February Update

Travel Journal Update: There is some more stuff up, if you go to the travel journal link.

Subscription Link: So, there is an issue with Google, but the link is here: http://feeds.feedburner.com/AwakeningInThePast
 I could also manually create an email list for my updates, if people want.

Story Update: This is happening very slowly as I am still struggling to do anything.

Current Thoughts:

 -- Impeachment -- I have been against this. Basically, I think Trump is problematic and impeachable, but I have issues with the mentality behind the current process.
    Summary:
    a) Let's start with an easy one -- Pence becomes president when Trump is gone. Impeaching the president also doesn't fix the issues with the Republicans.
    b) US does this to other countries -- Trump is the type of person whom the American establishment likes to put in charge of foreign countries which it destroys, as this type of person is easy to manipulate. This may explain why such people who do this believe that he was put in by a foreign power. However, the same mentality which justifies this abroad would encourage people domestically to value this.
    c) Next is something much more difficult to understand -- Trump is politics as usual, just more open about the corruption.
    Some of the more obvious points which come to mind include: The Republicans tried to sabotage Obama just as the Democrats attempt to sabotage Trump. Many horrible things Trump does are also very standard, like hurting migrants (Obama was called the "Deporter in Chief") or attacking the Middle East (and Obama escalated the drone strikes in the Middle East).
    I can also point out that US presidents will put pressure on foreign countries far worse that that which Trump was accused of doing to Ukraine. And I am not convinced American imperialism is a better justification than Trump's selfishness.
    Glenn Greenwald has talked about how Hillary Clinton got information from abroad in order to try to take down Trump, and has many times pointed out this double standard. For example: ( https://www.democracynow.org/2017/7/13/glenn_greenwald_donald_trump_jrs_emails ) "In which case, why is it OK for the Democrats to do it with Ukrainian officials or for their investigator to go to Moscow and get dirt on Trump?"
    d) Follows from (b) -- The entire impeachment process has been focused on an attempt to blame the Russians and push cold war mentality. Despite numerous potential offences, this process first focuses on the conspiracy-theory like "Russia-gate", only to switch to the American politics as usual "Ukraine-gate" when the conspiracy theory was proven false. The sin of Trump in this case is misbehaving in a way contrary to the American anti-Russian narrative rather than to advance it.
    e) Trump has been made into symbol of all the American sins. People think that if we get rid of him, we get rid of issues, but he is only more open about the corruption, not more corrupt. The people who love him don't want to admit that these things (racism, etc.) are issues, while the people who hate him don't want to admit that they have these issues.
    f) US politics has been phrased as a competition rather than focusing on fixing the issues. As such, impeachment will always be about Democrats vs Republicans rather than corruption, even if it were really about corruption (which it is not, no matter what the Democrats tell themselves).

    Here as an alternative analysis of the situation by philosopher Slavoj Zizek: https://www.rt.com/op-ed/480606-us-ideological-civil-war/

    I know appreciating these types of points is difficult for many people, especially as many of them require being honest about the reality of the US (as an imperialist state rather than being what it claims to be, a beacon of democracy).

 -- Anti-Nuclear Activism and the Youth: My mother claims that the persistence of anti-communist and other problematic perspectives come from the cold war, but in terms of Russia-phobia, many of the problematic voices are my age or younger. On my trip to Russia, I met many older Americans interested in deescalation, but very few youth, and I think the youth that were there had some sort of connection with Russia already. It seems that in this case, without cold war, people forgot about nuclear weapons, and without anti-nuclear activism, people forgot how to distrust US establishment (which hates Russia because it is a rival which refused to submit).
    In fact, Tulsi Gabbard changed her position on this regard in part due to a false alarm for a missile strike in Hawaii, causing her to realize that the US could be attacked, and the best defense is to avoid provoking a conflict.

 -- Russian Constitutional Changes -- These are necessary, as they are designed to decentralize power, which had been centralized by Yelson in 1993.
    I have been bothered about a clause which bans nationalized citizens from becoming governmental officials, as well as any Russian who have ever lived abroad. I won't get into details here but these are the types of clauses in laws which tend to get tacked on and to not be noticed as being problematic.