may have the appearance of communist countries because they are governed by communist parties, or because they have autocracy or one-party rule. But autocracy is not a mandatory feature of communism. Also, if true communism is anarchistic (as anarcho-communists believe), then one-party rule, and political nations in the first place, would logically have nothing to do with communism.
     Most of those countries I would describe as some of the best recent examples of authoritarian communism (a little less so Cuba). China certainly doesn't represent the free communism that Karl Marx envisioned (much less the idea that it would be worldwide, and empower the individual).

     3Q. Are there any countries left in the world that are still socialist? And are there any examples of successful socialist societies, either now or in the past? Are any European countries fully socialist?

     3A: The “Eurosocialist” countries in Europe are really closer to neoliberalism and democratic socialism than they are to full socialism. Countries like Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and the Netherlands are a lot like the United States: they're countries with regulated markets and a robust social safety net. Calling those countries socialist is like calling F.D.R. a socialist, it's an exaggeration.

     Socialist societies have existed, and do exist now, but they are usually short-lived. Sometimes they're destroyed by outside forces, sometimes they became tyrannical and had to be overthrown. Examples include Catalonia, Aragon, and the Mondragon cooperative in 1930s Spain, anarchist Ukraine in the 1930s, and the Paris Communes of 1848 and 1871. The Mondragon cooperative still exists today, and so does Rojava in Kurdistan.

     By the way, I would call Iceland one of the freest countries that exists, and I would also describe it as one of the best examples of both a free socialist and libertarian society.

     4Q. Critics of socialism often say that socialists just want to be lazy, not work, accept handouts, and “steal other people's money” by redistributing the wealth. Do you think that is an accurate description of socialism?

     4A: I think this is a description of the Democratic Party platform, intended to criticize it, and also used as a criticism of socialism, which has some similarities but is not exactly the same thing. The idea that socialists want to steal people's money is not true; it is wealth and opportunity that they want to redistribute, not money.

     Most socialists, communists, and anarchists don't even like the idea of money or currency in the first place, and want to get rid of it. Most socialists would agree that whether our children live or die from an illness should not depend on how much we work for government-printed pieces of paper, stamped with arbitrary values, covered in toxic processing chemicals.

     Socialists and Democrats do both want social welfare, and government assistance, but only the socialists realize in full that the problem is deeper than satisfying our temporary needs, and handouts like Food Stamps are just a temporary solution. What needs to happen is that ordinary people need more opportunities to acquire skills and education, and artificial privilege erected by law with the help of taxpayer dollars needs to be eliminated if we're going to claim that we have a free market and a free, meritocratic society.

     The people in Venezuela are not poor because they lack money; in fact, they have so much money that they don't know what to do with it, because of hyperinflation. They're poor because they lack resources; food, medications, adequate shelter, and other things we need to survive. Socialists understand that if you put too many obstacles - like hard work, and requirements to use money and currency, and pay onerous taxes, and follow overly stringent regulations - between people who are trying to support their families, and the things they need to do in order to do that, then the streets eventually fill up with starving people, sick people, and corpses.
     A society that considers bodies of sick people piling up in the streets "not a problem" or "not my problem" cannot rightfully be called a society.

     5Q. Is the Democratic Party socialist? If not, is anyone in the Democratic Party a socialist? Who are the most socialist-leaning people in American public office today?

     5A: Hillary Clinton is not “far-left”, and neither is Nancy Pelosi. They've both affirmed their commitment to capitalism over socialism. They're two of the most pro- Wall Street Democrats, and they've been used to making deals with Republicans, and corporate lobbyists who pay both sides, for a long long time.

     I think Maxine Waters wants people to think she is a socialist, but I doubt she really is one. Bernie Sanders, Sherrod Brown of Ohio, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, I think, are the best examples of socialist-leaning politicians in office today.

     6Q. What is the Congressional Progressive Caucus, and why do some people think it is socialist?

     6A: The Congressional Progressive Caucus is what's called an ideological congressional member organization (C.M.O.). Basically it's a faction of the Democratic Party. Other factions of the Democrats include the New Democrats, the Blue Dogs, and the Populists, just like the Republicans have the Tea Party Caucus, and several other groups.

     The Congressional Progressive Caucus has for a long time been cited by people on the far right as one of the top groups infiltrating American politics to promote socialism and communism. I understand why they would think that, since the Progressives are the farthest-left faction in the Democratic Party, but Progressive Democrats are not likely to cut off their association with neoliberal Democrats like Clinton and Pelosi until the membership of the Republican Party plummets significantly.

     Progressives would choose a free communist society if they could, and if it were easy, but they are gradualists and reformists, unlike social anarchists and anarcho-communists, so they insist on reform through elections, and that's why they compromise with pro- Wall Street Democrats so much, and, in the eyes of some, sell out their base (working families and the urban poor).

     7Q. What is the difference between a Democrat, a socialist, and a “democratic socialist”? Has America ever had a socialist leader? Were F.D.R., or Teddy Roosevelt, or any other presidents, socialist, or inspired by socialism?

     7A: An American Democratic partisan is not quite a full “one man, one vote” small-”D” democrat. On one hand, American Democrats are steeped in the tradition of American liberal-conservatism, and democratic republicanism. But on the other hand, modern Democrats stray away from the tradition of a liberal society and a limited government, which was the party's platform in the two decades after Reconstruction ended.

     The question surrounding democracy in American government is, fundamentally, “Whose property are we democratically voting on?” Also, “Did people give to the public pot voluntarily, and did they earn that money fairly in the first place?” Socialists know that a business is not competing fairly if it is subsidized and bailed out. But Democrats can't seem to decide how much of the economy should be up to be distributed according to a majority vote.

     The idea that the liberties in the Bill of Rights would ever be put up for a public vote frightens conservatives, libertarians, and even some progressives and nationalists. That is why, in my opinion, it is unlikely that real socialism could take root in America (or, at least, without a revolution), and that's why a lot of people are afraid of it. It would mean a dramatic change in how politics, the economy, and society are run.

     “Democratic socialist” is the term we use to describe people like F.D.R., and Norman Thomas (who inspired him), people who wanted American democracy with socialist influences. The term “democratic socialist” is distinct from “social democrat”, which was a term used to describe German communists in parliament in the early 20^th century. Personally, I think it would make more sense if the terms were flipped.

     8Q. Is Venezuela currently socialist? Did they achieve socialism under Chavez? Was the current crisis in Venezuela caused by socialism, or by something else?

     8A: Venezuela is not quite socialist, because it still has billionaires and private ownership. But it's almost socialist. They were closer to socialism, and more prosperous, under Hugo Chavez.

     Critics of the Venezuelan system arguing that nationalizing oil reserves is automatically socialist, but it's only socialist if the profits are reinvested to benefit the people. And that's what Chavez did – tied oil profits to a citizens' fund - until late in his presidency the value of oil went down, and thus the Venezuelan economy tanked. Tying oil profits to a citizens' dividend, or sovereign wealth fund or permanent fund, is something that's also been tried by Alaska, Norway, and Libya.

     It's true that the country did spend a lot on social welfare when they thought the oil-based economy would continue to succeed. But it did not help that the country was burdened with some 7 million Colombian refugees due to the civil war several decades prior. It also didn't help that, in 2002, the U.S. orchestrated a coup wherein Chavez was kidnapped, and then released and restored to power after two days, after a right-wing opposition backed and funded from Washington, D.C. briefly took control.
     State spending directed towards attempts to fight poverty, which could be described as "socialist", is not the only economic system that's to blame for Venezuela's problems. The profit motive of international capitalist sellers of food, toilet paper, and other necessities, is also partially to blame.
     Some who analyze the situation in Venezuela believe that the country's middle and upper classes' demand for a wider variety of products in stores, has been used to portray the food shortages as worse than they actually are (not that they aren't extremely problematic), and that ensuring a wide variety of foods is not as important as delivering large amounts of staples in order to keep people sufficiently well fed. Big business and media in the country, naturally, benefit from broadcasting demands for their own products, so that explanation seems to hold up to scrutiny, especially considering how problematic intellectual property can be in facilitating free, open, and low-cost international trade.
     Additionally, many Latin American countries, Honduras included, have been plagued with drugs, and the C.I.A. has not only undermined regimes all over Latin America, it has traded drugs for weapons in the course of arming all kinds of rebel groups in order to achieve those ends. Also, the U.S. imposed sanctions on Venezuela in 2014 and 2018, after U.S.-Venezuelan relations soured (following Chavez's apparent embrace of Fidel Castro and Saddam Hussein over George W. Bush, and Venezuela's failure to cooperate enough to fight terrorism in the eyes of the United States).

