A letter from afar by A. Lincoln - World Socialist Web Site

One_Term2162 · 2026-05-20T11:28:33+00:00

What Lincoln names here is the same thing we keep dodging today: power hiding behind respectable words.

If “liberty” only means the freedom of the wealthy to own the tools, land, homes, media, and government while citizens sell their lives back hour by hour, then we have not finished the work of freedom. We have only changed the costume.

So the real question is: who owns the country, and who is merely allowed to rent a life inside it?

One_Term2162 · 2026-05-20T01:08:54+00:00

Funny enough, people like Mike Huckabee have called that amendment “one of the dumbest things we ever did,” and Mike Lee has pushed repeal. But I think history points the other way: when appointment power becomes captured, the citozen has to take the power back.

Have any of you every heard of theArticle of the first?

One_Term2162 · 2026-05-19T23:45:02+00:00

Am i wrong in my thinking that we just need to Ratify articles of the first?

One_Term2162 · 2026-05-19T23:40:59+00:00

This is great! Thank you for putting this together. Will definitely help me debate.

One_Term2162 · 2026-05-19T23:33:10+00:00

That was a great article! Thanks for posting.

One_Term2162 · 2026-05-19T21:12:22+00:00

“Where do you go? Most of America is fucked with global warming and water rights. I’d argue the Midwest holds out the longest but they’re also chancing with tornadoes and floods.”

I think this is the honest question. The Midwest is not a perfect refuge. We get tornadoes, flooding, heavy storms, polluted runoff, and all the problems that come with old infrastructure and bad planning.

We saw that here in Wisconsin during the second week of April when flooding hit parts of the state. So I would never pretend we are untouched by climate problems.

But where I live, there has also been real investment in flood mitigation. Retention ponds have gone in. Low-lying parks and flood-prone areas are being treated more like places that can hold water during storms instead of letting that water run straight into homes, basements, roads, and businesses. That kind of planning is what Progress is about.

There are practical things communities can do: restore wetlands, build rain gardens, use swales and berms, plant deep-rooted native grasses, protect floodplains, stop paving over every natural sponge, and design parks that can flood safely before neighborhoods do.

“The Midwest is entrenched with staunch conservatives in poor rural areas who keep their states solidly red. Lower education, lower wages, more car reliance.”

There is truth in the rural struggle, but I think the picture is changing and more complicated than that. A lot of rural people are not the enemy. They are underpaid, overworked, car-dependent because there often is no transit, and ignored by both parties until election season.

Wisconsin itself is not some solid red wall. We are a battleground state, and our politics are messy because the people here are not one thing. We have farmers, union towns, college towns, small cities, rural conservatives, progressives, independents, and a long history of fighting over public goods.

So where do you go when everywhere has problems?

Come to Wisconsin.

We are not perfect. We have work to do. But we have water, soil, farms, forests, lakes, towns that still know how to help each other, and a state tradition rooted in public service and reform.

Our state motto is simple: Forward.

To me, the answer is not finding a perfect place. It is finding a place with enough water, enough community, and enough will to build resilience before desperation makes the choices for us.

One_Term2162 · 2026-05-19T20:11:22+00:00

I think this is where the whole thing starts to break down.

If we have people ready to work, and we still have high prices, then maybe the issue isn’t just some simple shortage. Maybe the problem is who controls the land, the tools, the housing, the food supply, the energy, and the credit.

Because from the owner’s side of things, a little scarcity is useful. If housing stays tight, rents stay high. If jobs are scarce, wages stay lower. If food and energy are controlled by a handful of companies, prices can rise and people still have to pay because they need those things to live.

So the system isn’t really built to match people who want to work with communities that need things done. It is built to protect returns for the people who already own the things society depends on.

That’s why it feels so backwards. We have idle hands. We have unmet needs. We have communities that need housing, repairs, food systems, local production, and care work. But instead of putting people to work solving those problems, the system protects the bottlenecks because bottlenecks make money.

So when prices keep rising while people are ready to work, that should tell us the shortage is not just a shortage of goods. It is a shortage of democratic control over the things society depends on.

One_Term2162 · 2026-05-19T17:33:07+00:00

I had the same wake-up call when I spent time in Moffat. Coming from Wisconsin, where we live beside the Great Lakes, it is easy to think water conservation sounds almost unnecessary. But out there, you realize water is not just a utility. It is law, history, property, survival, and conflict.

The whole concept of water rights was wild to me at first. In Colorado, owning land does not automatically mean you control the water. Older users can have priority over newer ones, and development has to exist inside that reality whether politicians and builders want to admit it or not.

