Change… holy change! If only we could be blessed with a light rain from the heavens that would wash away our prejudices, greed and dissipating wastefulness. Cleansed, Americans could then become one whole people instead of the many fractions that now make up this nation of diversity; diversity not just in people but also in rights, hopes and expectations.
Let there be no mistake, ours is a nation where indignation and ill will run much deeper than we would like to believe, or dare broadcast for everyone to hear; and it is these real life-size grievances never addressed fully or with candor – not just imagined ones – that prevent us from attaining national cohesiveness. Instead, all we have done from time immemorial is to lie to ourselves and to others… just by adding patches. Ours has never been a Fourth of July America, the one that our state department sells to the world, but a nation which has provided both: opportunity for some to realize a so-called American dream and, for others, the condemnation to relive an American nightmare.
Patches that cover up the problems of race, economic inequality and wantonly obscene self-indulgence are constantly being affixed to the American psyche as if telling us all that everything is fine with no reason to worry or complain. So truth is patched with lies time and again, as we are all asked to join in that proud chorus of “God Bless America,” an America that really belongs to a few, although most of us are deceived into adopting it as our very own. And the bullshit builds up, as do the patches, until the boiling cauldron overflows… then, the patches temporarily disappear and we come to blows.
Last week the media did its thing, and presented us with a reverend Wright made to look more like an irreverent Wrong exalting his black congregation with a blasphemous “God Damn America.” No American flag pin adorning his clerical garb, just words of anger and rancor coming from his mouth. An embittered Christian pastor who tells it like he sees it… and that for tens of millions is really the America they live in and not the mythical America that we seem to be patriotically proud of. By so doing, Rev. Wright created political problems for a member of his flock, Senator Barack Obama, and his quest for the Democratic nomination… and the chance to occupy the White House.
Obama’s denunciation of Rev. Wright was one of form as well as substance, but it did appear as a conditional denunciation to the existing racial problems that still afflict this nation. And that is something that most conservative Americans just don’t tolerate… it has to be an unconditional denunciation, and total adherence to the philosophy that “America does no wrong,” or it’s no denunciation at all.
Even if one questions Obama’s path and ability to bring real change to America, he does appear as a person of reason and honor… unlike most other politicians; and that, of course, will hurt his chances of being nominated by his party; and, if nominated, of being elected. After all, he’ll be portrayed as just a letter away from the founding father of Al Qaeda. The lies and denigration against aspiring-president Obama will be in full force and the fascist bloodhounds will be combing the woods and the marshes looking for that half-Negro terrorist who dares tell us that we have racial problems to solve. It has already started. In this morning local paper, The Oregonian, an uncalled for salvo was dishonorably discharged by a reader: “Barack Obama stands by Rev. Wright with glee. President he should not be.” Jubilant delight not from Obama but from the Rovesque nincompoop who wrote such trash! But that’s what the senator will get, non-stop, if and when he receives the Democratic nomination to run against John McCain.
Black rage in America is real, very real, even if it remains patched. The American judicial-prison system is a disgrace, one which affects blacks uniquely and disproportionately, as do other institutions. When Mainstream White America, the America that controls power, fails to address these problems, should people act surprised if criminal trials really become political trials, such as O.J. Simpson’s or Mumia Abu-Jamal’s?
We have only touched on racial resentment – which affects more than just blacks – but it applies with an ever increasing force to the broadening economic inequality and the accelerating disappearance of the middle class. Racial and economic rage affecting the “Other America” is likely to grow in the next few years attaining super-majority status to demand drastic social, economic and political change in this land of ours.
It is not double vision that makes us see two Americas… it is only political blindness that makes us see only one. Distance between the two Americas needs to be dramatically narrowed or we shall continue to remain the United States of Resentment, and not the United States of America we should strive to be.
America, more than anything else, more than the proverbial land of opportunity, is very definitely something else. This nation of ours appears to be, first and foremost, a land of contradictions where, while the polls indicate most people feel the nation is being led in the wrong direction, we seem inclined to follow the same pied piper foreign policy.