     So nationalization of oil, civil war, U.S. military interference and economic sanctions, refusal of police to fight violent drug gangs, price controls on food that foreign food sellers have refused to accommodate, and poor prioritization of food needs - as well as poor maintenance of the means of oil extraction - have all been significant causes of Venezuela's problems.
     American "economic imperialism", with the goal of slowing the development of the "resource-cursed" Venezuela (with its huge reserves of oil in the North, the price of which collapsed 70% in 2014, the year after Chavez died) - and a sense of legal entitlement to future profits from sales of consumer goods and everyday needs - are much more responsible for Venezuela's current problems than "socialism" (which, again, means worker control, ownership, or management of the means of production; workplaces, factories, large machines, farms, and maybe other things). There will not be full socialism in Venezuela until no workplace or energy company is owned by a private owner. 
     If Venezuela pursues more disciplined, motivated worker control over energy utilities, becomes successful at ensuring fair health and safety standards at oil extraction facilities, and expands oil refining in its own country, then it will be on the road to energy independence - and with it, economic and political independence - and it will also prove to the world that a socialist economy can be responsible, clean, and self-sufficient. Unfortunately, that will only piss America off (until it finds itself reasonable leadership who don't want to subjugate Venezuela's interests to their own).
     It could be argued that Venezuela's unrestrained social welfare spending in the face of massive temporary profits reflects a socialist desire to spend more in the short-term and overlook long-term problems. But it can also be argued that capitalism is more concerned about short-term gains than socialism, because capitalism has the reputation of prioritizing short-term profits over human lives. To any person with a conscience, the needs of Venezuela to move its most vulnerable citizens out of dire poverty and into acceptable housing, ought to outweigh the needs of Western commodities traders to acquire secondary homes for themselves.

     9Q. What is the difference between libertarian socialism and authoritarian socialism, and what are some examples of how their economic systems differ from each other? Is Venezuela libertarian-socialist or authoritarian-socialist? Would you describe Hugo Chavez or Nicolas Maduro as autocrats or dictators, or as men of the people?

     9A: Maduro is certainly having a hard time convincing his people that he is one of them, and worthy of Chavez's legacy. Some believe that Maduro displays more autocratic, authoritarian-socialist tendencies than Chavez, whom is viewed as more dedicated to freedom and equality. Or maybe it just appears that way, because the economy was so much more successful under Chavez.
     Maduro has also made attempts to replace the national legislature, and fill the supreme court with people who support him. But in Maduro's defense, he did that in response to the United Socialist Party's December 2015 electoral loss to an opposition made up of many of the same elements as the coup that ousted his predecessor Chavez in 2002 (with the help of the C.I.A.). Carmona, the president installed for two days during that coup, made the same moves that Maduro made some 14 years later: replace the national legislature with a new one, and pack the supreme court.

     Authoritarian socialists use autocracy, centralization of decision-making power, single party rule, price controls, rationing, and quota systems; while libertarian socialists use mutual aid, direct action, voluntary exchange. They also use radical reclamation of stolen property; also called appropriation, or re-appropriation. Re-appropriation is distinct from expropriation, the term Chavez used to justify nationalizing resources in the name of socialism and populism.
     Most libertarian socialists want to avoid expropriation, and are instead focused on achieving both freedom and equality through action that evades the state and tries to make it unnecessary. Authoritarian socialists, on the other hand, believe that freedom is often a threat to equality, and that, therefore, order is necessary to ensure equality. I would recommend that direct food aid continue in Venezuelan society, with or without the government's assistance.

     10Q. Do you think America could ever become socialist? If so, what would it look like? Is there any risk that if America tried socialism, it would end up poor like Venezuela? Why or why not?

     10A: I think the most likely way America could become socialist, at this point, is if Bernie Sanders got elected president, and appointed a cabinet with some more establishment-type Democrats but at least half “democratic socialists” who think more like him.

     But I don't see America approaching real socialism until at least the second term of the presidency of a socialist-leaning politician like Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez, or Sherrod Brown, and at that, only after significant changes are made to labor law (such as the repeal of most or all of the Taft-Hartley Act, which severely limits the ability to engage in meaningful, coordinated strikes and boycotts).

     There's an outside chance that socialist and communist parties in the U.S. - like Community Party U.S.A., Socialist Equality Party, Socialist Workers' Party, and the Party of Socialism and Liberation - may become more popular, and caucus with the Democrats, and grow the Democrats' coalition to the point where it is unstoppable and stays in the majority, and becomes virtually a single-party-rule system.

     I don't think there's any real risk that America would become anywhere near as poor as Venezuela is right now if it tried socialism. Marx made it clear that the countries where it would be easiest and most practical to achieve socialism are in the more industrialized nations, and the wealthier ones (like America), not the poorer, less industrialized ones (like Venezuela).

     America overproduces all sorts of things: cars, junk food, toys, consumer goods. So why should it be so difficult to afford to buy anything in this country? I think it's because of brand names, bad patent laws, trade subsidies, and protection of “private” property by public police. Socialists understand that violence, and the legal enforcement of the right to profit more and more each year off of one's private property, are the most important thing backing the value of those products, and also the value of our currency.

     There is more than enough to go around in this country, it's just not being distributed right. Take food for example; the U.S. throws away between a third and half of the food it produces every year. Food pantries are full of bread and other things they can't get rid of. The show Extreme Couponing shows us that using coupons right can reduce the price of food by 99%. But even when free food is available, in abundance, people don't always have easy access to it, and the law may require it to be thrown away before it goes bad. Which causes prices to increase.

     We can't afford it, so it goes bad, so they throw it away, so we can't afford it more. Maybe if you send it to us for free, it'll get to us before it spoils! How is mass-produced junk food so expensive, when you couldn't pay me to eat most of it!? You don't need to be a socialist to admit that something's not right here. The problem is that we're valuing obeying the law, and protecting the property and brand of the food producers, over our families' needs to eat.

     11Q. Some people believe that socialism, and free markets or capitalism on the other hand, are incompatible. Do you agree, and why or why not?

     11A: Socialists and communists would like a marketless society if they could have it, because most of them believe that markets, trade, currency, and money are not, and should not be, necessary in a just world.

     But it is not necessary to abolish markets in order to achieve socialism or communism; in fact, there is a proposed economic system called market socialism, in which markets still exist, but what's being bought and sold on the markets would mostly be cooperatively or socially owned, rather than privately owned. Mutualism is a similar system.

     “Market communism” exists too; this is a term that's been applied to the economic system used by Deng Xiaoping in China from the late 70s to the mid-1980s. China opened its markets to foreign investors, and as a result, the largely state-owned, socialized economy, became more balanced against other types of property ownership (private and personal).

     Unfortunately, Deng's regime ended with the Tiananmen Square Massacre, because Deng's regime was not prepared to face the consequences of more economic openness and cultural openness to the West. The people started to demand much more freedom than Deng's regime was willing to accommodate, and China started drifting back towards authoritarian communism, away from a vision of socialism geared towards freedom.

     12Q. Critics of “socialized medicine” warn of rationing and long lines in places like Canada and the U.K.. Do you believe that adopting a socialized, non-profit, or universal health care system in America would improve the state of health in the U.S.? Why or why not?

     12A: That all depends on what "socialized medicine" really means, and whether “universal health care” means universal care or universal insurance. I think the importance of insurance is being overstated, and the importance of health care, and access to health technologies and medications, is overshadowed.

     It would help to get the profit motive out of health insurance, but this issue should not be discussed without also addressing the questions: “Why did we ever repeal the law that prohibited health insurance companies from operating on a for-profit basis in the first place?”, and “Why would a health insurance company agree to cover for a disease that a person already has, when they know they're going to lose that bet?”

     As a member of the Libertarian Socialist Caucus of the Libertarian Party, I'm inspired by both socialist and free-market libertarian ideas. People who study both fields, understand that it's not only the socialization of risks that private owners take that's the problem, it's also a problem that people are not allowed the freedom or opportunity to compete against established producers, and provide better products for better prices and/or better qualities (without being accused of trying to corner the market, or push others out of competition).

