The Mason Moment with John Oliver Mason, October 30, 2023

I speak about the new Speaker of the House, and the need to vote out the Republican Party.

The Mason Moment with John Oliver Mason, October 23, 2023

I speak about my distress over events in the Middle East and of the craziness of the House Republican Caucus.

The Mason Missile, October 22, 2023

Greetings, Americans! Let us note (not mourn) the passing of Kevin Phillips, whose book of 1969, The Emerging Republican Majority, laid out the path of electoral victory for Republicans, which they have followed to this day. Phillips urged the party to appeal to working-class white voters angry at African-Americans for asserting their Civil Rights, which the Nixon campaign called their “Southern Strategy,” utilizing the phrases “law and order,” “crime in the streets,” “drug dealers,” and “welfare cheats,” instead of up-front spouting racial slurs; white voters would hear these phrases, and let their racially-stereotyped thinking do the rest, ginning up anger and resentment against uppity minorities. (https://www.phillytrib.com/commentary/the-gops-southern-strategy-mastermind-just-died-heres-his-legacy/article_4abdb10b-af22-5bb1-aa60-2d3b06c3e2d1.html) This has proven to be a recipe for social disaster; instead of bringing people together to solve mutual problems, and bringing people of all races together, Phillip’s formula has fostered racial anxiety and division, keeping Americans at odds with each other. And the news media, as far as I can see, has acted like it’s been a stroke of political genius, guaranteed to continually keep Republicans in the White House and other offices—but what about the real business of governing? What about public safety, schools, water/sewer, defense, housing? Public policy from such elections has produced ideas that shift the blame on the afflicted minorities, talking about them being oversexed, drugged up, lazy and ignorant, which is built on the stereotypes the Southern Strategy promotes. The Republicans who bewail what t---p has done to their precious party aren’t innocent of this; some variation or another of the Southern Strategy, like Ronald Reagan, in 1980, proclaiming “I believe in states’ rights” in the Mississippi community where the Civil Rights workers—Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, and James Chaney (glory to their names!) were killed by the Ku Klux Klan (https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-kkk-kills-three-civil-rights-activists); the 1988 campaign of George HW Bush, which featured photos of Willy Horton, “the scary Black rapist” supposedly out on the loose; and the constant promoting of the “birther” movement, which harped the idea that Barrack Obama was really born in Kenya, and they demanded his birth certificate but where never satisfied; and now we have this alleged capitalist business whiz of a real-estate developer, who cheated on his contractors, his taxes, his wives, and his golf, but has been so adored by evangelical Christian voters. I advocate public policies what would uplift and unite the people, ALL of them, and do not look down on anybody, be it the homeless, drug addicted, unemployed, or in some way or another marginalized. Ain’t this a trip? At this writing, the House members of the Republican Party, the “law and order” party currently infested with authoritarian ideas, can’t pull themselves together to elect a new speaker, after Kevin McCarthy resigned. Jim Jordan of Ohio, has failed three times to be elected Speaker, and the Republican caucus has been throwing up names of their members crazy enough to take the job, and crazy enough to attain support from the MAGA base, where the Republican Party is at now. The race-baiting and racially-charged innuendos have come to this. Traditionally, when the Republican Party, like during Ronald Reagan, put out a propaganda slogan not fit for a bumper sticker, all the party, and their allied media outlets, run with it, and the regular commercial media tags along. I remember the 1984 presidential campaign, where the republican media machine kept up the line about Walter Mondale, that he was beholden to “special interests,” and these so-called “special interests” were never identified; Republican voters collectively had their own idea of who these “special interests” were, like gays, Labor, feminists, or anybody they didn’t like. The putrid legacy of Kevin Phillips continues. This is what we’re up against, and I’m pleased with all the pushback against it, in the courts and in the neighborhoods. Workers have been winning victories in organizing and attaining good contracts, like the Teamsters against UPS, the slow-motion strike by UAW against the big four auto makers, and organizing drives at Starbucks, Amazon, and Trader Joe’s. Often the news media (and I say this with all respect, as I’m in the news media myself) doesn’t pay attention to this, they seldom do; but we’re paying attention, workers are paying attention, and communities are paying attention. So let’s keep it up! Let’s bury Phillip’s tactics of hate and division, and connect with fellow workers and neighbors in our worksites and blocks, see who the real enemy is, and band together—and VOTE every time an election arises, from President all the way down to town council and township supervisor; and Phillip’s toxic legacy will finally end in our politics. Stay safe, stay strong, and stay together! Slava Ukraini! America will be free! Bye!

The Mason Moment with John Oliver Mason, September 26, 2023

I speak about Yom Kippur, the whine about Critical Race Theory and “Woke”-ness, and the need to support all workers organizing.