Like it or not, in the US you cease to be an American (or rather, a “good American”) in the mind of your family, friends and neighbors the moment you deny the sacred dogma of inerrancy in US foreign policy. It may seem irrational to some people – either the statement on its face or what it’s implied by it – but deep inside that is the attitudinal belief of a vast majority of Americans I know and, I would venture to guess, most Americans anyone might know. And yet, that “patriotic majority,” so similar to me to the “moral majority” of time past, prefer not to think of themselves in any way, shape or form as nativists, jingoists, or otherwise exclusionary… convinced they are just down-to-earth regular folks: Main Street America.
Shortly after 9/11, political America – Democrats and Republicans – decided that it was about time to set aside their minute differences in foreign policy and act as a true united front. After all, they could always maintain some semblance of independence in the domestic arena, keeping a presumed differentiation alive and well… as if the gross mislabeling of the conservative and liberal captions defined how either party stood.
To our national detriment, including America’s standing in the world, such unnecessary and unwarranted united front was adopted by our political duopoly without as much as the blink of an eye; its ideas quickly permeating, and finding acceptance, through much of the citizenry of Main Street America. That citizen’s consent to relinquish rights and freedoms, giving blind permission, authorization, license and sanction allowing Bush’s White House to do as it pleased – all too often in open acts of criminality – has made it starkly clear that even if we claim to live under democratic rule, a so-called rule of law, our republic operates under a much different rule: the rule of consentership. And we, the citizenry, are simply the consenters! Such role reversal has made Americans the doting citizens of their uncle, Sam, an embarrassingly felonious uncle at that.
Let’s stop being hypocrites! Let’s stop blaming Bush for our own cowardice and lack of civic guts. Empowering a selected – not elected – government; granting clearance for the neocons to act; giving Bush the green light to invade Iraq; tolerating the usurping of our rights and freedoms; and going along with blatant economic malfeasance that is sure to bankrupt this nation, is unmistakably defining the highest level of consentership: what some of us would call the ultimate political pass.
Could it be that we are consenting because that is exactly what we want? That deep inside we know that someone needs to do the dirty work on our behalf, and that there needs to be a price paid? Are we really accomplices as much as we are consenters? Isn’t this a form of a dictatorship by that antidemocratic triumvirate that rules our lives: predatory capitalism, wasteful consumerism, and religious fundamentalism?
It’s beginning to look as if in early 2008, consentership will continue to dominate our Tweedledum-Tweedledee politics with Republicans and Democrats achieving renewed solidarity in foreign affairs, be it the forever-occupation (or negotiated presence) of Iraq, a non-stop continuing demonization of Iran and other “terror-villains,” or the constant denunciation of any nation that challenges our imperial hegemony and right to collect tribute in any way we see fit. Bush will soon be on his way out, but rest assured that his replacement will be a clone; or, as it is now starting to look, “a Bush in drag.” Perhaps we continue to be led astray with the promise of a lesser evil approach in domestic governance, but it will not be a lesser evil in the areas that are essential to bring trusting understanding among peoples of the world; it will not be a recipe to achieve peace on this earth, just as the organic compounds were to achieve life.
Of late, we have been looking at what is happening in Greater Russia, and are totally befuddled by the confrontational attitude of Mr. Putin. A man that not so long ago our own Duce, after looking into his eyes, tabbed as his straightforward, trustworthy friend Vladimir. My God, can someone explain how our prophetic, infallible Bush was able to get a sense of Putin’s soul and just a few years later have him turn against us?
But we shouldn’t fret over Putin’s reaction to our accustomed imperialist behavior, nor should we be surprised at his popularity in Greater Russia. Just like here in the US, there is also an apparent consensus in the neo-czarist land of Vladimir Putin, with an overwhelming majority matching their consentership against our very own. If we can be bipartisan in adopting – preserving might be a more appropriate word – an imperial foreign policy, it’s understandable that the Russians’ newly found economic success and national pride have turned their political behavior into one of consentership. The US should not expect anything better after our “screw-you” behavior during their cold turkey exit from communism, and now our insolence of trying to park missiles at their borders.
