* This originally appeared as a post on facebook by my friend Tony Pecoraro.  With his permission, I’m posting it here on my blog simply because it nails, with a visceral honesty and angst,  just about everything I’ve been trying to say for a year.  

Wikileaks has NEVER had to retract something for lack of authenticity, accuracy or truthfulness.  While the singular political establishment along with a cowardly and complicit media shouts from the rooftops about Russian intervention in our election, they NEVER, EVER attempt to even address the substance of the material leaked that my friend Tony is only glancing at here.

I know I promised nothing more political until after this election of dread and I’m confident this doesn’t break that promise because I didn’t write it.  So there.  The subsequent comment is my original one to him on his post.

It’s long but read the whole goddamn thing over lunch if you need to.  There’s hardly a word wasted.  

This one is for you Miles.*    

“It just keeps getting worse peeps.

I’m now reading reports and leaked emails that are showing Assistant Attorney General Peter Kadzik tipped off Podesta and the Clinton campaign about what was going on at the Department of Justice in order to prep them for the investigation into her email scandal back in 2015. This is after I read emails last night which decisively showed that Clinton’s staff’s immediate reaction to the 2015 NYT article which broke the email scandal was to deliberately destroy the emails in question.

At this point no one has an excuse anymore to not believe that there are multiple important government institutions that are effectively subverted by Clinton allies, or that Clinton herself and the company she keeps have no real respect for the concept of equality under the rule of law. Kadzik is right now one of the top overseers in the investigation of the new Weiner emails. It should be obvious that this is a major conflict of interest which, even if it ISN’T protecting criminal activity from justice, is an enormous undermining of public trust and favor for the Clintons in particular and Democrats in general and for the US government in its entirety.

I don’t want to hear anyone claim the Clintons are not corrupt anymore. I especially don’t want to hear about how Trump is more corrupt despite having never been a public official. And I REALLY don’t want to hear about how my criticism of Clinton makes me sexist or a Trump supporter. At this point all of these arguments are a waste of everyone’s time. Supporting someone who holds the law in contempt is stupid and inexcusable. Both candidates fit that description.

Both candidates do not qualify for public office. Both have demonstrated active contempt for the rule of law, the consent of the governed, and the existential threats facing America today. Both candidates should have to face criminal prosecution without any of their buddies on the opposite side of the court room or wielding the damn gavel.

This alone would be horribly dangerous in a time of political stability, but unless you have been dead for the past, I don’t know, thirty-ish years you don’t have an excuse for not realizing that this is not a time of political stability. In the 50’s – 70’s a scandal like this was enough to help destroy the solidity of the home front during war.

In a context of socioecnomic and political upheaval such as now it represents the ominous threat of potential civil war. The righteous authority of the rule of law cannot continue to be undermined so publicly and without any perceivable benefit to American citizens or consequences for those who violate it while allowing the stability of the government to continue to exist at all.

I want to know at what point are Americans going to realize that the voter base of the opposing political party is not the enemy.

I want to know at what point Americans are going to realize that political parties themselves, both the major dichotomy and the next to irrelevant ‘thirds’, are part of the enemy.

I want to know at what point will Americans realize that the economic powers behind both major parties and an uncomfortable extent of our entire government are the other part of the enemy.

I want to know at what point Americans are going to realize that their own relaxed ethical standards are facilitating their own betrayal by the people who are supposed to represent them.

I want to know at what point are Americans going to abandon these so-called leaders who only see government and power as a tool for exploiting billions of people and finally take responsibility for their own country and their own role in human history and development.

I have said before that I will vote for Clinton to prevent a Trump presidency. This is the moment where a line has been inarguably crossed. I cannot in good conscience put my official favor towards a candidate who seems incapable of being held accountable to the law of the land, who seems incapable of even understanding why accountability is a good thing both for Americans and for herself.

I cannot vote for her and sleep at night. I cannot vote for her and look myself, or those I love, in the eye. I cannot vote for her while honestly believing I am doing the right thing for others or for myself or for the very concept of justified rule under law.

Justice is sacred, not because of hollow tradition, not because of blind circular argument, and certainly not because of political expediency, but because without justice we have no foundation for higher order civilization and sooner or later we’re just another version of the jungle.

