The Mason Moment, November 18, 2024

I speak about celebrating working-class and neighborhood heroes, banding together for workers' safety and racial justice.

The Mason Missile, October 27, 2024

Greetings, Americans! We have commemorated the holidays of Rosh ha-Shona and Yom Kippur, along with Sukkot and Simchat Torah; may we continue to learn the true meaning of these events, that a new start is possible. Finally, the news media has been paying attention to trump’s mental health, or lack thereof, with his speeches going all over the place, and he goes on about everything but the topic he’s been asked about. Why has the news media, before Biden dropped out, been so fascinated with Biden’s mental health, but they’ve given trump a pass on it? Perhaps it’s because trump has been in the media for four decades, being hyped as a genius real-estate and casino tycoon, squiring some beautiful women all around Manhattan, and getting into tabloid fodder scandals, and that form of “news” veers into entertainment. Or perhaps also, some billionaire corporate interests, including some media corporations—yes, it’s a business like any other—don’t care about trump’s cognitive decline, or his racism, or his associating with neo-Fascists; all they care about are tax cuts they WOULD receive, along with the repression of workers and of women seeing reproductive freedom, people of color seeking equity and their REAL history told, and of LGBTQ+ people just wanting to live their lives without the risk of harassment and death. Project 2025, the brain-worm of the Heritage Foundation, is still on their minds, no matter how much the trump campaign tried to disassociate itself from it. (https://kamalaharris.com/project2025/) It’s NO different from the German industrial magnates who thought investing in Adolf Hitler and his NSDAP would be a great investment for putting down “Communism”—meaning any effort to empower workers, after the 1929 Crash and the Russian Revolution—and they paid no attention to Hitler’s rantings, the party’s violence and anti-Semitism, the brown-shirted goons stomping on their enemies and playing tin soldiers. They got their profits and the unions were destroyed, so what did they care? Of course you may think, correctly, of the German firms Krupp and IG Farben, who used the slave labor from the concentration camps; and there was Hugo Boss, the fashion house, which manufactured those uniforms for all the NSDAP’s branches, like the SS. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo_Boss) But American firms did business with Germany during the Second World War. (https://www.adl.org/resources/news/german-industry-and-third-reich) One is Ford, and Henry Ford was also a notorious Jew-hater and fanboy of Hitler; several subsidiaries of Ford held factories in Cologne and Berlin, using concentration-camp slave labor. Other corporate accomplices included Coca-Cola, Eastman-Kodak, IBM (for the record-keeping machinery they maintained regularly in the concentration camps, and their investments in several German firms, like the aircraft firm Focke-Wulf), General Motors (their Opal division), and certain American and British banks. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_companies_involved_in_the_Holocaust) (https://lorimer.ca/adults/product/big-business-and-hitler/) And if these corporations could collaborate with a foreign tyrant and murderer, they damn sure would be happy to work with a home-grown tyrant, like a future trump regime—which we must make DAMN SURE there isn’t any. We tried it before with trump; respectable, mainstream politicians thought that trump would have “adults in the room,” competent cabinet members and staff workers who could keep him from doing or saying anything stupid; but he was subservient to Putin in that meeting in Helsinki, praised neo-Nazis as “very fine people,” scapegoated immigrants from the Mexican border (but not the Canadian border, mind you) and Muslims (with the travel ban), the contempt he has shown towards women—his bragging about overturning Roe v. Wade, his insults towards accomplished women, and his sexual abuses—his contempt for military personnel (“suckers and losers”), for a start. And we can’t treat this election as just an “election,” a contest between two candidates with more or less differing ideas—or, as some adults I heard say, “just a bunch of crooks, they’re all the same” during my growing-up years. It isn’t. It’s for the future of America and its people; and it would be a disgrace for us to allow trump back into power, so he can abuse it by attacking his enemies—meaning US, his fellow Americans. But, just as our ancestors crossed an ocean to fight foreign fascists—some of them even dying—we can defeat the home-grown fascists of today. Freedom-fighting is in the American blood, from the Revolution, through the movements of pass women’s suffrage and end chattel slavery, through the Civil War and the struggle to organize workers, through the World Wars, through the Civil Rights movements for African Americans and other people of color, for women, for LGBTQ+ people. We Americans have a long and venerable history of standing up to oppressors and bosses, and asserting our right, and in the process, asserting our significance, our value, as human beings. SO, November 5, Americans, don’t let our ancestors, or our progeny, down. Don’t forget the great freedom fighters of our true, sanitized history. Let’s continue to put in the work, to campaign, and VOTE. When we stand up to the fascist goons arrayed against us, we’ll see they’re not so tough after all. Stay safe, stay strong, and stay together! Slava Ukraini! Am Yisrael Chai! America will be free! Bye!