Consentership may not be dangerously consequential for small groups or nations that have no influence beyond their memberships or borders. For an imperial superpower it can turn out to be the most extreme among political extremes, perhaps the worst form of dictatorship. After all, we are consenting to the rule of a very few… and those few have been granted the power to push the nuclear button at will, to turn daylight into permanent night.
And we have the gall to criticize some nations because we tag them as dictatorships!
I have studied the development of this political and social ideology [neoconservatism] to some extent, and its primary forebear is a political philosopher by the name, Leo Strauss. He was most affected by Plato, and, in particular, The Republic. I presume this is where Strauss gained his authoritarian worldview, which is seeded in the monolithic polis speculated by Plato, where the society is structured according to a corporatist regime, negating any differentiation between polity and civil society.
Authoritarians, such as Strauss, tend to be moral realists, similarly to Plato, which provides them with their rhetorical devices needed to justify their ethnocentrism, making it appear not as an ideology spouted by a faction that strives to impose it upon others, but as the natural moral order to which all humanity should aspire and, indeed, be pushed.
However, this belief in absolutes – a single moral order that exists apart from the men and women who speculate over its contents – has the impact of diminishing reality in favor of an impression of the world that is propagated through the contrivance of ad hoc explanations for all events that seem to run contrary to the idealized vision of human sociality articulated in the moral realist’s camouflaged ethnocentrism.
This is the point at which I am mystified the most by the neo-cons: Moral realism results in a negation of the saliency that should otherwise be attributed to contingencies that unfold in empirical reality, in favor of an adoption of a faith-based form of reasoning, where one’s beliefs will always be vindicated in the long-run. In the context of this type of thinking, we can meaningfully interpret the expression “moral courage:” a quality that is lacking in anybody who espouses uncertainty as to the veracity of the neo-conservative system of beliefs. Moral realism, in this instance, ironically, appears to be more of an underlying posit supported by convictions of faith rather than any reflection of reality.
What all of this has to do with Bush, specifically, I do not know, because he is not necessarily intelligent enough to grasp the neocons’ system of thought, such as the case with the intellect of hubris personified, Paul Wolfiwitz. However, I am sure that Bush’s absolute convictions regarding his born again stature in the eyes of his god might translate into the same type of empirically uninformed decision-making processes. Only, in Bush’s case, he has mistaken Chaney whispering in his ear for the Word of the Lord Almighty.
So, then, the question now arises: Why, even as the neo-conservatives – through their follies in Iraq and other ‘terror,’ related policy matters – have completely undressed themselves - Americans continue, as a population, to fail to mobilize in opposition to the Bush Regime?
As far as getting people off of their couches and politically engaged, I believe the problem is the deference we as Americans are socialized to possess and exhibit, beginning at a young age, whereby we are instructed to demonstrate respect and obedience toward our extant sociopolitical institutions. It does not matter what people might suspect or come to believe according to the conclusions reached in their own internal contemplations as long as they are encumbered with a habitual deferential posture that is assumed in relationship to sociopolitical institutions; fixtures that we are socialized to take to be transcendent of human interference and contamination. Even Tocqueville remarked that Americans displayed obedience to sociopolitical institutions, which prevented, according to the French observer, radicalized political behavior. He speculated that American democracy might be made possible by this willing subservience. Therefore, it is a matter of reinvigorating Americans with a sense of existential angst that is the key to unlocking radicalized currents of both thoughts and their associative social undertakings.
Returning to concerns related to religion: I would assume that Bush, indeed, during moments of cynicism, does use religiosity as a political artifice. Remember, the remarks made by Bush in the lead up to the War in Iraq, where he made mention of a “Great Crusade,” that we, as a nation, were about to undertake. Obviously, in retrospect, we can recognize this as a ploy to garner support from the war-mongering-religious-right that finds a place in our unfortunate society.
These remarks are not intended to be a denouncement of all instances of religiosity. I do make a differentiation between the dogma of fundamentalism and the personal spiritualism – associated with countercultural religious movements – which I suspect Jesus – the historical figure – to have proffered the latter in his sermons, because it is only with absolutism and dogma that religiosity manifests its deleterious qualities; what we witness in the Christianity that was tragically left to us by the sexually impotent, female loathing, and physically diminutive Paul, who knew nothing of Jesus other than Christ’s appearances in Paul’s own hysteria and its precipitation of fanciful delusions.
