American Liberals: Get Real - Not So Socialist Please

The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, 1987

Sanders loyalists I plead with you to get real.  The anti-communist paranoia is not over yet. Your grandparents are alive and kicking and those who believed everything that generation ever said about socialism, and those who were equating that political bent to communism are still very much alive. Don’t screw this up by allowing senator Bernie Sanders to get the democratic party nomination. Not just yet. Not now. If your efforts result in the defeat of Hillary Rodham Clinton you will be sorry. Our entire nation will be sorry.

This sound warning comes to you from someone who is more socialist than Bernie Sanders. I know it's not the time to build the democratic utopia we know that the United States can be.  

We liberals tend to be huge dreamers. We actually have political dreams at night, in REM. But consider please what the opposition to senator Sanders will be. Scrolling map views of the U.S.S.S.R. where the camera slows down just a little bit over the word “socialist.” Fast flashing pictures of Chairman Mao, interspersed with pictures of bread lines and starving laborers working government owned vegetable fields. The announcer’s voice saying the S-word about 10 times in 30 seconds. Pictures of an angry Bernie Sanders in black and white switching back and forth between images of starving communists and Joseph Stalin.

Now imagine where all the money is going to come from to fund those ads. That’s right, plenty of locations for funding. This country has over 3 million people who earn more than 1 million dollars in one year’s earnings (each year). There are tens of millions of Americans who look-up to them as something they can become. Never mind the more than 1700 billionaires who will think that Donald Trump or some other asshole conservative monied capitalist will make a great U.S. president. The odds are against us. The campaign funding system is not yet on our side. Dreamy dreams of a true socialist who can make your dreams come true before you die are not timely at this time in the United States. If you continue to froth at the mouth over the peace and love and economic equality message of the true socialist then senator Sanders will be the nominee and we’ll be losing the entire country to conservatives with such backward thinking we’ll be moving toward corporate fascism so fast you’ll wish for the Watergate days.

Then you can just say goodbye to all those dreams of a single-payer health care system, banking reform that protects the middle class, criminal justice reform that protects the poor, Wall Street reform that reigns in greed and wealth distribution that grows us into what we can be, education reform that makes us the shining city on the hill that can actually compete in the twenty-first century. Just kiss it all goodbye.  

