Repugnant-can Tax Plan: A Plan for Revolution (As We Go Through 15-year Cycles)

A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom.

-- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Ecclesiastes 9:11King James Version (KJV)

11 I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.

Ecclesiastes 9:14-18King James Version (KJV)

14 There was a little city, and few men within it; and there came a great king against it, and besieged it, and built great bulwarks against it:

15 Now there was found in it a poor wise man, and he by his wisdom delivered the city; yet no man remembered that same poor man.

16 Then said I, Wisdom is better than strength: nevertheless the poor man's wisdom is despised, and his words are not heard.

17 The words of wise men are heard in quiet more than the cry of [tRump] that ruleth among fools.

18 Wisdom is better than weapons of war: but one [or two U.S. 'residents] destroy much good.

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Bush 43 & tRump to Hussein & Kim: "I don't like the weapons that you might use in a war against the U.S. I want to ensure that we win by disarming you."

Hussein and Kim to Bush 43 and tRump: "We don't want you to like our weapons or to determine what weapons we're allowed to have. That's part of the logic of war, you Repugnant-can idiots!!!"

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I've noticed of late that there is a peculiar series of 15-year cycles that might give us an eye into the very near future. A woman recently expressed (in 2017) a desire to marry me under similar circumstances that existed when my ex-wife and I got married in 2002 -- needing to get married in order for me to move into her government housing. Washington, DC had a similar number of homeless people in January 2016 (8,350) to what it had in 2001 (8,325) and five more in 2017 (7,473) than it had in 2002 (7,468). There were similar decreases of 857 from '01 to '02 and 877 from '16 to '17.

In late 2002 Bush 43 was making the case for war in Iraq by accusing Saddam Hussein of having weapons of mass destruction which it turns out he didn't have. The Iraq War began on March 19th, 2003. Beginning in late 2017 we have 45 making the case for war in North Korea. We know that Kim Jong Un actually DOES have nuke-capable missiles, being as he's fired off a few of them. A recent article stated that the North Koreans tend to chill out with their "provocations" in the winter and to fire off missiles during national holidays -- of which they don't have anymore until the spring. That same article stated that 45's administration is being advised to use the winter as a time of negotiation -- right in line with how the Bush administration used the period from September 2002 to March 2003 to build up toward the Iraq War. Who knows??? The Second Korean War might start 15 years to the day after the Iraq War and some 68 years after the First Korean War in which my father (Rudolph Peter Sheptock, I, 1932-2000) fought. Let's remember that the Korean War was never officially called to a close.

Not all of the 15-year cycles described above are related. It seems to be a matter of mere coincidence that all of these things are happening in 15-year cycles -- marital issues, returns to the same local homeless population and the beginnings of major wars. I don't know that there's a science to it all; but, I'll take it for what it's worth and use it to make plans. If the pattern holds, then we can expect to count about 500 more homeless Washingtonians in January 2018 than we counted in 2017 (similar to the 482-person increase from '02 to '03) and for there to be large war protests beginning in the spring of 2018 -- some being as large as a quarter million or even a half million people. We can also expect to get bogged down in a 10-year war; and, that's only if it doesn't evolve into World War III and lead to the near-extinction of the human race, save the few "elites" who are kept underground until the nuclear winter turns to spring.

We can expect the economy to continue to improve going into 2018 and to take a nosedive in 2022 or 2023. Add to this the fact that war creates jobs as reservists are called into active duty, unemployed civilians take the jobs of the reservists and weapons manufacturers do more hiring in order to meet the greater demand for weapons. This is all the more reason to expect an economic boom in 2018 -- unless robots are used to make the weapons and fight the war. Let's not forget that the U.S. Government will also pay contractors to rebuild North Korea after we decimate the country -- something that robots can't do yet. That's a jobs plan if I ever saw one, tRump!!!