     New technologies in pharmaceuticals, and new developments in the way issuers structure health insurance policies, mean that the health industry is, by no means, exempt from those economic lessons. I oppose the individual insurance mandate, and I would support a public option, but I wouldn't ban for-profit health insurance. But people shouldn't assume that banning for-profit health insurance is the best way to achieve positive change in health policy; the main problem isn't that for-profit insurance isn't banned, it's that not-for-profit health insurance is discouraged by the government because the government can't find a way to justify taxing it.

     I would expect that a truly socialist health care system would be managed by a board comprised of doctors, nurses, other health care employees, and medical scientists, in order to fit the “worker control and management” model traditionally associated with socialism. I would want to make sure that patients - the consumers of medications – are also represented, even though they are not hospital workers. Including patients on a board of managers would make a hospital into a consumer-cooperative, instead of a cooperative enterprise.

     13Q. Why did you decide to call your second collection of essays “Soft Communism for 90's Kids”?

     13A: Because I am a 90's kid; I was born in 1987. I was four when the Soviet Union collapsed, so as a result, I didn't grow up being taught to be afraid of the Russians or of communism.

     I was 14 when 9/11 happened, and 20 when the financial crisis of 2007 hit. I've seen a police state steadily growing in my country, and I know we have troops in 4 out of 5 countries around the globe. I honestly have more critical things to say about my own country than I do about our rivals in Moscow. In Virginia, you can get a longer sentence for protesting the government on the wrong section of a public sidewalk, than you can for committing murder. In my opinion, the American police state makes the U.S.S.R. look like they weren't even trying.

     I called my book “Soft Communism for 90's Kids” because people in my age group are not afraid of socialism, the left wing, progressive politics, or anarchism. I wrote the book to inform people about changes to labor law in Wisconsin, my criticism of federal labor laws like the Wagner Act and Taft-Hartley, and to introduce the economic systems of Georgism and Mutualism in order to show that there is a bridge between American libertarianism and the radical left after all.

     14Q. What are the names of some of the articles you've written about socialism and labor law?

     14A: Articles I've written about socialism and labor law include “What Liberals and Conservatives Both Get Wrong About Socialism”, “Janus Decision Reveals Two-Faced Nature of Collective Bargaining Law”, “Majority Unionism, Compulsory Unionism, and Compulsory Voting Hurt Workers”, and “Wisconsin and Collective Bargaining: My Journey on Labor Policy”.

     You can read them on my blog, the Aquarian Agrarian, at www.aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com.

http://aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2018/09/what-liberals-and-conservatives-both.html
http://aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2018/07/janus-decision-reveals-two-faced-nature.html
http://aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2014/11/compulsory-and-majority-unionism-hurt.html
http://aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2013/12/wisconsin-and-collective-bargaining-my.html

Questions Written on December 8th, 2018

Answers Written on December 9th, 2018

Published on December 9th, 2018
Edited and Expanded on December 10th, 11th, and 13th, 2018

Supporters of Free Markets Should Oppose Gifts of State Privilege to Property Owners

     Some free marketers don't know capitalism when they see it.
     1) Easy credit from the Federal Reserve,

     2) small business loans from the S.B.A.,
     3) incorporation as an L.L.C. (which confers privilege to be irresponsible of legal and financial liability),
     4) the granting of patents, trademarks, and other forms of intellectual property rights,
     5) continued insurance of business accounts by the taxpayers (through the F.D.I.C.),
     6) giving trade promotions and protections,
     7) favorable professional regulation that has the benefit of shutting out established firms' competitors,
     8) sometimes even subsidizing and bailing out, and
     9) protecting physically with state employed police and military, and state licensed "private" security guards:

     These are all ways in which government protects each one of the businesses in this country. Not each business receives all of these, but nearly all receive at least a few.

     The taxpayers - a group which includes poor people, who pay sales taxes, income taxes, and innumerable opportunity costs - foot the bill in each stage of this process. Anyone who supports retaining the state's monopoly on these things, cannot be said to support competition, not free markets, nor true statelessness.

     Leaving aside the issue of whether and where it's legal to fully own property in the first place, anyone who is born without property is coerced into either foraging and homesteading for survival (if possible and legal), or else selling one's labor. Those are the only "legitimate" modes of survival which do not involve either theft or violating minor infractions which arguably criminalize victimless crimes.

     Aside from being coerced into "choosing" from among these, to whom we shall sell our labor, we are additionally coerced into relying upon established sellers for food and other products, because our foraging and homesteading options are limited, and because our ability to go into competition with those producers is limited by an regulations.

     And in a "free market capitalist" system with "minimal" regulations, "minimal" will be excused to justify any or all of the business privileges I have listed, based on the false assumption that capital is the source of wealth (rather than land and labor, which come prior to it).

     That idea, of course, is what leads to the notion that corporate tax credits are socialist. Because only someone so deluded as to think free markets must involve even "minimal" business supports (from the state), would argue that allowing corporations (which the public created) to keep more of the money it has stolen while maintaining its books with taxpayer backup, counts as giving workers collective ownership of those corporations.

For more information, please click the following link to read my previous article on this subject:

http://aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2016/04/government-is-source-of-corporate.html

Originally Written on August 11^th, 2018

Edited on December 1^st, 2018

Published on December 1^st, 2018

Our Basic Needs Are Abundant, Not Scarce

     In late November 2017, I posted a commentary to social media regarding what I regard as the most basic and primary set of human needs, whether they are scarce or abundant, and how we could access and afford them more easily. The post, originally titled “Everything Should Be Free”, follows:

     The law of supply and demand dictates that if a good is abundant (i.e., more exists than people need), its price will fall towards zero/free.

     To clarify, resources existing in a fixed amount, does not necessarily guarantee scarcity by that fact alone. Nor does scarcity only refer to shortages; shortages which are locally felt may be a symptom of inefficient distribution, unequal distribution. Scarcity is a condition in which a resource exists in a smaller amount than the amount demanded or needed.

     We can verify that most things we need to survive are not scarce, by simply thinking about it. Which things do we need to survive, and which phenomena and technologies make them freer? Our most basic needs are air, water, food, shelter, clothing, and medicine. I have not addressed clothing here, nor the need for plumbing and sanitation; but I did not leave them out because they're any less important; they're no less important. Instead, I have chosen to comment on how to make energy and transportation more easily available to people.

     AIR is free to breathe, but there will only truly be no price for clean air, when there is no more unnecessary air pollution, and when the costs of cleaning the air up (that is, cleaning up after ourselves) have gone down to zero. But it is possible.

     WATER falls from the sky in abundance. We can collect it, but only when it's legal. Sometimes it's illegal for a good reason, like when altering rain flow affects our neighbors' property, or threatens wildlife in the area, or drastically changes the water table or causes flooding. But when collecting rainwater does not require creating an artificial lake, it can be done freely and safely. Through rooftop water filters and rain collection systems, we could make water much easier to afford and acquire.
There is also a product called LifeStraw, which converts contaminated water into free, safe, filtered, drinkable water. If this product were made easily and cheaply available to the third world, perhaps through charity or mutual aid, then struggling people would have a much easier time acquiring water, one of the most primary things we need to survive.

     Enough FOOD is produced on the planet annually to feed 10 billion, while we have to feed only 7.5 billion. While the US throws away 40% of food, France requires groceries to donate unsold food to charity. Teach people how to grow food, and let them do it in cities. Watch “Extreme Couponing” and look up the mutual aid organization Food Not Bombs.

     SHELTER could be easily made cheap, or even free, through liberalization of homesteading requirements, changing local building codes to keep up with modern safety innovations and allow experimental architectural techniques, and returning the vast swaths of land owned by the federal government back to the states and the people. This will make land more available, and in turn, more places to stay.
     There are now 6 empty residences for each homeless American. Remove all government supports (including police protection) for absentee property ownership. Allow people to host homeless and needy people in their apartments without requiring them to pay rent, and allow renters and trailer and tiny house residents to claim state homestead tax credits (in states other than Wisconsin, the only state in which residents can do so).

     MEDICINE is kept artificially scarce and artificially expensive through patents, taxes, insurance mandates, trade barriers (against foreign-made pharmaceuticals), deadly approval delays, and other unnecessary and often unconstitutional intrusions. Getting rid of these privileges and barriers could help reduce the prices of medical care, medications, and medical devices.

     ENERGY is kept artificially expensive through patents, regional monopolies, preferential subsidies for one energy source or the other, and more. Letting the market choose renewable resources like solar, wind, hydroelectric, geothermal, and Alternating Current energy could save money, lives, and the planet.