As the Populist Party of America grows in size, we are faced with some challenging obstacles and difficult decisions to make regarding the future of the Party: i.e., What type of structure should be given to the Populist Party of America? Should we strive for a strong national organization? Or, contrarily, should we stress decentralization, choosing to focus on the development of state and local parties without any overbearing emphasis placed upon the integration of the various pockets of Populist America into a monolithic formation? Thus far, I have been exposed to two contrasting visions for the future organization of the Party, as it continues to grow in size.
There is an argument that maintains the necessity of an organization to possess some kind of integrated structure, which would include members who would participate in planning and problem solving. This managerial core would contribute to the development of different actionable plans that could later be introduced to the membership at large, providing some options that have already been delineated, from which the membership might select to adopt and implement as a Party platform. This proposal calling for the Party to possess a kernel, consisting of more active members, who would be inclined to offer centralized planning for the Party as a whole, stands in stark opposition to the other conception for the appropriate structuring of the Party, as it continues to expand.
This proposed design for the Party - which stands in opposition to proposals for centralization - would not provide for an organization with a centralized nervous system. Alternatively, the Party would be allowed to proliferated along lateral dimensions while failing to create an integrated hierarchy of offices.
To relate this ideology of decentralized politic to contemporary sociological literature, the jargon that has come into fashion, as a result of the studies upon the Informational Economy, which were initiated by Manuel Castells, uses the reference, Networked Politics, to designate instances of decentralized patterns of political praxis.
This new form of political mobilization often transcends the geographical boundaries imposed by states and governments. Furthermore, Networked Politics are understood as a by-product of what has been termed by Castells as Informationalism, which simply designates the technological paradigm underlying the expansion of Internet communicative infrastructures. However, the type of sociopolitical opposition that is formed through the networking of diverse agents and groups via the communication channels provided for by the Web - despite the transnational character of these network configurations - fails to negate the embodiment of geographical locality and the coalescence of interests among advocates who reside in physical proximity to one another; thus, allowing for embodied interaction.
This condition, where localized concerns are situated and understood in the context of larger geo-economic and geopolitical social forces, has been referenced under the neologism, glocalization. This concept fits in well with the social theoretical framework that has been introduced by Castells, who discards with the global democracy thesis propounded by Habermas and Rorty - which was founded upon the notion of a cosmopolitan culture - in favor of an understanding of the globalizing trends, facilitated by Informationalism, where multiculturalism will be preserved; only such cultural differences will become circumspect within a global forum of manifold cultural identities, who will participate in a world representational space in order to express their uniqueness as well as discover the peculiar attributes of others.
It is here, in the conception of glocalization, that I propose as a guiding post serving as an indication for the appropriate trajectory in which Populist America should transverse, as the Party enters into its future stages of development, as it continues to grow larger.
[Future installment: the concretization of glocalization in the praxes of Populist America]
Despite the best efforts of the Luddite, Jim Crow bigots residing in the backwater town of Jena, Louisiana, the cap is about to burst on these white supremacists, who are in the process of committing what amounts to a lynching of several, young African-American males. This clinical lynching is being conducted under the veneer of a juridical canard. The African-American high school students presently face decades in prison for charges related to an assault that was committed upon a white student in the Jena, LA school district. The African-American students, who have been charged with attempted murder, allegedly assaulted a white student. However, if one is to learn about the circumstances under which these charges have been leveled against the African-American male high school students, a picture emerges that screams of injustice, resulting from a racism that is so severe that I was shocked when I became fully familiar with these insidious events.
Apparently, this whole incident began after African-American students, during their launch break, sat under a tree that had been the providence of white students. In reaction to this apparent affront by the African-Americans, the next day white students had tied lynching ropes from the trees under which the African-Americans had sat. Despite the fact that this symbolic gesture on the part of the young aspiring Klan members constituted nothing less that a direct threat of murder directed against the African-American high school students - where a bystander would be left only to assume that the lives of the black students were in immediate peril - the white students responsible for this unforgivable threat were given a three day suspension. On the days that followed, the assault, for which the Black teenage boys are accused, took place. The African-American adolescent males were arrested and charged, not with simple battery, but attempted murder and the reduced crime of aggravated assault. These hyperbolic charges are only applicable in instances where a deadly weapon is used, according to Louisiana statutes. The first of the Black males to stand trial was convicted for the lesser charge of aggravated assault. According to the jury, the African-American boy’s tennis shoes qualified as a deadly weapon.