Please get real. The dream may come one day soon, just not yet, not this election year. 

~~~~~

The modern day Socialist divides and conflict:

I am a socialist. I have not been afraid of saying so publicly for decades. It will be twenty years before a majority of the population of the United States is willing to vote for someone who calls him or herself “a socialist.”

I am a consistent voter for the Democratic party in the United States for over 25 years. A democratic party voter who is asked: “What is a socialist?” Will not answer that simplistic question with only 30 seconds to do so. They will avoid an answer because they do not expect it to be understood. The public does not understand the differentiation between the old and worn-out comparison of similarities to communism that was touted in speech and print for over 50 years in the west when we were at war with the Russians over idealistic foundations. The public equates socialism with Stalinist Communism. That’s the way it is still. That’s unfortunate but it is to be expected in the educational demographic of the United States citizen.

In the United States the club of like-minded representatives who in this modern time of the present day defined Democratic party, has had a consistent record since they became dominantly the liberal party after the white flight of southern Democrats to the Republican party following the 1964 Civil Rights Act of protecting children and families in priority over the protection of profits. I say a “priority’” because they do not discount the role of capitalism in making our community what it can be, but that favoritism comes secondary in the priorities of needs. Where the strive among individuals to have the earning ability to have more material goods does indeed drive us toward growth and more public capital to provide that the affect of that growth beyond our previously conceived of forethoughts of what the future needs. Unexpected growth requires new money not the same source of old money. New money requires inspired creative entrepreneurship of the type that is fomented by the desire to have more material goods to one’s self and one’s family. A Democratic representative who shies away from the socialist label is exhibiting this pragmatic viewpoint. This is why it is tough to a get a fast answer to “What is a socialist?” from a Democrat.

I have long felt that what belongs to the Earth should belong to all and not owned privately. That includes our water that is deep underneath us and rains down on the Earth, to the minerals and fossil fuels we mine and pump out of the Earth that was layed there hundreds of thousands of years ago by life previous on this planet. Food to be eaten by all on Earth comes from these resources that are made available to private companies because they profit from farming and milling and producing the packaging and delivery of that food. But processing our resources to deliver and sell them to us is not enough reason to allow companies on Earth to restrict their availability to us based on how much money we the people have. The constantly rising cost of these resources is evidence enough, to me, that allowing those resources to be controlled by private profit is not only immoral but well proven by time and human history to be impractical in the long run and I wish that my fellow humans can all survive plentifully for the long run. That is socialism. That is why if I were a politician I would be the last person on Earth a for-profit resource gathering company or lobby of one of those companies would call a friend in government.

What distinguishes me from the hard definition of socialism: that no land should be owned by a private individual but by the government, so that the people only benefit from all resources that that land can reap, is that I’m fine with real estate. Fine, I would say, you can own this piece of land, but if you are pumping water or oil or mining any long standing resources from that land you may not own that. You may borrow it and only for the cost of it’s processing and delivery and not for a profit upon my fellow human because you did not create it and you can not own it.

A Democrat is a very much a socialist. We generally find very distasteful what a for-profit private company does in an exploitative manner to the population. We dislike the long run affect of more hungry people with greater needs who then need the only source for their welfare that then comes from some for-profit company. We want them regulated for safety and for affordability. We want children and families protected from the harm that they create when they think foremost of their profits before thinking of the long run effect on the welfare of those children and those families.

Author/Socialist-Democrat: James G Mason

2/10/2016

Congratulations Senator Bernie Sanders (D - Vermont)! I knew you would win the state next door to your own where you have been a political folk hero of liberals for decades, ever since you took over as the mayor of Burlington and fixed that medium sized city.

If you are a pundit get your recent past straight before making a fool of yourself. It was predicted as very likely by any smart politico who knows the senator’s past that he would win the votes of the liberal Democrats of New Hampshire. I have known this for all of this past year and (silly me) I expected that you political reporters would also have known this. I was expecting his big win there.

Hold on Bernie your real challenge is coming. In the Carolinas and those many states you are the tomato in the pickle barrel. Get ready for a Hillary Rodham Clinton win in nearly all of those states. That is where the delegate windfall begins for her.

Guess what voters: Hillary Clinton does stand for everything Bernie Sanders is touting as if those issues were his own unique and new advocacy. I have known this since the early 1990’s when her husband William Jefferson Clinton ran for the office of President of the United States and I witnessed a fighter who as a woman stood-out and fought against white male assholes, day after day. That white male machismo club has kept women like herself as an enemy to be subdued since the evolvement of bands of homo sapiens began to be thinkers and builders of their environment.

What Bernie says he will do is what Hillary has had close experience advocating for for decades. But she stands alone as the one candidate, between the two of you, who has stuck her neck out as a party participant who actually wanted the opposition to get onboard with her ideas. Bernie has mostly stood alone and has been comfortable as both a congressional representative and a U.S. senator from a small population state of voters in a demographic that is fairly new to the state of Vermont - not the old-timers of Vermont, but the demographic that fled the lower New England states, beginning in the late 1980’s, for cities like Burlington, who then voted for the passionate Jewish man from Brooklyn. As if he was more likely to understand the populace of the largest voting block population of that small state.  