The Mason Missile, September 24, 2024

Greetings, Americans! We are coming up to the High Holy Days, Rosh haShona and Yom Kippur. We have been going through Elul, which, according to custom, is the time to reflect on our lives during the previous year. This is also the time to make amends for anything negative we have committed; in this spirit, I ask forgiveness to anyone I might have wronged, and if anyone out there has wronged me, I forgive them. My forgiveness, however, does not apply to Donald whatshisface and his running mate and pet boy JD vance. Trump went on the debate against Kamala Harris (pronounced KA-ma-la) at the National Constitution Center, located in Philadelphia (I’m proud to say, https://constitutioncenter.org/). Harris is the kind of happy warrior leader we need to fight trump-style fascism (yes I WILL use that word!), fighting the good fight on genuine issues (instead of trump’s whining about windmills causing cancer) having fun along the way. Aside from the dangers trump poses to our country and to the world (all very real), I got a kick out of trump making a damn fool of himself, while Harris stood there confident and in charge. (https://abc.com/movies-and-specials/0ff50ff8-d36b-4d74-a943-839d568932a9) The craziest part was when trump, talking about Haitian immigrants in Sprin gfield, Ohio, “They’re eating the dogs, they’re eating the cats.” (https://www.msnbc.com/deadline-white-house/watch/trump-s-racist-lie-that-people-are-eating-dogs-this-is-the-logical-end-of-the-republican-party-219321413745) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHycpIhnFcU) Harris got a good laugh out of it, so did I, but the slander caused serious problems for Springfield, such as bomb threats at the schools, City Hall, and the Haitian community. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hx05dAFNPb4) On top of all that, vance was interviewed on CNN by Dana Bash; (https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/15/politics/video/sotu-bash-vance-haitian-immigrants-full-interview) Bash informed vance that the allegations about Haitian immigrants stealing geese from the ponds, along with the “stealing cats and dogs” story, could not be verified, and that the Haitian immigrants have proven to be good workers, primarily in the steel industry. But vance, smiling through all this, and linked it with the trump-MAGA whine about “open borders” and letting “these people” in. He knew the stories he repeated were non-verifiable, but it made for some propaganda to feed the MAGA-ists. It’s an old American tale: accuse some or another ethnic group, particularly people of color, of every sin and crime you can imagine, and saying they’re dirty and stupid, and that they would just sit all day and collect welfare AND take jobs away from “real” Americans, and so the State must keep them under control, either with over-policing, or oppressive working conditions at rock-bottom pay, or artificially-enforced unemployment, so workers would fight among themselves for a scant number of jobs available. It’s an old racist trick all through our politics, and trump, whose racism and anti-Semitism is all too genuine, has picked up on it, and has brought out the racism and hate lurking inside his voters. Class, the dirty little secret of American society, also gets into this, with socially and economically elite classes similarly looking down on working and low-income people, assuming they’re good for nothing but toiling at an assembly line for their benefit, or else they would be drugging, or boozing, or screwing. And so trump and vance keep feeding the public the narrative about what the terrible things immigrants allegedly do, since they believe the American people to be stupid enough to believe it. Don’t fall for it, Americans. We’re better than this as a nation. On November 7, we must go to the viting booth in record number and VOTE, for Kamala Harris and the entire Democratic slate, and strike a blow to trump and his MAGA minions. Vote blue, all the way through. Stay safe, stay strong, and stay together! Stop Project 2025! Slava Ukraini! Am Yisrael Chai! America will be free! Bye!

The Mason Moment with John Oliver Mason, September 3, 2024

I speak on social and political issues, calling them as I see them. I speak today about Labor day and the danger to workers from another trump regime.

