Donald Trump, who lost the 2016 presidential election by at least 2.8 million votes, has announced an "investigation."  He says the federal government will look into his false assertion that some three million illegal aliens voted for Hillary Clinton last fall, allegedly costing him a popular vote mandate.

The assertion is being gleefully rejected by much of the corporate media as "a lie." 

If we thought his calls for an investigation of our thoroughly broken election system were serious, we would welcome them. 

But Trump's relentless obsession with voter fraud has very effectively shielded the corrupted electoral system that put him in the White House.  His loud shouts have completely blacked out any discussion of the massive Jim Crow registration stripping, electronic vote flipping, and slavery-based Electoral College that put him in the White House, and that have effectively neutered American democracy.

Meanwhile, Al Gore, John Kerry and Hillary Clinton, all of whom rightfully won presidential races but then refused to fight for them, have said not a word about any of this.

Many of us in Ohio were duped into voting against our own best interests on Election Day in November 2015. Issue 2 was presented by the 1% as an antimonopoly initiative, promising to protect We the People from monopolies, oligopolies, and cartels.

Who wouldn’t vote for that?

Some saw through the smoke screen and voted against it when they realized it was an attack on grassroots democracy. But the majority went to the polls and, lulled by the propaganda, voted to make statewide initiatives even more difficult for us to place on the ballot.

It wasn’t about stopping monopolies, oligopolies and cartels. It was about stopping us. It was about choking off citizen initiatives.

Tightening the Choke Hold

January 21st 2017 was a great day for the Ohio Green Party. Greens, DemExiters, and progressive independents from all over the state came together for the first full statewide meeting of the year. Attendees from Bowling Green all the way down to Cincinnati met in Columbus to discuss the growth of the party and a slate of candidates for the 2017-2018 elections.

More than forty people were packed into the private residence at any one time with the party’s diversity being clearly represented. The diversity wasn’t only present in demographics; various politics and philosophies abounded. Individuals identifying as socialists, eco-anarchists, liberals, left libertarians, and more had their voices heard. There was no shutting down of anyone. No-one was deemed too extreme or too moderate to be a part of any discussion, and all policy and campaign ideas were welcomed. The high level of inclusivity ensured that friends were made and regional networks created. Another high point was the very few criticisms of Donald Trump and the total absence of ad hominem attacks. The building was rife with positivity.

People on the radical left have criticized the 3 million Americans who protested the Donald Trump inauguration for not being radical enough, not being black or brown enough, not being working-class enough. There is some validity to these critiques; a thriving movement against Donald Trump must be centered on the struggles of women of color, working class people, immigrants, and other marginalized groups. But there has been an attitude of shaming people — many of whom are becoming politically active for the first time — for not being “woke” enough.

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor has rightly pointed out that this attitude is politically immature and counterproductive. “The movement to resist Trump will have to be a mass movement, and mass movements aren’t homogeneous — they are, pretty much by definition, politically heterogeneous,” she writes in The Guardian. “And there is not a single radical or revolutionary on Earth who did not begin their political journey holding liberal ideas.”