Senator Sanders sir,

Your history as a politician clearly portrays that you have stood alone as a rebellious independent. Except for all those votes against a national waiting period and background check for gun buyers, in which you chose to listen to the National Rifle Association propaganda and so you thought that you were representing the people of a hunting state; Vermont.

You have been voting as a minority who stuck to his guns for the price of getting very few of your issues understood and accepted in the very partisanly divided government that is the United States. You have very little history as a moderate who seeks to bring people together to have accomplishments. Hillary has been that person of the later. That is a distinguishing difference that makes her a far better candidate to take-over the highest office in the United States as our commander-in-chief on day one.  You know of this difference sir, and you subconscious knows it also. Those dreamy liberals (I am often one of them) are mesmerized by an ideal that this country is not ready for. Not this entire country, a very different place than Burlington Vermont liberals portray your following as.  

All Rights Reserved; James Gray Mason, January, 2016. 

#BernieSanders #Sanders2016 #USElections #Vote2016 #JamesGMason #Opinion 

Political Science is Not the Practice of Theory

James Gray Mason, September, 2015

"Political science. . . . I have a Ph.D. in political sciences!" Politics is a social studies area - people. Far from any standard of actual science. Calling it a science is about the egos of those who want to appear “expert,” as public validation for their thousands of hours of looking at a 5,000 piece jigsaw puzzle with 500 difficult to define pieces always missing from the table. It is filled with thousands of factors that can never be accounted for - that it why it is fascinating to many people. It really is a historical study of human behavior. It is not even theoretical. Factually; calling a study of this guessing game “Political Theory,” is a falsehood. Political analysis is filled with predictive analogy that is conceptual. The study of politics is dependent on using the documented past behavior  An opinion writer who loves politics is mostly guessing. An analyst who thinks he or she can predict the future behavior of complex and ever-changing societies would like to think that those missing 500 pieces are consistent and will remain so - but those missing pieces are changing shapes from one day to the next, and even their colors. Because thousands of environmental changes among millions of people can never be studied enough to make accurate predictions.

In my country, the United States, a well-written book by a political analyst from just 15 years ago might as well be blank pages. The worth of that very time and culturally dependent viewpoint is only valuable for seeing the mistakes of the predictions of that analyst. These books are, however, very valuable for studying the history from one point of view of a person who has invested thousands of hours in observation.

Just listen to the exclamations of nearly every political analyst right now when discussion of what the American Republican party is going through right now; “Who would have thought, just 4 months ago that the Republican party would look like this?” The agreement with that surprise is all around. Because one billionaire with a tremendous sense of self-worth decided to throw a wrench into the works a few months ago. A socio-politico who can embrace our always changing nature might have been able to predict Mr. Hairdoo’s rise to false populism. Not some professor who has spent thousands of hours reading about the documented behavior of past voting populations. Not theory - speculative conjecture in attempting to predict the outcome of a 100 horse race where nearly every horse was raised and trained at a different horse farm, with a different trainer and different jockeys and different track conditions.

If you are studying what we are calling Political Science (very egotistically) - you are a futurist. If your speculation now is proven to have been accurate in several years, your success is very much like the success of a Tarot Card reader or a psychic entertainer. You knew the minimal odds of being right. You bet on those odds toward the outcome of being successful more than 50% of the time. That slight edge made you successful in your predictions in the minds of those who followed your speculations and saw only your right answers - in the aftermath of the outcome. You'll continue to get paid for your predictions if you can bounce around to enough varied media outlets. It would be in your best interest to not revisit your mistakes publicly - you would lose readership and not be called back for your opinions very often. The exception in the United States is that you are a regular political commentator on Fox News.

Humble down “political scientists.” A theory is of an outcome that can be continuously validated as consistently accurate. Theory is fact as we validate it to be. Not speculation that is just more than 50% accurate, by some people and mostly wrong by most. Mathematics is theory as best as can it validated it to be by testing and retesting the physicality of those numbers when those theories are finally put to a practical test.

To us flawed humans even our mathematics can be wrong after much certainty we are right. Several brilliant masters of advanced algebra have been later proven to be wrong. The math looked great and was agreed to be so by many peers who practiced the same methodology on chalk-boards. Wrong! Whoops! Even our solid theories can be later proven to be mistaken.

It is grandiose and fictitious to call the study of politics “theory.” It is the egos of the experts who needed a language to allow colleges to charge tuition's for many classes that resulted in advanced educational degrees of all letters to be awarded for thousand of pupils to feel validated as also being expert - at a social studies field of futurist predictions.

I submit to you a hypothesis: Attempting to continuously make politics a theory as if a science exists within that study is prideful arrogance of intellectuals who don’t want their many opinions to be considered futile when their lives are nearing expiration. Now test that hypothesis. Go ahead. It’s already been done but out of respect for those who try to be accurate we say nothing. We keep reading them and listen to their strenuous attempts because it is all we have.

