Inhumane, All Too Human
When they suppress your vote, they suppress your humanity.
Greg Palast
Jul 23, 2025
Meet the newest sleuth to join the Palast investigative team. Ethan Lieberman first joined us as a Park Foundation Scholar in journalism trying to get his hands on the FBI’s investigative files on Charles Koch. As you’ll see in our upcoming film, Long Knife: The Osage Nation, Koch Oil and the New Trail of Tears, Ethan was blocked by the Department of Interior whose files are controlled by one of Koch’s former lawyers. Lieberman knows how to go after the baddies.
Lieberman is also a poet and a student of the classics. So, I’ve asked him to comment on the meaning of citizenship itself from its origins in Athens.
This is an exclusive for our premium Substack subscribers…but you’re free to re-post and pass it on.
Welcome aboard, Ethan.
– Greg Palast

Inhumane, All Too Human
by
Ethan Lieberman | July 23, 2025
Greg Palast and I often discuss the unrelenting voter rights abuses that all seem to claw their way out of hell from some fissure in Atlanta. These demons of injustice have no intention to stop at Georgia’s state border; they’ll spread their wrath nationwide. [See “
Evil Scheme to Purge Half a Million Voters.”] Palast’s been at this for decades, and if he’s certain about one thing it’s that the problem is only getting worse.
The “resistance” is disorganized, paralyzed, and horrified by the incessant onslaught against civil liberties. Everyone seems to be thinking, “What the hell are we supposed to do?”
As much as I hate to admit it, maybe the Left needs to learn from Trump’s example. When you get knocked down, get up and
Fight, Fight, Fight. Focus on the issues that everyone cares about, the economic ones. And for the love of God… stop playing the victim. No one votes for the weak.
The battleground for this campaign is the ballot box. If you want it, you’ve got to take it. Palast often tells the story of his sister’s advocacy for President Clinton before his name was even a presidential consideration. If you didn’t know, she was pivotal in getting him elected. She described Clinton as “someone who’d run over his own grandmother if that’s what it took to win.” That’s just what it takes.
To fight injustice, we can’t complain about how we’ve been wronged. We progressives need to be better at the game than the opposition.
So, what’s really at stake when eligible voters are torn out of the voter rolls? I’ll tell you.
Taking someone’s right to vote is the same as saying they are less than human. The concept of citizenship stems back to the origins of democracy. It means that you hold a stake in the fate of your city, or in our case, nation.
Citizens get to vote. It’s their way of steering the enterprise that informs every aspect of their life.
Not everyone in Ancient Athens got the right to vote. If you didn’t, you were either a woman or a foreigner. In either of those cases, it was assumed you were incapable of contributing, and accordingly undeserving of the dignity that accompanies autonomy. These groups were seen as overgrown children… dangerously ignorant and worthlessly self-interested.
We don’t live in Ancient Greece. We operate today with well-reasoned confidence that all people are potential citizens. Well… most of us do.
While the modern world is sure of the humanity of every natural born citizen, the Right Wing (you could call it the “White Wing”) wants nothing more than to strip that status from undesirable (disagreeable) persons.
What good is a First Amendment when it only applies to your friends? Obviously, it’s meaningless. It becomes as temperamental as the direction of the wind. The winds of power. If the Grand Old Party has its way, the leadership will be chosen by unpopular opinion.
You don’t need to be Superman to know that, if there’s a time to fight for truth, justice, and the American way… it’s right now.
Ethan Jude Lieberman is a university trained journalist, writer, poet, and chronic observer of the decaying political-social environment that we collectively refer to as the early 21st Century. From martial arts, to philosophy, to artificial intelligence, his areas of interest widely vary. Lieberman firmly believes in the power of the generalist. While specialization was the core of success in the 20th Century, the 21st rewards a wide knowledge base and adaptability.