To make this whole affair even more sickening, the jury was all white. Additionally, during the case, the judge preceding over the trial had issued a gag order on all witnesses. Consequentially, the parents of the African-Americans, who were to take the stand in defense of their children, were prevented under threat of contempt from making public issue out of this miscarriage of justice; consequentially, the parents were precluded from pursuing recourse through an appeal to the innumerable law professors who would have accepted this case pro bono!
To read more of this revolting affair, you can begin by visiting an article that someone has put up on Wikipedia. It has been marked as potentially biased, but from what I have gathered from other sources, including interviews that were taken by Amy Goodman of Democracy Now!, the account on Wikipedia appears to be, for the most part, spot on:
With the events that have taken place in Jena, LA, I am going to return to the issue of the Tenth Amendment and its properly conceived relation to the Fourteenth Amendment.
I had written three controversial essays focusing on the candidacy of Ron Paul. I had criticized Paul for opposing legislation and certain reforms, which could be implemented by Presidential Decree, that would effectively contribute to the alleviation of the discrimination faced by gays, lesbians, and cross-gender. Paul, of course, explained away his refusal to adopt platform positions in support of the establishment of measures contributing to the equal rights and opportunities by all members of society, via appeal to a Libertarian ideological tenet that embraces the Tenth Amendment of the Constitution over and beyond other Amendments that might lead to divergent conclusions with respect to the appropriate role of the Federal Government and its interventions into social affairs that might alternatively be left to the states in order to regulate. Using the Tenth Amendment and its implications as premises, Paul essentially concluded that the inclusion of gays in the military as well as the extension of Federal Hate Crime Statutes to include crimes motivated out of hate for gays, lesbians, and cross-gender were decisions better left to, in the case of the former, the Military - and its own independent deliberations regarding its Uniform Code of Conduct - and, in the latter, the States and municipalities, who, in the absence of Federal intervention, would assume full responsible for the prosecution of crimes against these sexual minorities.
In opposition to Paul’s stance, I had countered by contending that Federal intervention has been historically demonstrated as a necessary device to extend civil liberties and citizenship rights to marginalized minorities who suffer from persecution and exclusionary practices within the provincial affairs of certain states. In short, my conclusions came down to unavoidable inferences drawn from the brute raw fact that without Federal interdiction these vulnerable minorities might not have their rights protected. I further argued that the Fourteenth Amendment was at stake - which in my opinion is far more significant than any appeal made to the nebulously defined Tenth Amendment
The Tenth Amendment - if one analyzes it with care - does not make specific references to the instances in which it should be prioritized over and beyond other possibly germane and applicable Amendments. In other words, rather than an Amendment intended to delineate specific rights, such as a clear and certain range of defined circumstances, where states should be deferred the sole authority when it comes to issues of civil liberties - the Tenth Amendment, according to my readings, appears to be intended only to limit Federal intrusions when the National Government is in the process of curtailing rights. However, in instances, such as hate crimes, the Federal Government is not inhibiting individuals from practicing types of social actions that fall under the extension of their own negative rights. Contrarily, the Federal Government is merely extending civil liberties by protecting the rights of vulnerable segments of society, who all too often are the deliberate and persistent targets of crimes, which impede the minorities from enjoying their own personal liberties, motivated out hate for the social minorities and the characteristics, which they embody, that make them socially different and identifiable as social outsiders.