~~~~~
6/22/2016

A science? Maybe for the people who invented the microchips that the programmers are using who are writing your algorithms based on your inability to keep up with culture, mass psychology, the arts, the lack of hope or the number of bloviating demagogues ready to pounce?

Testing your observations of nature have been very far from your boasted academic prowess. 

What is needed is a degree of esteem named SocioPolyPsych and with a minor in Hip Hop (or something similar). 

Geeez this could go on and on but you #polysci brainiacs don’t deserve it because not one of you can be found who proves the integrity of the label Science, in any academic degree. 

~~~~~

One day in a futuristic world where all beings in complex societies are physically hooked up to a massive central supercomputer, we may be able to genuinely predict the social behavior of populations that are politically dependent to function with efficiency. I do not look forward to that. Because it is entertaining to observe the observers who are right more than 50% of the time.

~~~~~

6/22/2016:

hmm. a new series developing that will have to be portrayed in tiny snippets for the internet attention deficit hyperactivity browsing public. The title of the series?:

What went wrong for Senator Bernie Sanders.

Know this readers: my predictions were public many months ago. I'm pretty pretty pretty sure you can find them. This series will extrapolate on those writings and the causality in reasons why they were made and why I knew with 90% certainty what would happen to his campaign for president of this greater country.

Point 1 (of many).

The aesthetics of the candidate.

Yes there are a shitload of very shallow people who make judgements about  people in a split-second. In your work or home environment, you have met one today.

Image for a meme: 10 or 20 young (youth is important for meme) African American people facing the camera. None expressing any interest. Collective cartoon thought bubble:

*"Oh not another old white guy. He fits my adapted stereotype of an old white guy. Part of the damn problem. He's a curmudgeon too! Seems like he's whining about his Ensure being late."*

All Rights Reserved (to editorialize): James Gray Mason, PhD (in WTF) 10/10/2015



#PoliticalScience #Theory #Speculation #Futurism #UnitedStates #JamesGMason #psychology #AmericanCulture #Prediction #JamesGrayMason #BernieSanders #USAElections #Vote2016 #endallsuffering #timetravelwish #IveBEENwithHER #ImwithHER

ISIS: A City Like Kobani - A Method of Peace that is Merciful, Efficient, Swift

2/23/2015: Kobani is finally cleared of ISIS. But not without 5 months of blood and suffering and many deaths of innocents.

"If we can do this the United States will be seen as the most intelligent fighting force on Earth and remembered as so by allies and enemies for . . . a very long time. Honor restored. Pride in our conquests will by experienced. Knowing we did everything we could to create peace peacefully."

From just behind the Turkish Army. At the Syrian border. Kobani less than 1klm in background.

Regarding Fighting ISIS and Protecting Kobani, Syria: How to Save a City from Enemy Attack. A plan to end local urban/suburban conflicts with greatly reduced suffering and expenditures of resources.

As of this writing, ISIS is closing in on a partially abandoned city called Kobani, on the Syrian border. In the U.S., we would call Kobani a medium sized city, like Poughkeepsie, NY, or Dayton, OH. About 200,000 people have already evacuated the city and its regional towns/villages. It has been reported there are perhaps 2000 people left in the city, who could not leave, or refused to. The Turkish army now has that democracies' permission to involve themselves in the war against ISIS. But due to the complex political environment, the army sits on the hilltop above the city on the Turkish side, across from Kobani (image above), with tanks and APC's, watching the smoke and explosions as ISIS moves-in. Many in Turkey, especially Syrian refugees and their families, are very frustrated with Turkeys' unwillingness to go-in. They are afraid for those left within the city and angry as their brethren and family are dying and being wounded, less than a mile from those who could be the city's salvation. Leaders and the UN are predicting ISIS will massacre thousands when they overtake the battered city, which may happen today.

What if there existed a swift, effective and honorable and dignified way to end a conflict like this one? What if there were a reasonable, efficient, bloodless, merciful way to stop a horror before it happens, with a passive, innocuous, yet aggressive attack?

I’m more perplexed as to why our military does not incorporate the following method, more so than I am doubtful we can initiate the following action:

We sedate-the-shit-out-of those bastards while they are fighting in the city. Everybody drops.