     TRANSPORTATION could be made cheaper by withdrawing all government and taxpayer supports from car dealerships, used car lots, and car graveyards. Vehicles in car graveyards, and aircraft sitting on government-owned lands, could be repaired and turned over to those who need them. The idea that car dealerships sit on cars, and have state-licensed private security guards and the police to protect them (sometimes at taxpayer expense) should indicate that price reductions are the only way to clear the market. The fact that supply and demand are not meeting, and causing markets to clear, ought to indicate that what's being sold simply isn't worth what they're asking for. Maybe it even indicates that there is not currently a free or fair market in transportation.

For more information:

- look up Citizens for Truth in School on Facebook,

- read my article "You Don't Need Money to Live" at http://aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2017/02/you-dont-need-money-to-live.html

and

- read my blog entry "Links on Homelessness and Moneylessness"
http://aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2018/05/links-on-homelessness-moneylessness.html

Originally Written in Late November 2017

Edited and Expanded on December 1^st, 2018

Published on December 1^st, 2018

Progressivism is Not Leftism, It's Statism

     Say what you will about the supposed devolution of progressivism into neo-liberalism, it has always been that way. Progressives trusted government from Day 1.

     In 1924, the radical faction of the U.S. labor movement stopped pursuing political reform. The faction of that movement that wanted to continue political progress, became the Progressive Party, and supported people like Robert M. LaFollette.

     Progressives, and the neo-liberals who brainwash them into doing Republicans' bidding, are not leftists. You can't assume they're leftists just because they're left of the American center. The American center is pretty far right. You can be left of American political center and still be right-of-center in the big scheme of things.

     Most American progressives (at least the ones with a modicum of political power) do not claim to be socialists; instead, they say that they support capitalism (or else a market system) but with reform. Given that neo-liberals Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton do exactly that, what is to differentiate them from progressives? None; it is the difference between a dog and its tail.

     Most people who conservatives call communists, socialists, and leftists are not really leftists; they're just liberals. Liberals who are complacent with big government, the military-industrial complex, domestic surveillance, illegal and unconstitutional government programs, unfounded limitations on majority voting, and fiscal austerity.

     Additionally, whom are OK with "limited" government regulation (that really just limits our ability to compete against the multinational companies that are screwing us over). Also, with what I call Nazi-Sympathizing Rape-Enablers (N.S.R.E.s; that is, the Republicans) being in control of our government 50% of the time.

     After the American Revolution, there were liberals and conservatives. Conservatives wanted to conserve the gains of the Revolution, while the (classical) liberals wanted to push that revolution even further, in order to achieve further liberation, and to impose more limitations on the government's ability to control our lives.

     Democratic republicanism and liberal-conservatism are what govern the U.S.. Democrats and Republicans are much closer than politicians and the media would have us believe. Obamacare was based on Romneycare and Pawlentycare (two proposals pioneered and implemented by Republican governors).

     Obama supporters: stop. You are trying to impose Republican legislation on all your Democrat friends, you have effectively become a Republican mouthpiece (nevermind that the bill imposes an infinite tax on a zero-dollar item, its unconstitutionality, or that the only thing arguably redeeming about it from a freedom-loving standpoint is that it restrains the activities of insurance companies that were created with public approval but which should never should have been tied to the public in the first place).

     Progressives: stop. Your cynicism of government is healthy, but it doesn't go far enough. All states draw their legitimacy from the normalization of political violence (a/k/a terrorism). Read the anarchists.

     Progressivism has thus far only succeeded in "solving" market failures by replacing them with government failures. Most progressives are good and conscientious people, but in my opinion many of them are prone to be too trusting of a system that they want to believe is good and can change.

     One needs only look at the 40 [or more] unconstitutional wars we've waged over the years, and the history of moral hazard and regulatory capture (short version: government failure and mismanagement, caused by blind trust in the government that it is doing its job) which have accompanied nearly every attempt at progressive reform, to see that appealing to our oppressors and begging them for more scraps has not been working.

     For my explanation of what Democrats and Republicans both misunderstand about leftist ideas, please click this link to read my September 2018 article "What Liberals and Conservatives Both Get Wrong About Socialism and Communism":
     http://aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2018/09/what-liberals-and-conservatives-both.html

Originally Written on October 26th, 2018

Edited on December 1st, 2018

Published on December 1st, 2018

Reaction to the Washington, D.C. Bomb Threats of Late October 2018

     On October 24th, 2018, someone mailed explosive devices to the F.B.I. and John Brennan. Two days later, a Florida man, Cesar Sayoc, was later arrested in connection with the mail bombs.
     On the day after the bombs arrived, I published my reaction to the incident on social media. What follows is the original text of my reaction.

BOMB THREATS BENEFIT BOTH MAJOR PARTIES, SCAPEGOAT THEIR MUTUAL ENEMIES, WILL BE USED TO EXCUSE TOTALITARIANISM

     These (failed, alleged, possibly staged) bomb threats will benefit Democrats by making them look like victims, and will benefit Republicans because they will lead for calls that more resources and funds and power be placed in the hands of police, military, Homeland Security, Secret Service, etc. (most of which are currently controlled by a Republican majority)

     These bomb threats will be used to justify attacks against the MUTUAL political opponents of BOTH the Democrats and Republicans, i.e., the American people who pay their salaries.

     To me, this - coupled with Trump's admission in January that it will take some sort of unifying event to bring the country together - seems like a False Flag. It could be used as the equivalent of 9/11 for George W. Bush, and the Reichstag Fire for Adolf Hitler. All lawbreakers, and critics of blind patriotism, will be denounced as disloyal, and even Democrats will stoop to chastizing citizens for failing to trust the government enough (even though the Democrats' supposed enemy is in charge of it).

     I interpret Trump's January statement as a veiled, general threat against all U.S. citizens; to obey him, re-elect him, and blindly believe whatever bullshit he's trying to sell them, OR ELSE he will STAGE an attack on some U.S. target (probably public infrastructure, which can be construed as a simultaneous attack on the government and the people) in order to SCARE people into rallying behind him. He is all but admitting that any and all politically motivated violence and threats benefit him and the political class.

     None of the worry about politically motivated violence is coming along with concerns that ALL law enforcement is based on the legitimization of violence. Statists and terrorists BOTH use violence and threats and coercion in order to achieve political goals. The only difference between them is that statists exert monopolistic, exclusive control over some well-defined contiguous territory, and terrorists don't.

     Except when they do.

Reaction to the Death of George H.W. Bush

     George H.W. Bush, the 41st president of the United States, passed away on November 30th, 2018. I wrote the following as a response to his death, and as a reaction to the media's fond remembrance of him (too fond, if you ask me):

     I was pleased to discover recently that in the 1980 Republican presidential debate, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush both expressed pro-immigration sentiments. But while it's true that George H.W. Bush was more pro-immigration than Donald Trump is - and more pro-immigration than most Republicans today - that fact alone doesn't make him a good person.

     Bush led the C.I.A. before becoming president, for a year in 1976-1977. He was president during the Noriega fiasco in Panama (in which both the U.S. and U.S.S.R. funded Noriega), and during the Gulf War (the 1991 war in the Persian Gulf, to defend Kuwait from Saddam Hussein).

     Bush started sanctions of Iraq that eventually resulted in the starvation deaths of half a million people (with the assistance of Bill Clinton and Madeline Albright, who continued them). Some politicians today, namely Rand Paul, say that Iraq was better off under Saddam Hussein than it was under and after American occupation. I believe that is an accurate assessment.

     Not only did Bush get America involved in foreign conflicts unnecessarily, he may have covertly killed several beloved public figures. Bush may have been in Dallas on the day JFK was killed. A George Bush worked at the CIA at that time, but Bush Sr. claims that it wasn't him. Some believe Bush had a very direct role in planning and executing Kennedy's death.

     In addition to Kennedy's death, Bush was probably involved in the Reagan assassination attempt. Bush arguably had the most to gain from an assassination of Reagan. Not only that, but the Bushes were friends with Reagan's shooter's brother and father. The father was John Hinckley, Sr., head of Vanderbilt Steel.

     Additionally, Bush's C.I.A. might have even hired John Lennon's shooter (Mark David Chapman, a former Marine stationed in Arkansas and Indochina) and paid the doorman at the Dakota building that night (a Cuban dissident named Jose Perdomo).

