Day - 1398

Thursday, February 27, 2020

Chapter Five (249 Days Until the 2020 Election)

I listened to two more interviews with Anand Giridharadas today.


This first interview is an hour long and is at the Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics.  The things he says about Harvard being the great washing machine of bloody money is amazing.

The second interview is with Michael Moore and is about 100 minutes long.


This is really thought provoking and helpfu.  There is no win-win, according to Anand.  I think he's right on so many levels.  I'm totally into his message that  billionaires have been taking and controlling the American dream for decades now at the expense of everyone else, and use their philathropic enterprises as a means of continuing the control, continuing the taking, while posing as the good guys, the noble guys, the guys who are kind enough to donate millions to worthy causes while the game is set up for them to reep hundreds of millions.  His Winners Take All book echoes other books I've read about our winner-take-all society.  Will the masses finally react to this in 2020?  It's possible, but there will be profound pushback.  We'll see how effective the pushback has been on Super Tuesday when Dems go to the polls in 12 states.  Do they choose Sanders/Warren or Biden/Bloomberg/Buttigieg?

Capitalism and socialism work together in all countries. "This notion that we exist in a binary world is ludicrous." The language we use to explain how governments are run needs to change.  We need to come up with new terms that aren't so polarizing.  So many good ideas and thoughts in these interviews.

Here's one more I listened to:


My Uncle Chris sent me an OpEd from the NY Times about how Dems cave on every issue.

Quanifying Liberal Suckerdom

That's been an ongoing problem going back to the Clinton years when they tried to push Health Care through and wound up getting spanked real hard in the 1994 mid-terms.  Then came "The era of big government is over."

For many Dems, the fight against Team Orange isn't just a fight to remove from office.  There's a civil war also going on within Team Purple.  Do we go safe and moderate (Biden/Bloomberg), or do we go radical (Sanders/Warren) and really confront the inequality that exists in the U.S.  The problem with that is what's already baked in the cake, which is a mindset of me me me, money & power, money & power, money & power, that all of us kind of accept and have resigned ourselves to.  That's how this country operates, and the feeling is if you don't like it, too bad.  There's so much that's dysfunctional about this place.  If Sanders is the nominee, wow, that would be something.

So it was playoff night tonight.  Kirk and I had a bye in the first round.  In the second round, we faced Carlos and David.  We went on a run in game 1 and were up 10-6, then 12-8, but soon it was 13-13. They were playing great and some of our rallies were so much fun.  Luckily, Kirk served two great serves and we closed out game 1.  By game 2, Carlos was tired and started skipping the ball.  We finished them off pretty easily and face Tyrone and Gary in the finals next Thursday.


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