My thought is we sedate this area, with drugs, dispersed through the air. Then go in while everyone is unconscious, disarm, apprehend, destroy enemy military equipment (in one place, with one bomb hopefully). We quickly attend to the wounded and sick, allow the population to return. Set-up a military front way south of the city, to ISIS's new involuntary position. It would be the most peaceful attack, and liberation of a city, from enemy attack and occupation, ever seen. The sedative could last 10 or 18 hours. Enough time to disarm all of the unconscious enemies, move their bodies onto trucks and to a temporary prison. We could establish full control of the city over any army on the ground before anyone has awakened.

We have all seen it done in the movies, and don't think our military's brightest minds have not seen it also, and have made provisions ready. If it works in an area like Kobani, it will work almost anywhere. If done with a strategy, it may be very effective and safe for all sides. Justice can be served without extreme violence. It's going to scare the living shit out of ISIS and make each of those assholes consider the new remote possibility that they will ever be successful with their religiously evil broad goal to take over the world. 

Candy Bar: I enjoy thinking, that in the 1960's, in the Pentagon, every officer began to have this day dream, repeatedly. It's why, I'm sure, we have this capability now. And we should not be afraid to use it against terrorists. From Goldfinger, Pussy Galores' Flying Beauties and their textbook Attack on Fort Knox, Kentucky:

To do this with moral confidence, we need to extinguish our old imagery of what a gas attack is. We need to realize that this time it's about sedating, not killing, and without even intention to cause suffering. We are not attackers - we are defenders. We are far-from being seen as dictators attempting to extinguish opposition to democracy by genocidal attacks. We will not be seen as any such attacker after Kobani is cleaned with this method.

Addendum, 11/4/2014:

Mr. President and Joint Chiefs,

         Take your balls in your hands and go visit the CEO of Pfizer, or Lilly. Have our boys take-over a big pharmaceutical plant and immediately make tons of this sedative, quickly. And consider, don't exclude a shit-load of lithium and Prozac in that mix.

We have the chemical technology to do this effectively without greatly harming numbers of innocents who may still be in the city.

The problem with traditional gassing of an area this large is that the combatant or not some may be harmed. For example, unless the chemical agent is only absorbed through the skin, or any mucosal tissue, as its  primary vector, the feeble of lung health may die from the dispersing of the sedative gas, depending of course on the chemicals used, and their density in the atmosphere. This population may be few in numbers, but may include those with COPD, babies, children and adults with asthma, and small animals, the elderly with weak cardiopulmonary health may suffer, and in this particular case some may die.

However, we could drop gas masks on the city, in certainty that some of those who will need a mask, get one. Of course, some ISIS fighters may have gas masks (but I have not seen one in media, have you?). Those with masks that filter the drug may continue fighting - if it's an aerosol with its primary vector as lung tissue. Again if the drug does not absorb through the skin or a mucosal membrane, they'll try to fight-on. But perhaps not many or all of the enemy will be equipped? As ISIS, in this scenario, if some of your comrades don't have protection, you lose them by your side as they become unconscious, your army is then cut into a small fragment of what it was prior to the gas attack. You must then consider surrender or conduct a fast retreat.

Note: It is possible the chemical used would nearly comatose the population, requiring an antidotal solution for each being revived. It would be an orderly manner of reviving the city, by small a number of citizens and enemy at a time.

If we think our military does not possess the ability to do this, that's foolish. If we think this same branch of our military has not prepared for evading the gas mask defense of this attack, that's foolish.

If you think the plan is ridiculous or implausible or abhorrent even, you don't know our capability. You may have little confidence in our military and our national security infrastructure, and you may not trust warring men at all.

Of course, this idea has been planned for and likely already tested in simulations; live and computer driven. Possibly, the chemicals are likely ready to go in sufficient amount - planned for as an emergency alternative to an armed crisis, and planned for as a manner of mass public crowd control. It takes balls that's all.

Our Commander in Chief will require a willingness possibly to cause the deaths, of some few innocents.  Their lungs and hearts won't be able to handle the sedation, who don't get a mask in time (if masks are effective).

Let's do this! It's the 21st century for a gods' sake. Why can't we do this? Balls <-- absence of.

Copyright Reserved. James G. Mason, October 11, 2014 JamesGMason.com