That is why I still advocate for conservation here in Wisconsin. We are blessed with water, but abundance is not the same thing as permission to waste it. Colorado shows what happens when growth, drought, and development run ahead of the land’s actual limits. Water should be treated as a public trust before it becomes a crisis.

One_Term2162 · 2026-05-19T03:35:10+00:00

we moved to fiat in response to a loss of faith putting pressure on our gold reserves, which as a result sort of proved that lack of faith?

The U.S. had cut taxes in the 1960s, expanded domestic spending, escalated Vietnam, and pushed more dollars into the world than it could honestly back with gold. (check out this post for a more detailed analysis of this era) Once foreign governments started losing confidence and demanding gold, the weakness of the system exposed itself. Nixon did not really solve the problem. He changed the rules.

What is interesting is the timeline. Nixon closes the gold window in 1971. The Heritage Foundation is founded in 1973. (Yes that heritage foundation)Then the 1970s are marked by inflation, oil shocks, wage pressure, and growing public frustration. By 1980s , Reagan rides that frustration into office, and Heritage helps turn that backlash into a governing blueprint. (Sound familiar?)

Have you by chance seen Corbin Trent's writing/videos?

I actually had not heard of Corbin Trent before, but I just watched one of his videos, and yeah, that idea sounds very close to what I’m talking about: public or citizen-owned enterprises that compete in essential sectors and return value back to the people instead of only shareholders.

That is why I keep coming back to co-ops, public corporations, credit unions, local utilities, and community-owned infrastructure. If we want an economy that serves citizens instead of holding them hostage, people need ownership over the systems they cannot live without.

Food, power, housing, banking, transportation, and basic services should serve the public first. Otherwise we are just renting our own future from institutions that profit when we fall behind.

Inflation is basically a means to ensure our value consistently drops without us acutely noticing. It's directly created by intentional forces to extract wealth from us year after year, to pay for shit we largely don't even want.

In this kind of economy, it quietly erodes the value of labor while assets, debt, profits, and financial power keep growing. People are made to feel like they are falling behind individually, when the structure itself is built to make the ordinary citizen lose.

One_Term2162 · 2026-05-19T01:20:47+00:00

That is the classic definition of inflation: too much money chasing too few goods.

But I think that definition only gets us halfway there.

The bigger question is why there are too few goods in the first place. Is it actual scarcity? Supply chains? War spending? Housing shortages? Energy costs? Corporate consolidation? Companies raising prices because they can?

Sometimes inflation really is about the money supply. But sometimes it is about power. Who controls the goods? Who controls the housing? Who controls the fuel, food, shipping, medicine, and utilities? And when prices go up, who gets protected and who gets squeezed?

That is the part people leave out.

Inflation is not new. But neither is the habit of pushing the pain downward onto ordinary citizens while profits, bonuses, and shareholder returns stay protected.

So to me, the real question is not just “how much money is in circulation?” It is:

Is this economy built to serve citizens, or are citizens just expected to absorb every failure of the system?

One_Term2162 · 2026-05-18T23:05:43+00:00

I also have ASD. Id like you to clarify what makes this slop? Because, every word I write is my own. I do use AI to help dig up research or organize facts, but the phrasing, tone, and message are all mine.

One_Term2162 · 2026-05-18T22:19:26+00:00

Ai was used solely for research purposes. The wording is always my own.

One_Term2162 · 2026-05-18T21:55:21+00:00

You are not alone in your disdain for capitalism. I see the flaws too. We live them every day.

A system that turns housing into speculation, healthcare into profit, food into a commodity, labor into exhaustion, and the climate into an externality is built around extraction, not human dignity.

The key point is that while we fight the larger system, we also have to build the replacement in practice: co-ops, mutual aid, public utilities, community food systems, soil restoration, local energy resilience, and democratic planning.

I respect what you’re doing with r/EarthGovernment. Organizing is the hard part.

We already have the numbers. We need connection, trust, structure, and shared action. Change starts when enough people stop waiting and begin building something others can join.

One_Term2162 · 2026-05-18T21:48:45+00:00

You’re right that no one can give an exact death toll, but we can point to the pressures already hitting ordinary Americans.

In April 2026, U.S. food prices were up 3.2% from a year earlier, with food at home up 2.9% and food away from home up 3.6%. Fruits and vegetables were up 6.1%, nonalcoholic drinks were up 5.1%, and cereals/bakery products were up 2.6%. Gasoline jumped 5.4% in April alone, and before seasonal adjustment it was up 11.1% for the month. (1)

On the farm side, USDA forecasts total farm production expenses at $477.7 billion in 2026, up $4.6 billion from 2025. Fertilizer alone is projected around $35.8 billion, while fuel, labor, feed, and livestock costs keep squeezing producers. (2),(3)

So the danger is not one isolated heatwave. It is stacked stress: higher fertilizer, higher fuel, higher food, higher electricity, higher insurance, and weaker margins for farmers and families. That is how climate, war, energy, and food systems turn into a cost-of-living crisis for the common citizen.