     Perhaps most worrisome of all, Bush was a member of a Skull and Bones lodge, the Yale secret society that has roots in the 17th century opium and slave trades. He reputedly received a nickname from Skull and Bones for being its most sexually experienced member.

     And who could forget, Bush Sr's father Prescott Bush managed the American accounts of Fritz Thyssen, the steel and rubber magnate whose slave labor camps eventually became death camps.

     Prescott Bush fed, clothed, and sheltered his whole family with the money that the U.S. government let him keep after Brown Brothers Harriman was convicted of violating the Trading with the Enemy Act by trading with Nazi affiliated companies.

     The whole Bush family are Nazi war profiteers, including George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, Jeb Bush, and the rest of them. The family might not have survived if it weren't for the U.S. government allowing them to keep their Nazi war profits.

     George H.W. Bush spent his last moments telling his son George W. Bush that he loved him. Anyone who loves George W. Bush - who continued his father's war, which led to the deaths of millions more, and the birth of mutated babies due to depleted uranium use in Fallujah - is not worth admiring.

     Not only am I glad that Bush is dead, he is one of a small group of people whose eventual deaths I can honestly say I've been cheerfully anticipating for several years. No amount of charity, friendship with Democrats, or love of his own family or love of people from Mexico, could convince me that he is worthy of admiration or even fond remembrances.

     Good riddance.

Post-Script:

     For an explanation of my claims about Bush's possible involvement in the deaths of John F. Kennedy and John Lennon, and the shooting of Ronald Reagan, please read my March 2012 article "Bush Family, World Vision Behind JFK, Lennon, Reagan Shootings" at the following address:

     http://aquarianagrarian.blogspot.com/2012/03/bush-family-world-vision-behind-jfk.html


    To read about Prescott Bush's link to Nazi war profiteers, read the following article from the Guardian:
     http://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/sep/25/usa.secondworldwar


     Click this link to watch Bush and Reagan discuss immigration:
     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsmgPp_nlok




Second Post-Script:

     I would have also wished to mention Bush's involvement in the C.I.A.'s funneling of drugs into inner cities, his role in covering-up and ignoring the H.I.V./A.I.D.S. crisis, the "Highway of Death" during the Persian Gulf War, and Bush's possible involvement in the trafficking of prostitutes and the Franklin cover-up.
     It would have been difficult to name all of Bush's major crimes against humanity on the first try. I regret neglecting to mention them, and I encourage my readers to do their own research about those topics.

Reaction, Introduction, and Post-Script Written on December 1st, 2018
Second Post-Script Written and Published on December 4th, 2018

Edited on December 1st, 2018

Originally Published on December 1st, 2018

Forty-Seven Reasons Why I'm Concerned About a Resurgence of Nazism in America (Incomplete)

Table of Contents

Introduction
1. Most Americans Don't Mind Sacrificing Liberty or Privacy in Exchange for the Illusion of Security
2. The T.S.A. Confiscates Our Things and Sells Them on the Cheap, Like the Nazis Did to the Jews
3. Both I.C.E. and the Nazis Used the Promise of Showers to Deceive Their Prisoners

4. Most Americans Don't Mind Spending too Much, Working too Hard, to Earn Special Treatment
5. Unpaid Prison Labor and For-Profit Prisons Are on the Rise
6. Fear-Mongering About Disease-Carrying Immigrants Prompts Calls for Ethnic Cleansing
7. U.S. Immigration Authorities Sprayed Immigrants with Zyklon-B, Once Used to Gas Jews
8. Authorities Are Spraying People with Noxious Gas at the Border Right Now
9. Calling Welfare Recipients and Immigrants “Parasites” Normalizes Dehumanization
10. Americans of Both Major Parties Justify Abortion if it's of “the Right Race”
11. Immigrants Are Depicted as Invading Hordes of Barbarians, Like the Jews Were

12. Immigrants Are Depicted as Both “Lazy” and “Taking Your Jobs”, Like the Jews Were
13. President Trump Has Promulgated Stereotypes About Hispanics, Muslims, and Jews
14. President Trump Said He'd Consider Creating a Database of Muslim-Americans
15. President Trump Encourages His Supporters to Harm Protesters and Dissidents
16. Trump's Ex-Wife Claims He Reads and Admires the Fascist Italian Dictator Benito Mussolini
17. President Trump Wants to Amend or Repeal the Birthright Citizenship Clause
18. The President Wants Dictatorial Power, and Congress Has Historically Given it to Him
19. The 2020 Census Could Be Used as an Excuse to Arrest and Deport Undocumented Immigrants
20. The U.S. Already Practices Internment of “Undesirables” and Maintains Concentration Camps
21. People Still Excuse F.D.R. for Refusing to Let Undocumented Jewish Refugees In
22. The Democratic Party's Love of Big Government Makes Authoritarianism Unavoidable
23. An I.C.E. Official Said They're “Just Following Orders”, Like the Nazi Adolf Eichmann Did
24. Trump's Former Press Correspondent Claimed That the Nazis Never Used Chemical Weapons
25. Ultra-Nationalism, Nativism, and Extreme Anti-Immigration Policies Are the New Normal

26. American Citizens in Good Standing Are Already Losing Their Citizenship Without Cause

27. Right-Wingers in Germany, Austria, Italy, etc. Hope to Form an "Axis" to Solve Immigration
28. Democrats' Enthusiastic Support for Assimilation Plays Right into Republicans' Hands

29. Americans of Both Major Parties Demonize the Far Left, Communism, and All Things Foreign
30. Obama Democrats Made it Difficult to Get Away with Calling the President Racist or Fascist

31. Strong Anti-Fascism is Virtually Non-Existent in Libertarian Circles, the One Place it Matters
32. I.C.E. Separates People by Age and Sex, Like the Nazis Did
33. I.C.E. Confiscates Religious Items, Like the Nazis and Communists Did
34. Post-9/11 Fear of Foreigners and Middle Easterners Threatens the Safety of Jewish People
35. A Growing Number of Americans Want to Silence Discussion of Israel
36. All Criticism of the State of Israel is Deemed Anti-Semitic, and This Silences Jewish Voices
37. Promoting Jewish Stereotypes is Publicly Acceptable in America Nowadays
38. Many Jewish-Americans Have Been Legally, and Voluntarily, Disarmed
39. Israeli Ultra-Nationalism is on the Rise, and Gaza is Already a Concentration Camp
40. George W. Bush's Grandfather Was a War Profiteer, and Bush Loyalists Are Still in Office
41. American Companies That Financed Nazis and the Holocaust Are Still Around, and Popular
42. Americans and Soviets Imported Nazi Scientists As Part of Operation Paperclip
43. Americans Call for More Non-White Police, While Nazis Rewarded Loyalty with Police Posts
44. Many Americans Are Desensitized to Violence, and See Mass Murder as Something Funny
45. A Literal Nazi Ran for U.S. House of Representatives and Won His Nomination Uncontested
46. American Culture is Awash in Alcohol, Which Was Given to Jews to Cope with Their Conditions
47. American Culture Values Competitiveness in Sports, the Economy, and Even Survival

Conclusion

Content

Introduction

     The October 27^th Tree of Life Synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh – in which 11 Jewish-Americans were shot to death in the midst of their morning prayer¹ – confirmed many Americans' fears that the threat of violent anti-Semitism is real. Many are beginning to wonder whether actual Nazism itself is on the rise in America today² (as opposed to just plain American imperialism and authoritarianism, like we're used to seeing every day).³

     On November 19^th, a video was uploaded to the YouTube channel youthleadermagazine, entitled “Jeremy Ornstein Sunrise Movement 1: Adults – Face Harsh Reality – GROW UP!”.⁴ In the video, an 18-year-old Jewish-American student from Massachusetts named Jeremy Ornstein, speaks outside of once and future Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi's office in Washington, D.C.. Accompanied by scores of students holding signs reading “Green New Deal”, Mr. Ornstein described his brother finding the Holocaust memoirs of their grandparent who had immigrated from Hungary.

     According to Ornstein, “I walked in, and almost immediately to my right, I saw a book on the table, and read that the Nazis pretended the gas chambers were showers to kill the Jews. And I remembered that I was devastated by that fact, and all of my resolve fell from my shoulders. And before I left that room, I had to grow up. So many times in the past few years, I have had to grow up. Like the first, second, and third time I read about kids being shot in schools. And when we all learned about the lead in the water in Flint. And every time that I read or see about the aftermath of climate-fueled disasters.”⁴

     Mr. Ornstein then described being on the phone with his father while the shooter in Pittsburgh was still active, and went on to challenge Speaker Pelosi and the Democratic leadership to “grow up” like he did.

