Examples of Parallax Views

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Universal Single-Payer health care is the real solution! Debunk the myths and lies about it.

July 17, 2018 GlenAnderson 0

The U.S. is virtually alone among rich modern democracies in failing to provide decent health care for all of its people.  The U.S. ranks low among these nations in many indicators of health (life expectancy, infant mortality, deaths from preventable diseases, etc.). A major reason is that while other nations regard health care as a BASIC HUMAN RIGHT, the U.S. pretends that it is a COMMERCIAL COMMODITY for private profit. The real remedy — UNIVERSAL SINGLE-PAYER health care — is explained in the “Health Care” part of my blog, www.parallaxperspectives.org.  I encourage you to read several posts about it. Please […]

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U.S. needs immigrant workers because we disable our troops and underfund education

July 17, 2018 GlenAnderson 0

Savvy people have been recognizing that the U.S. economy really needs immigrant workers. We do not have enough native-born workers for many jobs. And I don’t mean only working on farms and in restaurants. The U.S. imports a great many skilled workers: nurses, doctors, computer programmers, and so forth. For many decades the U.S. has been sending our troops to fight totally unnecessary wars in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. Only recently has the government been admitting that many troops become disabled through PTSD and other physical and mental disabilities. Actually, the numbers are much, much higher than the government […]

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U.S. Militarism Promotes Gun Violence. To reduce gun violence here, reduce military violence worldwide.

July 10, 2018 GlenAnderson 0

“Climate deniers” refuse to acknowledge the human causes of the climate crisis. Likewise some people try to blame gun violence on far-fetched causes such as popular music or pornography, even though those are common in other rich nations with very little gun violence. Deeply embedded in U.S. culture is an excessive willingness to use military violence. The U.S. has a long history of mistakenly thinking that violence solves problems. The U.S. has started wars to dominate other nations, especially since the 1898 Spanish American War. In the past 120 years the U.S. military has overthrown dozens of nations. We have […]

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To protect immigrants, let’s de-polarize the U.S.’s political culture.

June 30, 2018 GlenAnderson 0

Many problems that are plaguing the U.S. are rooted in various kinds of polarizations.  Oppressors use a “divide-and-conquer” strategy to disempower ordinary people so the oppressors can grab more power and enrich themselves financially.  They polarize us by pitting race against race, religion against religion, straight people against LGBTQ people, and native-born people against immigrants. They also polarize us by emphasizing nationalism, so they pit nation against nation.  They promote wars and nuclear weapons. All of these polarizations draw from the same roots.  In order to protect immigrant rights — and all people’s rights — and in order to prevent […]

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Great home-made signs from immigrant rights rally

June 30, 2018 GlenAnderson 0

On Saturday June 30 a huge crowd — certainly more than one thousand, and perhaps two thousand — attended the immigrant rights rally at the Washington State Capitol Building in Olympia WA.  The initial focus was “Keep Families Together,” because the Trump regime has kidnapped more than 2,000 children (including toddlers and infants) from their immigrant parents because their parents had crossed the U.S. border without the necessary documentation.  Trump was holding those children as HOSTAGES in order to pressure their parents to “self-deport” and pressure Congress to pass a cruel law against immigrants.  The Trump regime has lost track […]

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Abolishing nuclear weapons would help immigrants’ rights.

June 28, 2018 GlenAnderson 0

To protect immigrants, STOP POLARIZING PEOPLE IN ANY WAY: Stop dividing people by nationality, race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, disability, economic class, etc. The problems we face are huge, deeply rooted and interconnected. Because these problems are linked, we can make progress toward solving any of the divisive problems by starting with any one of these problems and showing how it connects with the other problems. The problems already existed before Trump made them worse. Nationalism and racism polarize “us vs. them.” For more than 70 years nuclear weapons have expressed the nationalism that is one root of anti-immigrant feelings. […]

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To Achieve Social Justice, We Must De-Polarize Our Society

June 17, 2018 GlenAnderson 0

Oppressors often use a “divide-and-conquer” strategy to keep populations divided so the oppressors can dominate them.  This has been happening in the U.S., as it has in other countries. The remedy is for people to recognize and expose the oppressors’ scheme — and to bring all demographic groups together to de-polarize our society. Unfortunately, some people who are oppressed buy into the polarization and get angry and vengeful against other demographic groups that have been set up by the oppressors as polar opposites.  These people unwittingly serve the oppressors’ interests in keeping the population divided. The real remedy is to […]

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Better than defeating Trump’s supporters, let’s heal them and convert them to better values. And let’s heal ourselves too.