This is not to say that the Tenth Amendment should not take on any significance and it should not be appealed to in instances where the Federal Government is in the process of extending its authority in a modality that is an affront to civil liberties. However, conversely, the Tenth Amendment should not be used as a juridical-politico artifice for what amounts to curtailing civil liberties by deferring the responsibility for protecting individual rights to the judgments of states and their provincial practices, in which the manifestation of racism and hate related crimes might be afoot, leading to the legalization of practices that only serve to curtail the rights of minorities. I think that most would agree that the Golden Rule - although not explicitly mentioned in the Constitution - nevertheless, serves as a guiding post for the formation of our best conclusions regarding what social conduct is permissible versus actions on the part of individuals and groups that should be interdicted. Those who act upon others in a manner that prevents the enjoyment of liberties by those upon whom the actions are committed should expect no better by other agencies who might act upon them. I cannot put it any more succinctly.
Returning to the case in Jena, I cannot think of a more compelling example of why the Federal Government must sometimes be permitted to intervene in order to prevent the most egregious instances of the persecuting of disliked minorities. To reiterate, Ron Paul needs to go back to the drawing board, and thoroughly recalculate his position on Federal hate crimes as well as the rights of sexual minorities.
Russell Cole
What is more dangerous to passenger airplanes, human breastmilk or Dell laptop computers?
It is a good thing that the security measures safeguarding passengers of jet airplanes against threats that are conceived on an ad hoc basis, only after they are learned from the intending terrorists themselves, are finally being implemented.
It is only natural to suspect that terrorists will deploy the exact same techniques that have already been discovered by Homeland Security. Therefore, it is a good thing that our safties are in the hands of officials who are more than capable of ignoring potential threats that might be actualized by terrorists in the future in order to exhaust their energies upon developing measures to guard against terrorist techniques that have already been attempted.
An excellent exemplar of this philosophy of law enforcement is the current security measures being institutionalized at airports. Since terrorists have already attempted to use liquid explosives, we can infer that they are going to use the same technique in furture operations. This is why it is so important that liquids such as human breast milk are being guarded against.
I have never personally seen breast milk explode. Then again, I have had few encounters with breast milk of which I am aware. On the other, the explosion of Dell laptop computers is something that might occur in the present and future, and, therefore, should not consume the precious intellectual resources of those who are commissioned with assuring our security on planes. Consequently, we can thank those in charge of Homeland Security for preventing against plots that have already been foiled while ignoring potential threats, such as the explosion of a Dell Laptop computer during a flight.
An assessment of the political landscape following the Midterm Elections, which analyzes the opportunities and the best course of actions for the new Democratic Majorities…An Article by Dave, who forgot to provide us with his last name. However, we have an address to a Weblog that is published by Dave at the following URI:
Many may see this statement as surprising–either because they assumed anyone with left-of-center politics will naturally be very excited about the elections or because they know me and assumed that I wouldn’t. In general I don’t put much faith in voting. It is essentially a chance every several years to legitimize the broader set of relations within society. To the extent it allows us to actually choose among leaders it is often a choice of imperialisms, a choice of capitalisms etc.
This year I felt differently. This election was widely viewed as a referendum on the Iraq war and the aggressive nationalism of the Bush administration. The stunning rebuke to the Republican party is an important tool for re-orienting the political climate, for establishing that the country as a whole is unhappy with the Iraq war and government corruption. It has heightened the sense of cost that politicians feel in supporting the Iraq war (Ned Lamont’s primary victory was also absolutely crucial in this) and in forcing elites towards consideration of an exit strategy sooner rather than later. As opposition to the Vietnam war created the “Vietnam Syndrome” and a reluctance to commit American military forces worldwide, we can only hope that we are creating an “Iraq Syndrome” that will help prevent future pre-emptive wars and aggressive militarism. By giving Democrats subpoena powers we put in motion a process that will surely reveal facts about the preparation/execution of the war that will further increase popular outrage. I also felt that splitting the power of government between parties would help curb a range of excesses that have resulted in vastly increased government surveillance power. Finally, the proposition in my state would have banned not only marriage (which I think should be a purely religious affair, untouched by government) but also any form of legal arrangement that was similar to marriage such as civil unions or domestic partnerships.
