FIRESIDE CHAT

Our Task: Stop an
Impeachment Congress

by Susan Kokinda

[Print version of this transcript]

The following is an edited transcript of the opening remarks by Susan Kokinda to the LaRouche PAC weekly Fireside Chat on August 20, 2018. The full discussion is available at https://youtu.be/I5550XLBpKQ

I want to address the question of the midterm elections from the standpoint slightly longer than an election cycle—well, actually, a lot longer—2,500 years. I want to go back to the great poetic drama written by Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound, which was written in about 500 B.C. Some of you are familiar with the basic outline: The god Prometheus aligned himself with the human race against the Olympian leader god, Zeus. Zeus wanted to wipe out the whole human race: He decided 2,500 years ago that there were too many of us. You can see that the idea of overpopulation has a long, long history.

Prometheus defended mankind by giving mankind the gift of fire, and Zeus punished him by chaining him to a mountainside for all of eternity, with an eagle picking out his liver.

I think it’s important to read this beautiful poetic drama. Prometheus gave mankind much more than just the gift of fire. It’s really a metaphor for man’s ability to comprehend universal principles, because what Prometheus says is: I gave him knowledge of the seasons, so that man could develop agriculture; I gave him knowledge of letters, so he could pass on learning; I gave him technology, so he could build buildings; and husbandry to harness animals, so we wouldn’t live like animals or be beasts of burden. That’s the human outlook.

What Zeus represents is the imperial outlook, the principle of the oligarchy—the idea that the few have the right to determine life and death over a domesticated herd which is denied access to advances in technology, denied access to the essential quality of being human. I really do encourage people, if you haven’t read this, it’s easy to get on the Internet, you can get a Dover Edition for a couple of bucks.

Our Task: Stop an Impeachment Congress

It gives you the insight you need to see what the real battle between paradigms is—right now—in the midterm election. The midterm elections are not a fight between parties; they are a fight between paradigms. It would be nice if you could go into the voting booth and choose the new paradigm versus the old paradigm—you can’t. Except for the campaigns of Kesha Rogers in Texas and Ron Wieczorek campaign in South Dakota, where you have candidates explicitly supporting the new paradigm. Instead it’s going to necessitate that we address the population from the standpoint of this larger principled fight.

Go back to Zeus and his punishment of Prometheus: any political figure or movement, which challenges the control of the oligarchy has the wrath of Zeus brought down upon them. Obviously, that’s what’s happening to Donald Trump. He’s there to challenge the policies of the modern-day Olympian gods, the British Empire. He’s against their policies of globalization, and perpetual war, and free trade. Even worse, Donald Trump laughs at them! That makes them very angry.

This is the same thing that happened to our movement in the 1980s, when Lyndon LaRouche was working with Ronald Reagan to overthrow the oligarchy’s doctrine of Mutual and Assured Destruction (MAD) with Reagan’s adoption of the Strategic Defense Initiative and attempts to actually implement it. But even worse, LaRouche wanted to bring the gift of fire to a mass political movement, that is, to arm the population with the scientific knowledge of physical economics, and the power to willfully shape the policies of the nation toward a better future.

Not only were these ideas a threat in the abstract, but we had a movement, a citizen-candidates’ movement of thousands and thousands of candidates, some running for local election, some running for U.S. Senate, Congress, governor, and a few were beginning to win primary elections. Well, at that point, Zeus assigned one of his imps, named Robert Mueller, to bring the wrath of the Olympian gods down on our movement, with the same kind of witch hunt that we’re seeing today being carried out against Donald Trump.

As threatening as our movement was in the 1980s, as threatening as Trump’s victory was, and is, the real threat to Zeus today, is what LaRouche called for a decade ago: that is, a four powers agreement among the United States, China, Russia and India, to bring down the British-run monetarist system and replace it with a New Bretton Woods, based on the principles of LaRouche’s economics.

We can now see that the new configuration of powers on this planet—those four nations and their current leadership—threatens to end the control of this British oligarchy once and forever.

Russia, China and India are increasingly in sync around the New Silk Road Spirit, as Helga Zepp-LaRouche has described it. We have Trump’s relationship with Xi Jinping, reaffirmed today in a tweeted Presidential statement, in which President Trump confidently projected that we will be able to work out the trade disagreements with his “good friend, the great Xi Jinping.” So those parts of the Four Power agreement are in place. When Trump succeeded in going to Helsinki, meeting with President Vladimir Putin, well, that was the last piece of the puzzle moving into place.

The gods on Mount Olympus are not happy. We know the hysteria of the escalation they’ve carried out since Trump’s trip to Helsinki—the intensification of the coup process which Barbara Boyd went through very thorough in last Saturday’s Manhattan Town Hall dialogue.