June 4, 2018 GlenAnderson 0

In the past few decades the U.S. has become increasingly polarized — and increasingly rigid — and mutually hateful to the people on the “wrong” side of issues.  This is NOT sustainable for democracy, nor for a free society, nor for human rights.  People in each of the two big political parties want to DEFEAT members of the other party through dynamics that seem warlike or genocidal. Trump has escalated the polarization horribly, not only across political parties, but also across races, nationalities, religions, sexes, sexual orientations, economic classes, and other demographic variables.  THIS IS NOT SUSTAINABLE, but people in […]

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Visualize — and create — a government “of the people, by the people, for the people.”

June 4, 2018 GlenAnderson 0

On June 4, 2018, Trump tweeted, “I have the absolute right to PARDON myself.” His statement and statements by Rudy Giuliani and some other extreme Trump loyalists expose the Trump regime as a dictatorship. The Trumpists think he is above the law, and that he can simply disregard the Constitution in his pursuit of power and wealth.   Since he started running for President in 2015, Trump has commanded — and mainstream news media have utterly yielded — the power to be every day’s #1 news story.  Trump has tricked everyone into talking about him all the time.  (Yes, I’m […]

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Several ways to vigorously reform our criminal justice system

June 3, 2018 GlenAnderson 0

The U.S.’s criminal justice system — like so many other aspects of American society — is profoundly dysfunctional, cruel, and wasteful. Thoughtful people have been urging humane reforms for many years.  More and more people are advocating positive changes.  Here are some reforms we really need now.  Grassroots organizing can help to accomplish them.   In order to change the system, we need to change how we talk about it.  Some commonly used words and expressions keep us trapped in the unjust status quo.  Here are five ways to improve our effectiveness when we talk about criminal punishment and mass […]

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Insights and information about taxes, with a few links

June 3, 2018 GlenAnderson 0

Taxes are opposed by conservatives who want to keep their riches instead of sharing their money with governmental efforts to help people with education, health, etc. But liberals and progressives also criticize our tax system because it is unfair.  Rich people and big corporations get so many loopholes and breaks that they pay less than their fair share.  Poor, working class and middle class people pay more than their share. Actually, we should see taxes as the dues we pay for living in a civilized society.  That is the ideal.  We need to fully fund the governmental services that help […]

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Stop the U.S.’s cruel habit of “regime change.” It is WRONG to violently overthrow governments.

May 26, 2018 GlenAnderson 0

The U.S. has a long, horrible, cruel habit of violently overthrowing governments and abusively meddling in elections to manipulate their outcomes even if the U.S. militarily does not overthrow those governments violently. I am appalled by the hypocrisy of Americans — a majority of ordinary people, along with politicians and the mainstream news media — who express moral outrage that Russia has meddled in the U.S.’s 2016 election.  The U.S. has done this to other countries VERY OFTEN for many decades. This article summarizes the U.S.’s violent overthrows of other nations.  American politicians and news media and ordinary people do not […]

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Changing our economic system can reduce climate disruption

May 26, 2018 GlenAnderson 0

The vast majority of people who say they want to protect the climate are stuck within the confines of our current economic system.  This severely restricts the progress we can make.  If we really want to make significant progress, we must change our economic system. In addition to the article by Naomi Klein that I posted just now, see this article from another source.  This website has a variety of information, so look for materials that are relevant to the economic aspects of the climate crisis: http://systemchangenotclimatechange.org/