The Mason Missile, September 19, 2023

Greetings, Americans! September 11 has a special meaning; it is the date of some of the worst in world tragedies. On September 11, 2002, two jet liners, seized by Al Qaeda terrorists, crashed into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York; another one was captured and crashed into the Pentagon; and another, which the terrorists planned to ram into the Capitol, was recaptured by the passengers and crashed into farmland in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Thousands of innocent people were killed; I remember I was at my job and one of my coworkers told me about the New York crash, and we all huddled around the radio for the latest news. No cause can justify or excuse these crimes. May the souls of those killed continue to rest in peace. The other tragedy was in September 11, 1973, in Chile; on that day, the Chilean military, on the encouragement of the CIA, violently overthrew the government—the duly elected government, might I add—of Salvador Allende, killing Allende and bring in the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet—whom Allende, earlier in that year, appointed Commander-In-Chief of the Chilean army. The coup ushered in one of the vicious dictatorships in the world, where dissidents were murdered by Pinochet’s secret police, DINA, with such means as throwing them into the ocean or into the Andes; crushing their bones by driving a car into them; beatings, rapes, and assassinations, such as the bombing of the car driven by Orlando Letelier, an official in the Allende administration who was a leader in the anti-Pinochet resistance. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orlando_Letelier) Another victim of the regime was Victor Jara, the radial theater producer, poet and songwriter, who was tortured and shot, then dumped into a shantytown in Santiago. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V%C3%ADctor_Jara) They were among the thousands of victims of the Pinochet regime, and their loved ones are still seeking justice for them. Documents are still being dredged out about OUR OWN government’s role in the coup. (https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2023-08-29/us-releases-chile-coup-documents) Henry Kissenger, then Nixon’s Secretary of State and National Security Advisor, was full of the fear, dominating foreign policy at that time, of COMMUNISM and the belief that any government pointing anywhere to the “left” was a client for the Soviet Union and its schemes of world domination, an enemy that had to be eliminated, no matter how popular it was to its people, no matter how peaceful and non-repressive it was. (https://www.e-ir.info/2016/02/12/us-foreign-policy-and-the-1973-coup-in-chile/) (https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/cold-war-henry-kissinger/2023-05-25/henry-kissingers-documented-legacy) (https://www.npr.org/2023/09/10/1193755188/chile-coup-50-years-pinochet-kissinger-human-rights-allende) Eventually, after the coup, the policy of the Nixon-Kissinger regime went from instigating the coup to helping Pinochet consolidate his power, and they didn’t worry their heads about human rights violations, repression of the arts and media, or torture. Pinochet and his regime has become the role model for the far-right thug element in THIS country, like the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers, and other domestic fascist gun-slingers. (https://theintercept.com/2021/02/04/pinochet-far-right-hoppean-snake/) They want to utilize Pinochet’s tactics of repression and torture against anyone in the “left,” whether it be a Maoist or some milquetoast liberal; no one, no matter how nonviolent or pacifist, would be free from being their enemy of THEIR state. One big thing about the Pinochet regime is how the free-market loving “Libertarian” faction of economic thought fell in love with the regime, with such heavy-hitters as Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek praising Pinochet for privatizing public services, eliminating the social-welfare system, and the deregulation of business. These “Libertarians” whine and howl about any state intervention into the economy, no matter how beneficial it would be to the general public—environmental protection, protection of union-organizing drives, Social Security, public health, what have you—as “tyranny,” and to them democracy, the general public voting on the future of the country and participating in its works, would be a terrible despotism, and the only TRUE freedom is the freedom of corporations to pollute the air and water, to overcharge for shoddy products, to put contaminated food on the market, to prevent workers from organizing. Hayek and Friedman, however, were perfectly fine with a violent dictatorship, so long as its opponents were denied their “Liberty.” They would have no role in this “Libertarian” society. All of this is chronicled in Naomi Klein’s book The Shock Doctrine. Here, in all its glory, is Fascism, the repressing of dissidents for the benefit of the financial elite. This is what awaits us if trump is reelected into the Presidency. The elements for undermining our somewhat rickety democracy are as present in this country as they were in Chile, such as a violent racist-fascist element ready to slaughter its enemies, their allies placed in the state apparatus (the Supreme Court and the House of Representatives) , and its fellow-travelers caught up in a news-and-information bunker with no outside interference. (I say bunker, not bubble, purposely.) We’ve had our bouts of repression in this country, such as the Red Scares after the World Wars, and the attempts to discourage dissent during the invasion of Iraq. The most nonviolent of peace movements were under surveillance during and after the war, and opponents were treated like Neville-Chamberlin type appeasers. Plus during the length of the Civil Rights Movement, the FBI (I say this with all due respect) had a vast program to surveil and undermine the movement, treating it like “the enemy within,” as was the anti-Viet Nam-war movement. It can happen on a bigger scale if trump is reelected, and make Pinochet look like a wimp in comparison. No, we MUST NOT and WILL NOT allow this to happen! We WILL organize, and support all other organizing efforts of workers and communities; we WILL educate ourselves on the REAL issues, and it isn’t gas stoves and drag queens; and we WILL get out and vote, and help our friends and neighbors do so as well. That’s how we’ll defeat our homegrown Pinochet wannabes. Stay safe, stay strong, and stay together! Slava Ukraini! America will be free! Bye!

The Mason Moment with John Oliver Mason, September 18, 2023

I speak about the wave of worker organizing, and of the need for workers to organize.

The Mason Moment with John Oliver Mason, September 11, 2023

I speak about the current Labor activity and militancy in this country.