     In his speech – perhaps intentionally, perhaps unwittingly - Ornstein seemed to be drawing a parallel between the Nazis' deceptive promise of showers for the Jews in their custody, and the government's failed promise of clean, potable drinking water to the people of Flint, Michigan.⁵ Each involved a promise of water and cleanliness, and neither promise was fulfilled.

     Ornstein is right to call his government out for failing to deliver on its promise, and to challenge the Democratic Party leadership to stand up to the opposition party. While it would be difficult to argue that Jeremy Ornstein and his ancestors were not victimized by their governments, it is hard to ignore the tragic irony of his situation: he is coerced into trusting a government which has already deceived him many times before. Moreover, he is begging one party to protect him from the other.

     Ornstein described repeatedly being let down by the Democratic leadership, albeit while wearing a T-shirt bearing the words “we have a right to good jobs and a livable future”, and while admitting that the Nazis baited their Jewish victims with promises that they'd take care of them and give them showers. It would be unfair to blame the victims in these situations, but I'm compelled to admit that Ornstein's message is, sadly, not as self-aware as it could be.

     In my opinion, one of the main lessons of the fact that Nazis pretended that gas chambers were showers - and gave the Jews soap to wash up with as they were being unwittingly led to their deaths (although some knew, or at least suspected, what was happening)⁶ - is that governments are willing to tempt their people with promises of care, riches, jobs, and other nice things, even if those governments eventually want those very same people dead.

     The use of showers as an excuse to “exterminate” people, is just one small example in a long line of policies influenced by the “ethnic cleansing” mindset.^{7, 8} A nation which adopts this mindset will posit that the nation, its moral culture, and the human gene pool need to be “cleansed” of “alien” and “sub-human” elements, and takes this as an ideology of “racial hygiene”, to underlie and inform its public health policy.⁹ This idea – and the idea that we're all being fattened-up, and made to surrender all sorts of measures of privacy, independence, and even security, for the sake of the illusion of security, and a little special treatment – is what I intend to explore in the remainder of this essay.

     I see many reasons why the administration of President Donald Trump could, should, and must be described as imperialistic and authoritarian, and even as dictatorial, fascistic, and Naziesque. This essay is intended as a precise enumeration of the forty-five reasons why I feel that way, and what parallels I see between the current treatment of immigrants to the United States by I.C.E., and the treatment of Jewish prisoners by the Nazi S.S. (schutzstaffel; “storm troopers”) before and during the Holocaust.

1. Most Americans Don't Mind Sacrificing Liberty or Privacy in Exchange for the Illusion of Security

     Regarding a tax dispute in Pennsylvania, Benjamin Franklin once wrote, “They who can give up essential Liberty to obtain a little temporary Safety deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”¹⁰ Although Franklin made that statement in favor of taxation for the purposes of funding collective defense,¹¹ the statement has been characterized as one in favor of greater privacy and less government intrusion in our lives.¹²

     Franklin's point is well taken; the political ramifications of the attacks of September 11^th, 2001 – in particular, the U.S.A. P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act,¹³ and the 2012 N.D.A.A. (National Defense Authorization Act)^{14, 15} – have demonstrated just how much privacy, independence, integrity, and peace Americans have been willing to put up with paying, in order for the illusions of safety and security,¹⁶ and in exchange for a little bit of convenience^{17, 18} and special treatment.

     As a result of the Patriot Act, omnibus defense budgets whose riders affirmed the policies of the Patriot Act, and subsequent Supreme Court decisions; the Bill of Rights,¹⁹ habeas corpus,²⁰ the principles of the Magna Carta,²¹ and the rule of law,²² are effectively null and void.

     F.B.I. agents write their own search warrants.²³ Courts have made it easier for police officers to follow us into our homes,²⁴ and to declare us domestic terrorists,²⁵ deny our right to trial,²⁶ and freeze our assets so that we can't defend ourselves in court.^{27, 28} Citizen and judiciary complacency with “Stop-and-Frisk” laws²⁹ have rendered the decision in Terry v. Ohio practically meaningless,³⁰ all but ignoring our right to resist officers who violate our safety, and even violate the law itself, in the course of their duties.^{31, 32}

     However, 9/11 did not change everything; as many of these restrictive measures were in place long before the attacks. As the result of a Supreme Court decision made in the 1980s (Warren v. D.C.),³³ police are rarely held responsible for their crimes,³⁴ and never held to an expectation that they will protect and serve all the people.³⁵ As the result of a Clinton-era law,³⁶ local police departments all over the country are in possession of weapons of war, from machine guns, to tanks, to drones, etc..³⁷

     Those offenses against the people, as well as the intrusions into our privacy via warrantless wiretaps³⁸ and other forms of domestic surveillance, have been well-documented (of course, not well enough). But those points aside, it should not escape our attention that the Transportation Security Administration posted a whopping 95% failure rate in a 2015 study, catching only 3 out of 70 concealed weapons.³⁹

     The T.S.A. does create what Franklin described; the feeling of “a little temporary safety”. But the T.S.A.'s failure shows that this feeling of safety is just that; a feeling, an illusion. Given this fact, the reckless invasions of privacy, bodily autonomy, and physical comfort which are reflected in its policies concerning pat-downs and body scanners,⁴⁰ should prompt us to question whether there is anything at all in these practices which benefits us (the people paying for it, and the people subjected to it).

     Today, anyone is welcome in America who steadfastly trusts, and is loyal to, the police. Some Americans want to believe so badly that the police are doing the right thing, that they are willing to excuse the unnecessary use of force (and the disproportionate use of that force against non-whites⁴¹) – or an excessively complicated and even conflicting set of directions for surrender⁴² – in order for an officer of the law to subdue an arrestee. Recent years have seen Americans arrested after failing to obey orders due to an inability to hear those orders in the first place, whether it's because they're deaf,⁴³ listening to music on headphones,⁴⁴ mentally disabled,⁴⁵ a legally armed security guard who simply didn't hear the order to drop the weapon,⁴⁶ or even already paralyzed and in a coma.⁴⁷

     This devoted trust of police officers and their commands, have given rise to the idea that “all you have to do is comply, and you won't get hurt.”⁴⁸ American comedian Bill Burr remarked sarcastically, “Look, it's really simple. All you have to do is comply, and you won't get your ass kicked by police. When they tell you to get down, you get down. When they tell you to turn in your gun, you turn in your gun. When they tell you to get in the boxcar, you get in the fucking boxcar. Why in the Hell is this so difficult to understand, people?”⁴⁹ In the words of author Patrick S. Tomlinson, “'Just do what they say and you won't get hurt' is what we tell hostages, not free citizens interacting with police.”⁵⁰

     As the old saying goes, “If you give someone an inch, they will take a mile.” That is, if you let someone tell you what to do, they'll continue doing it. Then, before you know it, you're just doing as you're told, without questioning it, instead of doing what you want to do.

     Although is is not required to think for yourself in our society, it is also not prohibited, and that is for a reason. If you let other people direct your life, eventually you will end up their puppet, and the executor of their will, and you may have to give up your identity, your well-being, or even your life in order to serve out somebody else's sick purposes. It's usually acceptable to refuse to obey orders that seriously violate your conscience and your sense of morality, and having a healthy distrust of authority is not only acceptable; it's part of our heritage as Americans (from the Revolutionary War).⁵¹

     As you read the remainder of this article, when I discuss American policies currently in place – I invite you to ask yourself how this policy affects Jewish-Americans. Set aside how it affects Americans who are not Jewish, and then consider the possibility that non-Jewish Americans' freedoms might be curtailed solely to make curtailments of Jewish citizens' freedoms seem normal, or “not as bad” by comparison.

      Opponents may say, “See, the Jews and the non-Jews both have to do something they don't want to do, that's called sacrifice,⁵² and it's what you do in a society to compromise”.⁵³ But consider the possibility, instead, that two wrongs don't make a right. Also, consider that condemning people to equal misery, is equality, but only equality in suffering.⁵⁴

2. The T.S.A. Confiscates Our Things and Sells Them on the Cheap, Like the Nazis Did to the Jews

     The Transportation Security Administration confiscates more than half a million dollars in spare change alone from travelers every year.⁵⁵ Not only that, they sell the items they confiscate from us on the cheap,⁵⁶ and you can go online^{57, 58} to find out how to buy those items back from them in government-sponsored police auctions.