As it turns out, at least a couple of major aspects of this somewhat predictable pattern have changed. As indicated earlier, we've gone from facing off with a president who didn't have WMD's after all to facing off with one who does. We've also gone from having a Republican president whose intransigent and somewhat unprincipled ways were upsetting and unsettling to now having an altogether Repugnant-can president who is a loose cannon in the worst of ways and whose term we'd be fortunate to survive. One thing that definitely remains the same is that neither 45 nor the current congress seems to realize how ignorant and unprincipled it is to fight another nation because you don't like that nation's weapons. News flash: An enemy doesn't want you to like his weapons, to overpower his weapons or to escape his weapons in the event of a war. That's part of the logic of war. It doesn't make sense to go to war with a nation whose weapons you don't like; as, that's when they'll be used. The silver lining in this dark mushroom cloud of nuclear war is that, after the war, the enemy won't have many, if any, WMD's left. They will have expended most or all of them on us and our allies -- at least the allies who don't also have alliances with North Korea. The "icing" on the cake in this scenario is that the nuclear winter that follows will do much to reverse global warming (which more than makes up for the U.S. not joining the Paris Climate Accord).

There's another item that I would have included in the list of issues that apparently go full-circle over a 15-year period, except that Bush 43's tax plan wasn't as big an overhaul of the tax code as Reagan's or Trump's and it occurred in two parts that were passed in 2001 and 2003. Maybe I should've included it nonetheless. In any instance, Trump and the 115th Congress have passed a tax plan that will greatly reduce tax revenues -- a Christmas gift to the rich, by all means. Well before this latest tax code overhaul many advocates for the poor were pleading year after year with government officials to fund social services -- especially for those who can't work and for those whom it can't be guaranteed that they'll find living-wage jobs. With there now being less tax dollars to go around, Congress has a reason of its own making which will be used to justify completely destroying the social safety net. Then again, the impending war will guarantee employment for almost all able-bodied Americans and once again incentivize poor Americans to go blow off the heads of another country's poor so as to earn a college education  -- to join the military for the promise of a better life if they don't return in a box.

When it comes to war, I've noticed yet another pattern. Right after a war -- even a decade after a major war -- those who came back from the front are more likely to stand up for themselves. Many of the Blacks who stood behind Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1955 had fought in World War II and came to envy the better treatment of Afro-Europeans. The Community for Creative Non-Violence (CCNV) Homeless Shelter in Washington, DC was founded by Vietnam-era vets who renounced violence but who stood up for themselves and other homeless people -- going head-to-head with the Reagan administration. This particular pattern may very well be the final ingredient in a recipe for revolution, as those who get deployed return and fight their true enemy -- the tRump administration (or whatever American administration is in power at the time). Since it doesn't seem that Americans will have a revolution/ Civil [sic] War that prevents a long and protracted war overseas, our only hope might be a Second American Revolution/ Civil [sic] War after the Second Korean War -- 2018 to 2023 or 2028. Let's brace ourselves for impact. (War is never "civil".)

Patterns aside, I've noticed that the world society learned a simple but profound lesson after World War II. Following World War I (1914-1918, initially known as "THE World War"), the highly-educated leaders of various countries assumed that there would never be another world war -- being as people would remember how terrible it was and they'd never let things go that far again. Then there was World War II (1939-1945). Of course, the U.S. was the final country to enter the war following the December 7th, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor. Ours was also the country that did the most to bring the war to an end as General Dwight D. Eisenhower (a German-American) defeated Adolf Hitler (an Austrian fighting for Germany) at Normandy Beach, France. (BTW, tRump is German -- the name having been anglicized from Drumpf -- which means that he might become the second German-American 'resident associated with a world war.) That said, the world learned after World War II that we can't count on the mere memory or historic record of an horrific war to serve as the reason for which people avoid war. So, in 1948 the United Nations was created as a tool to prevent another world war. There were 21 years between the end of the first world war and the beginning of the second. It's been 72 years since the end of the second. Maybe this means that the world society has learned the most important lessons. I'm not so optimistic.