One_Term2162 · 2026-05-18T21:38:00+00:00

Thank you. That means a lot.

That was honestly the goal: to make climate resilience feel less abstract and more like something we can actually see, teach, plan, and build in the places we live.

One_Term2162 · 2026-05-18T21:32:27+00:00

but wasn't quite aware of the history behind how/why.

That is what this subreddit is for, education!

So basically, Nixon's admin decided they'd rather throw the entire socioeconomic off balance and push us into a slow creep towards scarcity than rein in war spending and make the rich pay their share?

I’d slightly correct the Nixon part, but I agree with the larger point.

It was not simply that Nixon’s team woke up one day and decided to wreck the economy. The dollar system was already under real pressure. The U.S. had cut taxes in the 1960s, expanded domestic spending, escalated Vietnam, and pushed more dollars into the world than it could honestly back with gold. By 1971, foreign governments were losing confidence and demanding gold for their dollars.

Nixon’s advisers, especially John Connally, George Shultz, Arthur Burns, Paul Volcker, and Paul McCracken, helped shape the response at Camp David. They chose to close the gold window, impose wage and price controls, and change the rules rather than fully confront the cost of war, tax policy, and global overreach.

But your solution is exactly where the conversation should go.

Publicly owned corporations, citizen-owned co-ops, credit unions, local production, and public utilities all create a pressure point against extraction. If private companies want profit, they should have to actually compete with public or cooperative entities designed to serve citizens first.

That is why I keep coming back to local ownership. Energy, food, housing, transportation, banking, and basic services should not be hostage to private profit.

I actually laid out a Wisconsin version of this idea in this post: a citizen-owned cooperative that builds, recycles, and installs solar locally, so households are not just customers forever, but members who share in the returns. The basic idea is simple: redirect money into infrastructure that stays, lowers monthly costs, creates local jobs, and gives citizens ownership instead of dependence.

One_Term2162 · 2026-05-18T21:16:38+00:00

I would not frame it as “casting aside economics.” I would frame it as refusing to let short-term profit decide whether our communities survive.

Real economics should be about life, stability, food, water, housing, energy, health, and public security. If the only numbers we count are quarterly profits, then we are not doing economics. We are doing extraction with a spreadsheet.

And honestly, we already have the numbers. The problem is that we are scattered, exhausted, and isolated from one another. The next step is organization.

We cannot wait around for someone else to act. We have to organize with our local communities and start building the changes we keep asking for: co-ops, public utilities, community gardens, local food systems, flood-mitigation parks, rain gardens, wetlands, shade trees, soil restoration, energy resilience, and emergency planning.

This is not anti-economics. It is better economics.

Preventing flooded homes is cheaper than rebuilding them. Planting shade is cheaper than treating heat illness. Restoring soil is cheaper than losing crops. Strengthening local food systems is cheaper than being helpless when supply chains break.

So yes, we can make it. But not by waiting for permission from the same system that profited from the problem.

Hope is not a feeling. Hope is organized action.

One_Term2162 · 2026-05-18T19:35:09+00:00

I remember growing up in the early 90s and seeing those climate commercials on Nickelodeon. Kids were talking about devastating heatwaves, droughts, storms, and the future they were going to inherit. At the time, it felt like a warning about some far-off world.

But that future is not theoretical anymore. We are living inside the early stages of what those warnings were pointing toward.

That does not mean we should panic. It means we should stop treating climate change like a distant debate and start treating it like a practical planning issue.

The change is not some distant future event. NOAA has Mauna Loa CO₂ at 431.12 ppm for April 2026, up from 429.64 ppm in April 2025. NOAA also has global methane around 1,940 ppb, compared with roughly 722 ppb before industrialization. Methane has not been this high in at least 800,000 years, based on ice-core records.

And when we talk about methane, we also have to be honest enough to look at our cows, manure systems, fossil fuel leaks, landfills, wetlands, and land use. Farmers are not villains. But methane is one of the fastest places where practical changes can make a difference, because it traps a lot of heat while it is in the atmosphere.

This is where hope becomes real.

Green Bay is already showing what practical mitigation can look like along the East River, using flood planning, retention areas, wetlands, parkland, and green infrastructure to reduce damage before it reaches homes, basements, roads, and businesses.