     After a 1938 Nazi law required Jewish residents to register their wealth and their valuable possessions, the Nazis confiscated many Jews' possessions.⁵⁹ While some Jews were legally ordered to sell their possessions, others were left with no realistic alternative available but to sell their most cherished possessions in order to afford to leave the country, while others were forced to abandon their property in order leave the country. At times, Jews' property was sold to finance the government, and/or in order to finance the Jews' own deportation at the hands of the Nazis.⁶⁰

     American travelers - and sports fans,^{61, 62} and concert-goers - have almost gotten accustomed to abandoning their possessions with little or no notice or thought, when entering public property, or someone else's private property. Perhaps this is, to a large extent, a result of the T.S.A.'s rule banning containers of liquid larger than 3 ounces (in order to decrease the likelihood that a liquid-based plastic explosive or “gel-ignite” could be smuggled aboard an airplane flight).⁶³

     Once in 2012, I myself decided not to attend a speech by President Obama because the online invitation for the event suggested that security would confiscate my bottle of water on the way in.⁶⁴ It's hard to go see a band at a festival, concert, or even a punk bar, without showing your I.D. to prove that you're of legal drinking age, pay too much for the ticket, get your hand stamped and/or let them put a bracelet on you (to signify that you've paid already), and, possibly, be asked to throw away any food and drinks we might have on us. It seems excessive.

     But more importantly, it conditions us to put up with similar treatment by government, and by people who invite us onto their property. People should not have to choose to abandon water and food, - two of our most urgent needs - in order to be allowed onto private or public property. Nursing mothers should not have to throw away breast milk,⁶⁵ and cancer patients should not have to be attacked for not enjoying being grabbed by T.S.A. agents,⁶⁶ solely in order order to fly “safely” across their own country. Yet Americans put up with this sort of treatment every day – enduring all forms of medical torture - simply to get from Point A to Point B. The fact that the T.S.A. is selling our possessions back to us, only adds insult to injury.

     If this is all really “for our protection”, then clearly something is wrong. The right to be secure in our persons, papers, and property includes the rights of bodily autonomy, physical integrity, the right to defend oneself, and the right to possess items including medication, so long as we do not use those possessions to harm others. No government should have the right to force or pressure us to abandon, destroy, nor sell our property in order to cooperate with it, nor in order to cease cooperating with it (by terminating our citizenship).

     The fact that non-Jewish travelers suffer these indignities and deprivations, ought not be any less worrisome than the fact that Jewish travelers suffer them. And the fact that they both suffer, only helps to conceal the facts that 1) Jewish travelers are grossly inconvenienced by these measures, and 2) no traveler, concert-goer, nor sports fan – either Jew or Gentile – need undergo them.

     Those who remember the victims of the Holocaust, and whom have learned its lessons, would do well to consider that if they keep checking their possessions at the door (to the property, or the country, whatever the case may be), then they might eventually be asked, or even expected, to check even more of their property, and their right to privacy, and their identity and heritage, at the door. This is a slippery slope that will lead us to think that privacy, property, and the right to express ourselves are things that have to be earned at grave costs.

     But indeed they are, because so many have fought for them. That is why we must cherish the right to own possessions (as long as we don't use them to hurt others or gain leverage over people), and cherish our right to privacy, and to express ourselves, or else we will lose those rights.

3. Both I.C.E. and the Nazis Used the Promise of Showers as a Way to Deceive Their Prisoners

     According to witnesses, gas chambers at the Dachau extermination facility were disguised as “Brause Bad” (“shower baths”),⁶ and their ceilings were even studded with fake shower heads made of sheet metal.⁶⁷ The German reputation for cleanliness had culminated in an ideology of “racial hygiene”,⁹ wherein inferior races can be washed away from the “body” of the German volk (“the German people”) as diseases and parasites are washed away from pure white Aryan skin along with the dark soot. The disease may be given as typhus, but the “virus” that the Nazis intended to “wash away” was Jewishness.

     The book Crystal Night details how the Nazis allowed Jews to purchase food and cigarettes as a consolation for being deported.⁶⁸ This fact ought to teach us that when all of our "freedoms" are only exercised after paying, and when specifically permitted by government through permits and licensing, government can be made-out to look benevolent for simply removing the obstacles it placed between its employers (we the people) and the things we want. As Ayn Rand said, through her Fountainhead character Howard Roark, who will let me is "not the point. The point is, who will stop me?"⁶⁹

     To Jews arriving in Dachau, the fake shower heads probably provided a brief moment of hope that the Nazis intended to, at least, keep them healthy enough to work themselves half to death. But history shows us that the permissions, allotments, variances, and even gifts that come from government, are merely as a “betrayal with a kiss" (as in the story of Judas's betrayal of Jesus). It is said to “Beware Greeks bearing gifts”, but it is also said not to “look a gift-horse in the mouth”. I prefer the former quotation.

     This is why I have written this article; to caution people about the twin dangers, which always go hand-in-hand: of totalitarianism (the Republicans) and totalitarianism-enablers (Democrats). Of Nazism (the Neo-Nazis and Trump loyalists) and the apathy and neutrality which make it possible. Let no one diminish what horrors the one is capable of inflicting, and the other of excusing, permitting, and being accomplice and accessory.

     Time and time again, the establishment Democrats, under leaders like Nancy Pelosi, have let young men like Jeremy Ornstein down. Democrats betray their own voters – supposedly a party of, by, and for workers and people of color – and turn around and push Republican policies on their own people. Then they try to make up for it by attaching riders to bills, and bargaining for slightly less repression, in order to tempt the left-leaning public with political goodies and treats; special favors intended as bargaining chips so that they'll vote them back into office.

     Democratic Republicanism, even of the Progressive or Democratic Socialist varieties, only serves to make unfulfillable and unaffordable promises to the American people, while using those promises to distract from not just their own impossibility and unaffordability, but also from the horrendous legislation the goodies are attached to. For example, Senator Bernie Sanders voted to support the 1994 crime control bill that was signed into law by President Bill Clinton. That law led to the incarceration of at least a million non-violent offenders, but Sanders decided to support the bill because it included protection against victims of domestic violence.⁷⁰

     Whether it's a robust social safety net as a compromise for having to pay for the military-industrial complex, or compensation to farmers as consolation for getting “punished” by tariffs,⁷¹ the supporters of both major parties have been bought-out. Americans can't tell when they're just being fattened-up for the slaughter. They think they can buy their way out of a system that unabashedly fumbles for excuses to confiscate their property, and rules their lives, and regulates their money, and controls that money's value. The goodies and treats promised in exchange for the welfare-warfare state “compromise” are soaked with blood, and are inedible.

     When we think of Jews being saved from “extermination”, one thing that comes to mind is Nazi Party member Oskar Schindler, who is credited with saving the lives of over a thousand Jewish people by employing them in his factories.⁷² One wonders how many would-be Holocaust victims were saved solely because other people were not saved. I am reminded of the story of Rabbi Chaim Rumkowski, whom the Nazis gave a position as the head of the Council of Elders of the ghetto in Lodz (or Litzmannstadt) ghetto in Poland. Rabbi Rumkowski eventually called on ghetto-dwelling Jews to give up their elderly, their children, and themselves. All the while, Rumkowski performed a role similar to that of Schindler: shape which Jews survive, and which Jews escape the country. As a matter of fact, a 1942 speech⁷³ by Rumkowski shows that he thought of himself as a surgeon, with the collective body of the Jewish people before him on the operating table, believing that he needed to “cut off limbs in order to save the body”.⁷³ Captive Jews knew that it would help them to curry favor with Rumkowski (and with Jewish community leaders in other ghettos, and also with their Nazi captors).

     The sad facts that many Jews tried to ingratiate themselves to their captors through submitting to back-breaking labor, and through assimilating (for example, through their dress and appearance, and through converting to Christianity), and ingratiated themselves to the members of their own communities assigned to represent them, ought not serve as a mark of shame. But the consequences of those actions are felt today; Jews are not alone among the many peoples of America, or of the world, who cower at the feet of those who pledge and pretend to protect, serve, defend, and represent us (military, police, politicians, and bureaucratic special interests alike) whether they follow through on those promises or not.