I see the makings of World War III. Americans might have less than three months to prevent it -- Americans who oppose tRump, that is. Forty-five is sure to continue the military build-up off of the Korean peninsula between now and mid-March 2018, so that he can exercise some "gunboat diplomacy" with Kim Jong Un at that time. Kim is likely to fire another missile that month. It might turn out that Robert Mueller's investigation has turned up indisputable evidence of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, that tRump has been forced to publicly accuse Vladimir Putin and that Russia has decided to defend North Korea against an overreaction from the United States. Enter a like-minded Chinese government and you now have three nations that are united in their anger and animosity toward the U.S. Then there is the complex tree of alliances that exist between those three nations and many others. Of course, the U.S. has other allies -- like France which wisely decided against helping us during the Iraq War. This could spell the end of American imperialism more than 70 years after our nation prevented German imperialism. I'm guessing that, by the end of World War III, those who remain will have learned that a presidential candidate (or candidate for chancellor) who didn't get the majority of the popular vote (the way I believe Hitler actually DID) shouldn't be seated by an electoral college and that any nation that begins to exhibit imperialistic tendencies needs to be put in check by other nations immediately. It's too bad that the world didn't learn the latter lesson at least 40 years ago. It might be too late to come back from the brink, save the distant possibility of an American uprising during the winter of '17-'18.

As the United States continues to spend more on war than it spends on programs of social uplift and to do so at an accelerated pace, I can see Washington, DC once again becoming a hotbed of protests in the spring of 2018. Let's plan around this strong possibility and do it better this time than we've done it in the past. As people descend on DC to protest the next major war, they should:

1 -- begin protesting in mid-January (no later than mid-February)
2 -- connect with the DC locals, especially around the issues of poverty and homelessness
3 -- ensure that Blacks lead the charge around Black issues
4 -- remember that failing to amass enough opposition to disrupt the tRump administration BEFORE March 2018 could lead to World War III
5 -- demand that less be spent on war and more on programs of social uplift
6 -- connect with the Washington Peace Center to find lodging and other supports
7 -- encourage others to vote non-Republican (for Democrats or viable third-party candidates that won't just take votes away from a Democrat who would have otherwise beaten the Republican candidate)
8 -- plan the creation of a viable third party whose existence can dramatically change national politics.

With the status quo, we can expect:

1 -- Less tax dollars in 2018 leading to cuts in social services
2 -- A second Korean War (third world war) beginning in the spring of 2018
3 -- An improved war economy in 2018 // An economic downturn that begins in the fall of 2022
(for those who remain.)

The local political calendar includes:

1 -- counting the homeless in late January 2018
2 -- finding out who will run for mayor by the end of March (the incumbent, Muriel Bowser, having already declared)
3 -- finding out how many homeless people were counted in mid-May (maybe c. 7,950, like in 2003)
4 -- the 6/19/18 Democratic Primary with an incumbent who made addressing homelessness a centerpiece of her platform in 2014 and might oversee a net increase in homelessness during her term
5 -- the possible announcement on 6/20-21/18 that she is the first DC mayor to be voted out based on her failures toward the poor.

National politics:

1 -- The entire lower house (the House of Representatives) is up for reelection during every mid-term election. To give the GOP a simple minority of seat (217 of 435), Dems and third parties would have to take 22 of the GOP's current 239 seats in November 2018.

2 -- One third of the upper house (the Senate) is up for regular reelection every two years; and, at least one senator plans to resign, though not at the end of his term. Eight of the 34 contested seats are held by Republicans who will have 51 seats after Doug Jones is sworn in this January. If all contested Democratic senate seats are retained within the party and all contested Republican senate seats go to Democrats or third-party candidates in November 2018, then the GOP would be left with 43 seats come January 2019.

3 -- This means that people can vote non-Republican -- for Democrats or viable third-party candidates that won't just take votes away from a Democrat who would have otherwise beaten the Republican candidate -- and end up with 57 non-Republican senators and hopefully at least 261 non-Republican House members. This would stop tRump dead in his tracks (emphasis on "dead").

4 -- All poor people (most of them White) will hopefully not vote against their own self interests in 2018, the way they did in 2016.

5 -- Hopefully poor and lower middle class voters (the vast majority of Americans) will vote for their self- and class-interests in 2018, as they follow the lead of Black Alabamans who chose Doug Jones.

The most immediate issue is no doubt preparation for large war protests like what we had from 2003 to 2007. (I expect to see the first protest of 2018 on January 20th and for them to only grow thereafter.) But, let's come with a more powerful message, in greater numbers and more frequently. Something tells me that the need is even more urgent this time around and that the suffering of the poor will be deeper than it has been in the past. The more things change, the more they stay the same.