The Mason Missile, August 31, 2024

Greetings, Americans! This month had the Democratic National Convention, in Chicago. There, the attendees heard from Congress-member Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY; her district covers portions of the Bronx and Queens), UAW President Shawn Fain, Senator Raphael Warnock (GA), Rep. Jasmine Crockett (TX), Former First Lady and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, AND—President Joe Biden. The speakers spoke about the serious issues facing Americans, such as workers organizing for their defense, trying to pay medical bills for loved ones, the dangers to women’s reproductive rights, lifting people out of poverty, and the dangers of a widening gap between the super-rich and the rest of us working and low-income Americans. But there still was a feeling of joy and positivity, and hope that we STILL CAN defeat the fascist forces of this country, and raise the country to an even higher level. Plus, it gave proper respect to Joe Biden, who cleaned up themes left by the regime of Donald whatshisface, dealt seriously with the COVID pandemic (instead, like one other person, of talking about injecting bleach or UV lights inside your body), and gave the nation a reason to hope for something better than racism, division, and hatred infesting our politics. Thank you, Joe, for all that you have done. (https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/watch-rep-alexandra-ocasio-cortez-speaks-at-2024-democratic-national-convention) (https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/watch-uaws-shawn-fain-speaks-at-the-democratic-national-convention-revealing-trump-is-a-scab-t-shirt) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JznC5vZnGOQ) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=md0GA-T8Cv4) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8N9LJ1Tk1w) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=np6ZGonecFE) One great part is when Michigan State Senator Mallory McMorrow hauled out to the convention a HUGE copy of Project 2025, the demon child of the Heritage Foundation, and she read some of the items it has in store for America, essentially turning the entire federal government into trump’s own enforcer, on behalf of his billionaire donors. (https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2024/08/19/mallory-mcmorrow-dnc-speech-michigan-state-senator/74857761007/) Others who have read portions of Project 2025 were Kenan Thompson, a veteran of Saturday Night Live, Colorado Governor Jared Polis, and Pennsylvania State Representative (and candidate for Auditor-General) Malcolm Kenyatta. (https://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/watch/kenan-thompson-warns-voters-of-project-2025-217713733673) (https://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/watch/colorado-gov-polis-slams-project-2025-as-trump-s-roadmap-to-ban-abortion-217707589796) (https://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/watch/state-rep-malcolm-kenyatta-slams-project-2025-at-the-dnc-217567813821) (I myself will also keep mentioning Project 2025; the trump campaign has been distancing itself from it, but this is the plan they STILL have, and have been planning to do for decades; they WOULD put it to practice in a potential trump regime, IF we don’t go out and vote November 5.) Please contrast the Democratic convention to the Republican National Convention last month, in Chicago. In spite of the trump-worship, and all the silliness it entails, there was a look of doom in the hall, like they know they MIGHT lose (let’s work to see that happens), and, instead of substantive discussions about issues affecting the lives of Americans, they put on a freak show, including a lip-synch act by Kid Shlock, uh, Rock, and Hulk Hogan acting like he’s ready to take on Andre The Giant again in Wrestlemania, which, back in the day, took place at trump’s casinos in Atlantic City (before he bankrupted them and they had to be demolished; quite a business whiz, he). The fight is on for America’s democracy, and to improve it however we can. The labor movement is an excellent resistance movement against everything that trump, Project 2025, and all their corporate sponsors are trying to accomplish: eliminate women’s right to control their reproductive systems, eliminate any and every intelligent and fact-based discussion of our nation’s history (including racism and oppression of workers), along with any restraints on the President removing career, competent civil servants and replacing them with his hacks and flunkies, and turning our own military—our own fellow Americans, our own sons and daughters—into his own private crew of leg-breakers; and let’s not forget their targeting LGBTQ+ Americans, in the name of “traditional values.” You know I’ll do my part! This Monday, I’ll take part in Philadelphia’s Labor Day Parade and Festival, joining my union brothers and sisters in honoring the work WE have done to build up this nation, no thanks to the billionaires who just take the profits and get all the publicity; and to prepare ourselves for the election, November 5, where we can strike a blow, with our ballots, for freedom and against fascism. We GOT this, Americans! Stay safe, stay strong, and stay together! Slava Ukraini! Am Yisrael Chai! America will be free! Bye!

The Mason Moment, August 26, 2024

I speak about third parties in our politics, and how we can't vote for them this election.

The Mason Moment, August 6, 2024

I discuss the influence of such tech-moguls as Peter Thiel and Elon Musk entering and influencing our politics.