The latest intensification of the effort to break up any Four Power agreement, to break the United States primarily from moving into this new configuration, is the threat of a false-flag chemical attack in Idlib, Syria. In her weekly Schiller Institute webcast, “Brits Preparing a New False Flag in Syria, Citizens Must Choose: War or New Silk Road,” Helga Zepp-LaRouche went through that very thoroughly.

So, we have to escalate, and the elements of that escalation are the continued and intensified circulation of the Schiller Institute petition for a New Bretton Woods conference, brought about by those Four Powers. There will be a conference in New York City on Sept. 13 on this very subject. We have to bring this battle into focus, in the fight for the midterm election, and we have to make absolutely clear that this is the fight between two paradigms.

Several weeks ago, LaRouche PAC issued a national leaflet and this should be the ammunition that we use throughout the country, with one voice, as we intervene into these midterm elections. It’s on our website, entitled “Countdown to the 2018 Mid-Term Elections: We Must Take Charge Now!” I’m just going to read the opening, in case people haven’t seen it:

On November 6, 2018, Americans will go to the polls. This will be the most consequential election of our lifetimes. If the current crop of crazy “Resist” Democrats take the House, and the present equally crazy free trade, new Cold War loving faction of Republicans join them, President Trump will be impeached and the policies of George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton, and worse, will re-emerge, triumphant. The world will be back on a course for war with Russia and China—a war which the human race will not survive.

Those are the consequences.

We are challenging people to take charge, to assume the role that our Constitution envisions. We have to set the agenda for this election. We’re calling on citizens and candidates alike to pledge themselves to three critical big game-changers:

1. To not support the impeachment of President Trump. Shut down the coup attempt and prosecute those who are trying to carry it out.

2. Adopt the full body of LaRouche’s Four Laws.

3. Work with Russia and China and other nations on areas of mutual interests—in particular, counterterrorism, joint ventures for infrastructure, and exploring space.

Those points have to be the defining litmus test in this election.

Lessons Learned in Michigan Organizing

Let me give you a little background in terms of the origins of this particular leaflet, because we, here, in Michigan and the Midwest, were somewhat frustrated in terms of our ability to affect the primary process, which here in Michigan concluded on Aug. 7. We do have a Trump movement, and some decent people won nominations for Congressional seats and Senate seats. But now, of course, they face the challenge of getting elected, and anybody who’s sane here in Michigan knows that that’s not going to happen on party lines. The Trump people know this. In Michigan’s Aug. 7 primary, 140,000 more Democrats turned out than Republicans.

There’s a key race here in Michigan in the 11th Congressional District—this is two women, here in the Year of Woman. One of them, Lena Epstein, was one of the architects of Trump’s victory in Michigan; the other, Haley Stevens, was the chairman of Barack Obama’s auto task force. There you have it: a clear Trump-versus-old-paradigm standoff in this election. But again, more Democrats turned out than Republicans in the primaries.

The 11th Congressional District is unique in another respect. This is the district where Bill Roberts, our LaRouche PAC-backed candidate ran for Congress in 2012 and 2014, as a Democrat. In 2012, in the Democratic primary, campaigning very prominently to impeach Barack Obama, he got 40% of the vote in the Democratic primary. Not quite what Kesha Rogers was able to do, by winning her primary in Texas, but still a reflection of a similar revolt among the constituency in this Congressional District. That is part of the audience that we have to address.

What we discussed with LaRouche PAC’s Treasurer Barbara Boyd, as we came out of the primaries, is that while there were some decent candidates, the level of discussion in the primaries was abysmally low. Even the decent candidates didn’t bring up the really fundamental issues that are going to move people, especially the blue-collar voters. Barbara said, just intervene as if we were running for office ourselves, and that’s where the idea for this leaflet came from. We have to take charge, and we have to set the agenda.

What we have planned here in Michigan is kind of a land and air assault with this midterm leaflet. Last Saturday, we went up to Lansing, the state capital. The Republican Party was having its convention to finish off their slate and pull together for the elections and so on. We just stood outside the convention hall, got out hundreds and hundreds of leaflets, and signed up tons of contacts, with an extremely high recognition that this race is not about “Republicans versus Democrats.” In fact, some of these Republican delegates were saying they didn’t trust the Republican Party—for good reason—there are some pretty lousy people running on some of the state ticket here in Michigan.

Set the Agenda!

