May 22, 2024 - John Oliver MasonJohn Oliver Mason

Greetings, Americans!

On April 23, I did my duty as an election board worker for my division in Philadelphia. We need more people to step up and take part in OUR political system, and play a part in positively shaping OUR community. Maybe YOU could run for an office? Why not?

And we must stand up to the violent minority who, through their terrorism (terrorism IS very much American, not always abroad) attempt to prevent or weaken the public’s right to vote. Such terrorism includes “voter ID” laws, limiting the number of drop-off boxes for mail-in ballots, and, as in Georgia, prohibiting serving food or beverages to people in line, for hours in whatever weather, to vote. Our right to vote is a mighty weapon in our hands, and certain powerful forces want to take this weapon away from us. Let’s not allow this to happen.

We are in the season of Memorial Day, where we show our respects to those men and women in our Armed Forces who died in service to their country. We must continue to honor their memory, and to assist and aid their loved ones. As opposed to so many political hacks who want to talk all badass without risking themselves (and send low-income kids to get killed), we must genuinely worry about the needs of military families.

The danger of fascism is ALL too real, and it’s not hyperbole, it’s a genuinely American strain we’re up against. Recently, trump, over his “Truth Social” rag of a social media site, put out a video, with AI-generated images of old-time newspapers, on the theme of “What if trump wins? (God forbid!)” One smaller headline talked about a “unified Reich,” as in hitler’s Third Reich. (https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/not-an-accident-trump-s-unified-reich-video-alarms-historians-and-fascism-experts/ar-BB1mMZvo)

The campaign took down the video, but trump showed us once again, for any of us paying attention, what he would do to this country, IF he is elected again. We must add this alongside the march of the torch-bearing neo-Nazis in Charlottesville in August 2017, where he said there were fine people “on both sides”; his telling his rally attendees to beat up anyone who dares stand up to him; his dining with such Jew-haters as Nick Fuentes and Kanye West; his hiring while in office of Steve Bannon, online conspiracy-monger and believer in racist conspiracy theories; trump saying, according to General John Kelly, that hitler “did some good things”; trump doing nothing while COVID-19 spread all over the country, saying “It is what it is (dictators think their citizens are expendable); and NEVER forget about how trump urged his followers to rampage through the Capitol, to try to destroy the peaceful, democratic transfer of power after losing the 2020 election. NEVER, Americans, forget all that.

Just as hitler cozied up to the big industrialists, financiers, and other conservative elites of Germany for their support (https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/how-big-business-bailed-out-nazis), trump is trying to get money out of the billionaire class to finance his campaign—and to pay for his legal bills. recently, trump held a dinner at Mar-A-Largo with fossil-fuel executives, telling them IF he is elected, he would give them everything they wanted—ending Biden Administration executive orders to protect the environment, eliminating prohibitions in offshore drilling, ending all of Biden’s green energy programs, and granting them more tax breaks—IF they collectively give him $1 billion. (https://www.politico.com/news/2024/05/09/trump-asks-oil-executives-campaign-finance-00157131) (https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-offers-oil-execs-110bn-in-savings-exchange-support-2024) Oil industry lobbyists are already drawing up proposals and strategies to implement these policies IF trump wins.

The fossil fuel moguls may act liked they’re shocked—shocked, I tell you!—but they have no more use for democracy, or for the lower classes (that’s us), than the industrial moguls who thought hitler was a good investment in order to beat down communists, Social Democrats, and unions, and then after the Second world War acted so innocent about what the regime did. Industrial and commercial corporations are authoritarian, hierarchical systems, spanning throughout the globe, and so what chance has a poor individual working person have against such a vast bureaucracy? (Yes, that’s what they are, bureaucracies, raking in TRILLIONS of dollars, and none of this Ayn Rand “rugged individualist” bullshit!)

It’s only through organizing from the grassroots, in our worksites and neighborhoods, we have ANY chance of standing up to these Wall-Street gangsters, and their congressional concubines, and their pet media, and their deluded thugs. Remember November 5 is just a few months away, and we must take our stand and get out and VOTE like our lives, and our country, and our democracy, depend on it, because it does.

Stay safe, stay strong, and stay together! Slava Ukraini! Am Yisrael Chi! America will be free! Bye!