     I'm disturbed by the contrast between that fact, and the fact that the Jewish tradition is one of peaceful disagreement, civil disobedience, and non-conformity. The shared trauma of the Holocaust and the horrors of police violence and domestic surveillance in post-9/11 America have produced a society wherein Jews and non-Jews alike have been intimidated into submission; into willfully divulging all of their personal information,⁷⁴ and registering many of their valuable possessions instead of insisting upon owning them outright.⁷⁵ America and Israel alike are societies full of people who have experienced Stockholm Syndrome;⁷⁶ if not at the hands of genocidal captors, then at least at the hands of their own tyrannical, imperialist government.

     Cooperation and authority are all well and good. But if it's cooperation with authority, or if you didn't give the authority to the authority figure willingly, or if it's cooperation with people who want you dead, then cooperating would be unwise because it would be submission to tyranny. It is not necessary to negotiate with our captors; not when it is possible to fight back, or when it is possible to prevent ourselves from falling into our captors' control in the first place. We can and must fight back against the demands and expectations that our possessions and privacy should be simply thrown away, so that we can enter someone's property, enter public property for which our taxes paid, or exercise our natural freedom to travel across the Earth.

     This is the condition we find ourselves in today: that we've allowed ourselves to be deceived. We believe that eating and smoking are privileges instead of rights, that do not have to be merely paid for but also permitted by the government. Many of us have been tricked into thinking that access to clean water is a privilege as well. That collecting rain water is not a right (when it can be done safely, and without affecting our neighbors).⁷⁷ That you have to pay taxes in some towns and municipalities – including my own former hometown of Lake Bluff, Illinois (as recently as June 2017) - in order to access its beaches.⁷⁸

     Where people can be tricked into thinking that clean water and showers are a privilege, rather than a right, they can be tricked into being so grateful for those things, that they can be convinced to give up anything and everything in order to receive them; their freedom, their clothing, anything.

     Yet most Americans are willing to give up food and drinks just to get into a movie theater or concert, give up small weapons they might need for self-defense just to get in anywhere, and give up their right to expect privacy wherever they go outside their own home. But most people don't even have “their own home”, because the bank and the government can always take it away.

     Whenever public utilities providers fail to deliver clean water, suitable, for drinking and bathing, to the people who pay their salaries - and whenever government places unnecessary obstructions to solving the problem when water must be delivered to people who need it – we should let our government's failed promises remind us of the Nazis' willful betrayal.

     But most importantly, I.C.E. (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) did use the promise of baths – not showers, like the Jews, mind you; but baths - in order to trick immigrant women into allowing officials to take their children away.

     According to Texas-based federal public defender Miguel Nogueres, “Every day we hear that parents are being separated from their children and are given different reasons for the separation. Some are told the truth. Others are told that [their] children are being taken for a break to play, or bathe, or sleep, … little white lies to ameliorate an exploding situation. The parents will realize they were lied to when they meet us before court.”⁷⁹

     In a June 10, 2018 article for the Boston Globe, entitled “'Children are being used as a tool' in Trump's effort to stop border crossings”,⁸⁰ Liz Goodwin reported that “[Azalea] Aleman-Bendiks, the public defender, said several of her clients have told her their children were taken from them by Border Patrol agents who said they were going to give them a bath. As the hours passed, it dawned on the mothers the kids were not coming back.”

     Goodwin continues, “In late May, separated parents in McAllen [Texas] were given a number to call HHS [the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services] and try to locate their children. It was the wrong number. Last week [early June 2018], parents were given a handwritten note telling them to call ICE – not HHS – if they wanted information about how to reunite with their children. But parents did not have access to phones at the time, rendering the number useless.”

     Supporters of President Trump's immigration policy doubt that the above story has any veracity; they do not believe that there is any truth behind the claim that immigrant children were separated from their parents through promises of baths. But it is the truth, and any student of history should hear serious alarm bells ringing in his head at the similarity between this incident and the Nazis' gassing of Jews after they were told they were about to take showers.

     Sure, this is slightly different, because the Jews were gassed to death, while the immigrant children are merely missing... but to those who would make that argument, I ask: What makes you so certain that many of those immigrant children didn't die too?

4. Most Americans Don't Mind Spending too Much, Working too Hard, to Earn Special Treatment
5. Unpaid Prison Labor and For-Profit Prisons Are on the Rise
6. Fear-Mongering About Disease-Carrying Immigrants Prompts Calls for Ethnic Cleansing
7. U.S. Immigration Authorities Sprayed Immigrants with Zyklon-B, Once Used to Gas Jews
8. Authorities Are Spraying People with Noxious Gas at the Border Right Now
9. Calling Welfare Recipients and Immigrants “Parasites” Normalizes Dehumanization
10. Americans of Both Major Parties Justify Abortion if it's of “the Right Race”
11. Immigrants Are Depicted as Invading Hordes of Barbarians, Like the Jews Were

12. Immigrants Are Depicted as Both “Lazy” and “Taking Your Jobs”, Like the Jews Were
13. President Trump Has Promulgated Stereotypes About Hispanics, Muslims, and Jews
14. President Trump Said He'd Consider Creating a Database of Muslim-Americans
15. President Trump Encourages His Supporters to Harm Protesters and Dissidents
16. Trump's Ex-Wife Claims He Reads and Admires the Fascist Italian Dictator Benito Mussolini
17. President Trump Wants to Amend or Repeal the Birthright Citizenship Clause
18. The President Wants Dictatorial Power, and Congress Has Historically Given it to Him
19. The 2020 Census Could Be Used as an Excuse to Arrest and Deport Undocumented Immigrants
20. The U.S. Already Practices Internment of “Undesirables” and Maintains Concentration Camps
21. People Still Excuse F.D.R. for Refusing to Let Undocumented Jewish Refugees In
22. The Democratic Party's Love of Big Government Makes Authoritarianism Unavoidable
23. An I.C.E. Official Said They're “Just Following Orders”, Like the Nazi Adolf Eichmann Did
24. Trump's Former Press Correspondent Claimed That the Nazis Never Used Chemical Weapons
25. Ultra-Nationalism, Nativism, and Extreme Anti-Immigration Policies Are the New Normal

26. American Citizens in Good Standing Are Already Losing Their Citizenship Without Cause

27. Right-Wingers in Germany, Austria, Italy, etc. Hope to Form an "Axis" to Solve Immigration
28. Democrats' Enthusiastic Support for Assimilation Plays Right into Republicans' Hands

29. Americans of Both Major Parties Demonize the Far Left, Communism, and All Things Foreign
30. Obama Democrats Made it Difficult to Get Away with Calling the President Racist or Fascist

31. Strong Anti-Fascism is Virtually Non-Existent in Libertarian Circles, the One Place it Matters
32. I.C.E. Separates People by Age and Sex, Like the Nazis Did
33. I.C.E. Confiscates Religious Items, Like the Nazis and Communists Did
34. Post-9/11 Fear of Foreigners and Middle Easterners Threatens the Safety of Jewish People
35. A Growing Number of Americans Want to Silence Discussion of Israel
36. All Criticism of the State of Israel is Deemed Anti-Semitic, and This Silences Jewish Voices
37. Promoting Jewish Stereotypes is Publicly Acceptable in America Nowadays
38. Many Jewish-Americans Have Been Legally, and Voluntarily, Disarmed
39. Israeli Ultra-Nationalism is on the Rise, and Gaza is Already a Concentration Camp
40. George W. Bush's Grandfather Was a War Profiteer, and Bush Loyalists Are Still in Office
41. American Companies That Financed Nazis and the Holocaust Are Still Around, and Popular
42. Americans and Soviets Imported Nazi Scientists As Part of Operation Paperclip
43. Americans Call for More Non-White Police, While Nazis Rewarded Loyalty with Police Posts
44. Many Americans Are Desensitized to Violence, and See Mass Murder as Something Funny
45. A Literal Nazi Ran for U.S. House of Representatives and Won His Nomination Uncontested
46. American Culture is Awash in Alcohol, Which Was Given to Jews to Cope with Their Conditions
47. American Culture Values Competitiveness in Sports, the Economy, and Even Survival

     The explanation for reasons #4-#47 will be posted here soon.

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Written on November 20^th through 22nd, 2018

Originally Published on November 22nd, 2018
Ending of Section #3 Added on November 23rd, 2018
Edited and Expanded on November 28th and December 19th, 2018
Edited on November 30th, 2018