But that’s not our focus. Our focus is to ensure that we set the agenda in this election. We got out scads of leaflets. We’re calling on new supporters that we’re meeting in the field, as well as our veteran activists, to take this leaflet, saturate the political landscape with it. People can go door to door, they can get it out on social media, they can go to political events and leaflet with it. Already we’re starting to get some of the political layers that we met at the convention and elsewhere pledging to circulate our LaRouche PAC statement. We’re using Facebook very aggressively to reach out into these political layers. Former candidates, people who lost their primary elections but obviously ran because they took their responsibility as a citizen seriously enough to run for office; organizers and others—and we’re getting a really, really strong response.

People are responding, sending back emails, phone numbers for follow-up. We’ve already had one candidate for office, and one former candidate for state legislature calling back for more intensive discussion of LaRouche’s policies and how we’re approaching this. Many people are thanking us profusely for this outlook and asking for more discussion in order to grapple with what they admit are “big ideas.”

We’re also seeing it in the field organizing. The response that we’re getting from people, is a recognition that what’s important in terms of swinging these midterm elections in the right direction, is really about people don’t know. In other words, they know that if it’s party politics as usual, they’re going to lose. It’s what they don’t know, that they’re eager to find out. This means the policies that our movement has put forward.

I think one of the things that people should be attuned to, is that President Trump is going to be out on the campaign trail,—I don’t remember the number of days—between now and the midterm elections. The states that we know he’s going to are Nevada, North Dakota, South Dakota, Tennessee, Missouri, Montana, and Kentucky. If you live in one of those states, make sure that you are getting the White House email notifications of where these events will be. With 24 to 48 hours’ notice, you can print up leaflets and go to these rallies. There will be tens of thousands of people at these rallies—saturating these layers with these marching orders, and getting as many contacts as possible, is one really concentrated area of intervention that we can focus on.

Get in touch with us, if you want help in coordinating this kind of activity.

We are getting close to just a two-month countdown into the midterm elections, and the key, really, is to break the controlled environment. We cannot let the media, or the two major political parties set the agenda.

Fascism with a Democratic Face

Breaking the controlled environment is a crucial element in terms of how we have to address those layers of the population who have been subjugated to the brainwashing of the enemy’s outlook. Anybody who’s stepped outside their house in the past two years and tried to talk to a “Never Trumper,” knows that there’s a phenomenon of hysteria and insanity within these layers, which I don’t think we’ve seen in living memory.

What you’re actually seeing is what the British and their psychological warriors called “Fascism with a Democratic Face.” It is something this organization wrote about extensively over decades—what the British were faced with: how to take a population, particularly in the United States, which had mobilized to win World War II and defeat fascism, which had provided—especially here in the Midwest, the “Arsenal of Democracy” which revived our economy in the greatest economic recovery up to that point, such that we could actually defeat Britain’s Nazi threat, how do you take that population and over however many decades it’s going to take, how do you get a significant section of them to willingly adopt policies that will reduce their standard of living, kill their future, destroy their nation, and possibly lead to thermonuclear war?

And that will be the final result, if we get an impeachment Congress in 2018.

LaRouche addressed this phenomenon of Fascism with a Democratic Face, extensively, in a lengthy pamphlet in 1974. While some of the tactical aspects of some of his writings are no longer relevant today, the universal scientific principles he addresses are more relevant than ever before.

Key to brainwashing a population, is the creation of a controlled environment in which the victims are brought—willingly or otherwise—to reject any concept of universal principle. This gets back to Zeus versus Prometheus. To brainwash people, you embed people in an artificial world—today called a “narrative”—where one’s entire worldview is controlled by the idea and the power imposed by the oligarchy. Once you live in that world, then you’re allowed to make “democratic decisions,” constrained to that world.

The anti-Trump movement today is really the personification of Fascism with a Democratic Face. Yes, there are decent Democrats, but if they’re going to subject themselves to the impeachment, warmongering, and anti-growth insanity of the party leadership, they’re going to be just as culpable as those who are consciously pushing these policies.

I want to take a moment and introduce you to some of the ideas that LaRouche was putting forward in the 1970s, to better understand this phenomenon, of how to break a population in such a way to create this kind of movement. He starts with a quote which seems pretty obvious on the face of it. “The basic difference between mental health and mental disease is the distinction between reality and fantasy.” Well, that does seem obvious, but, really, the question is: What is reality? I think most of you on this call know it’s not CNN. But it’s also not Fox TV or Alex Jones. In other words, not-CNN—the negative of CNN—is not reality.

Reality has to be defined from a Promethean standpoint, that is, how man knows the universe and acts on the universe. Nothing which operates below the principled fight between an oligarchical system and a truly human system is reality! We addressed this question in a very fundamental way in the recent class series that Dennis Speed and Will Wertz just presented.