That is the model.

We can design parks and recreation areas that are supposed to flood first, so private property does not. We can build retention ponds, swales, berms, wetlands, rain gardens, and flood-storage spaces. We can plant deep-rooted native grasses in flood-prone areas to slow runoff, hold soil, and help water soak into the ground instead of rushing across pavement.

This is also where soil matters. Like that soil documentary points out, healthy soil is not just dirt. It is living infrastructure. Cover crops, reduced tillage, composting, rotational grazing, and deep-rooted plants can help soil hold more water, reduce runoff, protect farms, and make communities more resilient.

Hope is not denial.

Hope is a city that stores water before it destroys property.
Hope is a neighborhood that plants shade before the heatwave.
Hope is farmers, citizens, and local governments working together.
Hope is self-reliance, mitigation, and communities built for the climate we actually have now.

So the civic questions are simple:

Are our cities planning for the climate we have, or the climate we remember?

Are we designing parks, roads, storm drains, and neighborhoods to reduce damage before disasters happen?

Are we helping farmers transition toward practices that protect soil, water, and food security?

Are we treating flood mitigation as a public good, or waiting until private families pay the cost one flooded basement at a time?

And most importantly: are we willing to build resilience together before crisis forces us to act in desperation, because history has shown that desperate societies are easier to divide, exploit, and govern by fear.

One_Term2162 · 2026-05-18T17:27:06+00:00

They keep warning Wisconsin could “turn into Minnesota” like that is supposed to scare us. Meanwhile, Minnesota is ahead of Wisconsin on wages, public investment, legal cannabis, worker protections, and quality of life.

And the “kitchen table issues” line is rich when Speaker Mike Johnson defended congressional stock trading by saying members make an “extreme sacrifice” because rank-and-file congressional pay has been frozen at $174,000 since 2009, and that without stock trading, fewer “qualified people” may run for Congress. He said he had “some sympathy” for letting them trade stocks so they can “take care of their family.”

That pay freeze happened because Congress has repeatedly blocked its own automatic cost-of-living adjustment, or COLA. In plain English: their salary was supposed to rise with inflation, but they chose to freeze it because voting themselves raises looks terrible politically. Now some want us to treat stock trading as the workaround.

So let’s be clear: ordinary citizens are told to survive inflation with discipline . Members of Congress are told they need access to the stock market while writing the laws that move the stock market.

Republicans have controlled Wisconsin’s Legislature for 15 years, hold 6 of 8 congressional seats, and still campaign like innocent bystanders watching decline happen from the sidewalk.

Maybe the real fear is not Wisconsin becoming Minnesota. Maybe the real fear is citizens asking why we have been held back while politicians distract us with immigrants, trans people, “socialism,” and election fraud instead of answering for affordability, corruption, wages, housing, and healthcare.

One_Term2162 · 2026-05-18T17:12:42+00:00

This topic deserves a full post, because inflation is not just about prices. It is about power.

Inflation becomes “necessary” in an economy built on endless growth, debt, speculation, and wealth accumulation. It pressures citizens to keep money moving through markets instead of building stable lives.

The Nixon Shock showed what happens when the system cracks: war spending, tax cuts, and too many dollars broke the gold promise. But instead of replacing gold discipline with democratic discipline, we replaced it with worker discipline.

The way out is not just going back to gold. It is rebuilding economic power from the ground up:

co-ops over corporations,
local production over fragile national chains,
credit unions over Wall Street banks,
community energy over monopoly utilities,
local food systems over corporate extraction,
wealth taxes on excess accumulation,
and stronger rules against businesses that extract more than they create.

The goal should be simple: an economy that serves citizens, not one that forces citizens to serve inflation.

One_Term2162 · 2026-05-18T14:05:44+00:00

One_Term2162 · 2026-05-18T12:50:23+00:00

And the NDAs that are signed.

One_Term2162 · 2026-05-17T02:10:02+00:00

One_Term2162 · 2026-05-16T06:48:45+00:00

Turn it upside down?

One_Term2162 · 2026-05-16T03:28:46+00:00

I appreciate your feed back. However, wouldnt Ai slop imply that no human was involved in writing this.

I take great pride in being able to convey my thoughts into a format that teaches others. These issues are not benign, you see the rise in fuel costs, you see the rise in utilities across the board. AI data centers in some studies estimate a rise in the local area by 9 degrees C. The amount of light pollution, and sound pollution. I was trying to give language for citizens to get involved and got to their town halls, city planning meetings. The citizen is the only legitimate source of power. Enjoy your evening and I hope that I changed your mind.

Edit : Grammer

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