I should not have to list the reasons why we are better off out of the jungle.
I categorically refuse to sacrifice my sense of justice simply because I am afraid, either of physical danger or simple criticism.

If you think anyone should I think you are wrong and have a lot to learn.

Do not think that I am not afraid either. We are talking about a president, in either electoral result, who doesn’t respect the law and lacks the respect and trust and consent of the majority of the electorate. Nothing good can come from either candidate aside from their dismissal in four years or their impeachment in less time than that. That’s the BEST possible outcome.

The worst possible outcome is civil war between urban and rural populations, fueled by deep seated economic and political resentment and distrust, the flames fanned by a new generation of murder technology, the violence exacerbated by the logistical tools found in communications technology.

My friends, we are not talking about a series of small militia skirmishes in unknown small towns or federal nature reservations. All the ingredients for civil war lie scattered between the International Boundary and the Rio Grande, between West Quoddy Head, Maine and Cape Alva, Washington. All it needs is someone (or more likely a couple hundred separate someones) with enough motivation and who knows what they are doing before, in the words of Colonel Couvillon, “Our way of life right here is about nine meals from anarchy.”

Over a million people easily could die from violence and starvation in the first year of such an unmitigated catastrophe. No, I am not including in this rough and conservative estimation the cost to human life across the globe that the accompanying economic crash would cause.

So yes I am afraid. We all should be. This is real, this is our country, this is US.

But if ethical standards were meant to be abandoned at the first sight of trouble or danger then there is no point to them in the first place and they represent nothing of value whatsoever. If legal standards were meant to be ignored because they are inconvenient then there is no value to legal authority and the terms “president”, “representative”, “justice”, “officer”, and “general” have no meaning and the entire concept of governance implodes from the internal pressure of its own vacuousness.

Now more than ever before we need to stop seeing our fellow citizens as the enemy, and start seeing the institutions and those wielding them to pit us against each other as the real enemy. Tea Party members and BLM advocates have far more in common with each other than with the vast majority of the leaders who claim to fight for their causes. Same goes for alt-right individualists and hardcore intersectional feminists. Everyone has much to teach everyone else about their struggles under an inhumanely insensate kleptocratic oligarchy.

We can no longer afford to pretend to do right by our nation or ourselves by dehumanizing any point of view from our fellow citizens that opposes us. We have to educate and empower each other under an unyielding faith, yes faith sneering secularists, that we are all in this together and that only as equals under this faith can we cooperate sufficiently to govern ourselves and render political parties entirely obsolete. So long as we don’t believe in the patently obvious, that as humans we share the common goal of fulfilling life for ourselves and those we love and can achieve this more easily and sustainably through cooperation than conflict, then we have lost the struggle for a more perfect union before we start.

I don’t, can’t, care anymore if my presidential vote will get lumped into the “other” category. I also don’t care about any thoughts that I am wasting my vote by refusing to cast it in favor of a candidate that doesn’t believe in the rule of law. Any vote for a candidate that holds the law of the land in contempt is a vote quite literally for a specific version of anarchy or the invitation of total anarchy. Anyone who knowingly votes for such candidate has to acknowledge the personal failure represented by their inability to understand this.

I am pressing the Post button on this status, taking a shower, walking to the early polling station, and writing in on the presidential vote the only name I’ve seen so far that belongs to a person both familiar enough with the political process and passionate enough about the actual problems endured now for decades by American citizens while also continuing to demonstrate a firm understanding of ethical respect both to the law and to us as citizens to have earned my consent for governing: U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders.

By the time I get back I want to see names of people who can help me get something real started: a public super-pac that can fund media, politicians, and policies made by, of, and for the actual public. I hope you understand if you don’t declare yourself as willing and able to assist in this effort, or at least offer constructive criticisms, and I end up ignoring you. We no longer have the time to enjoy the luxury of idle conversation or petty argument. Now is the time to act for our own interests since it should be abundantly clear that no one with official authority has enough interest in doing so for us.

I sincerely hope that it is not too late to fix this.”

12 Responses to “A Guest Blog from my friend Tony Pecoraro”