They made the point that reality can be found only in the relationship of human beings to the physical universe. LaRouche’s economics is the study of how human beings relate to the universe and discover the noösphere, in the way LaRouche discovered it, so they can improve it. I would say that that class series is really basic training for people who are going to be intervening into the midterm elections. It’s available on https://discover.larouchepac.com/ and people should put themselves through this—it’s like boot camp, an eight-week training process. You’re going to have to condense the timeframe because that’s about what we have until the midterm elections, now.

Back to LaRouche’s discussion of how to shape the thinking of the population: It’s not surprising how LaRouche locates the segment of society which is most susceptible to sanity. He says,

It might be imagined that the sanest person is one who works with his hands, since he is obliged to prove constantly that the mental processes guiding his hands are in an appropriate correspondence to whatever laws of nature determine the actual results obtained. . . . Sanity, the appropriate perception of real connections in the world, involves the thinker’s assuming personal responsibility for the consequences of his concepts in respect to those persons who act upon them in connection with lawfully determined processes.

This is where the blue-collar vote for Trump comes from. Blue-collar workers, farmers. These are people who have a connection to reality. You can’t go into some fantasy world and think that you can plant corn in January in Montana, and that somehow, you’re going to have a crop. There’s enough of a connection to the real world, such that you maintain a layer of the population which was able to respond as it did in the 2016 election, and give Trump the margin of victory, which gave him the Presidency.

Then the question is, who are the people who are less susceptible to sanity, less connected to reality? The further you get away from productive employment, or living in a productive household, the more controllable you are. Look at the composition of our economy today—I think the manufacturing base of our society is somewhere in the 20% range—you have a huge pool of people, who are floating around in a state of mind in which reality never knocks on their door.

LaRouche takes it one more step, and this is what I want to really stress in terms of how people think, in terms of intervening into this midterm process. He gets into the nitty-gritty of the actual brainwashing, and what LaRouche says, is:

The small group operates exactly like a brainwashing group, particularly if established within a controlled aversive environment. Its smallness precludes its attempting to exert any meaningful influence on the major issues of material consumption, leisure, political institutions and so forth. Consequently, it is compelled to limit its deliberations to secondary issues, to alternatives as defined in the limits for demands established by the aversive authority controlling the larger environment.

An entire layer of the population has been decoupled from reality. It’s not just fake news. It is removing people from any relationship to the real universe of causal action. The fact that the causes of the crisis facing the nation cannot be addressed in this kind of process, is the fundamental aspect. The population has descended into smaller and smaller identities and issues, which will never, ever fundamentally change anything.

The minute you step back from the big issues, as we define them in this midterm election leaflet, you cede territory, due to the enemy’s aversive environment. And if you go back to the 1970s, when LaRouche was writing these, what were the big issues? The big issues were the 1971 destruction of the Bretton Woods system. The British began to seize control of the entire world financial system. Unless that is addressed, you are never going to be able to address the economic problems in your country. In the 1970s, you also had the assault on our productive culture, with the rise of the zero-growth movement, anti-population, and deindustrialization. This is now firmly embedded in the entire culture, and unless you take that on, you’ve ruled out the most fundamental principle which defines reality, which is man knowing and improving upon nature.

This is what’s wrong with the Democratic Party and the trade unions as institutions today. They stopped taking on those big battles, pretty much after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and Bobby Kennedy. They might fight for a piece of a shrinking pie, but they’ve accepted the aversive environment. Frankly, there’s no Republican Party; there’s a Trump movement, and then there’s neo-con allies of the Democratic Party on the other side.

Take Charge, Break the
Controlled Environment

This defines what we have to do in the midterms. We have to have a conscious understanding that we’re breaking the controlled environment, the aversive environment of the British Imperial system. You can’t fight with people inside that environment. You’ve already discovered that if you’ve tried to talk to a hysterical anti-Trumper, on the issues that are “allowed” by the media. We have to break people from the brainwashed axioms of the British Empire. That’s the aim of this national leaflet.

You have to identify for people the face of the enemy: It’s the British. It’s not the “deep state” or the “new world order,” or “socialism,” or “big government.” People need to understand that the Democratic Party of Franklin Roosevelt and John Kennedy was destroyed by the British and transformed into the party of Fascism with a Democratic Face. But it’s the British game.

You have to fight from the Promethean standard of reality; that is, fight for the Four Powers and the New Bretton Woods. Fight for the principles which we outline in this campaign leaflet and take charge. That is the only way that we are going to ensure that an impeachment Congress is not elected. Fight like Lyndon LaRouche always has done, from the standpoint of universal principles, as embodied in all of our current campaigns.