We should be careful, however, in hailing the new balance of power. In terms of the Democratic agenda there are some issues. During the election the Democrats were careful to avoid a specific platform, but since the election they have been promoting their “Six in ‘06″–six goals to accomplish after coming into power. The items are:
-increase the minimum wage
-negotiate for lower prescription drug prices
-restore 12.5 billion dollars in cuts for higher education
-use $15 billion in oil subsidies and use it for “energy independence”
-reinstitute “Pay-Go” rules (any new tax cut or spending must be offset elsewhere)
-vote on the 9/11 Commission recommendations
Now, some of these I have no issue with. Increasing the minimum wage is good (although it will likely not be by very much and they will probably still fail to index it to inflation so it automatically increases with the cost of living). Negotiating for lower drug prices is good, but its main effect is to just decrease the cost of existing healthcare programs (will those savings be used to cover the tens of millions without insurance? or increase the quality of healthcare?). $12.5 billion to help people with college costs is good (but is nothing within an over $2 trillion federal budget, and will these funds actually help break class barriers to college, or will it only help defray the cost to the upper-middle class?). Ending tax cuts for oil companies is good (but “energy independence” has been picked up as a catch-all phrase including tax breaks to oil companies for domestic drilling and investment in technologies that are already economically viable on their own). The Pay-Go rules are perhaps the biggest issue but they come too late to stop the massive GOP tax giveaways and commit the Democrats to fiscal straitjacket in the future. The one I have the least concern about is the 9/11 recommendations implementation. I have not seen the full list, and there may be objectionable changes, but instituting measures that don’t compromise civil liberties and that actually reduce terrorism (i.e. not racial profiling, not massive data mining) is a good thing.
You will likely notice that nowhere is there anything about Iraq. The Democrats would prefer to have this off the table at the moment. Iraq makes for a good election issue, but they are now stuck between advocating some form of withdrawal (which they are unwilling to do) and advocating some other strategy to control the country for America’s benefit (which means they have to tone down the rhetoric and agree with many statements the right is making). Some Democrats are willing to actively engage, but their plans often revolve around maximizing US leverage in Iraq. The event that may alter this political hesitancy and incoherence is the release of the James Baker III/Iraq Study Group report. The report will give massive political cover for politicians to support a bipartisan re-alignment of American foreign policy along Realist lines (crack down on Shia regional power, shift back towards American backing of dictatorships to enhance regional stability).
We should remember that the left need not be simply a Democratic interest group, it can be a powerful social force. Conservatives may now be for the moment wedded to the GOP, but they grew powerful as a social movement in the 1950s & 1960s through local campaigns, awareness raising and building a mass base around people’s grievances. The height of the American labor movement’s power was in the 1930s & 1940s as it waged a relentless struggle to increase wages and expand social programs. The New Social Movements that coalesced in the 1960s & 1970s achieved the most social change when they were vibrant, active movements that challenged existing social relations. The Civil Rights and Black Power movements completely upended the existing power structure of the country by mobilizing African Americans to collectively and directly challenge racist institutions, racist practices and unequal systems of wealth.
Sometimes social change requires legislation. Occasionally you need to play the inside game of electoral strategies and lobbyists to achieve a particular objective. Too many people on the left, however, are at risk of being caught up in the game of the big non-profits and politicians whose business it is to talk a good game. We should remember that between Nixon and Clinton, Nixon was by far the more liberal president. When the Democrats finally captured the presidency the result was NAFTA, GATT, welfare “reform” and more. Earlier in his term, when Clinton attempted to lift the ban on gays in the military and expand health coverage both failed because the conservative movement had achieved so much in terms of reworking the political landscape and the terms of debate. The Democrats will say to the left: “Settle down, we’re doing what we can while staying in office.” The reality is that this is true; that’s why the left cannot make its agenda putting Democrats in office.
The making or creation of wealth has only one goal and this is the creation of more wealth. It seems that in today’s Global market that when it comes to gaining wealth it does not matter where or with whom. It matters not about people or anything else. Making money is solely about increasing the bottom line. The history books of life are filled with those facts. Yes, when required it even will supplant loyalty and allegiance to nations, friends and even family.
Here is an example of what I am talking about. The newspaper today had an article about North Korea. In it they defined this vast cheap labor base just waiting to be exploited. It talked about China and how even they are fast becoming too “costly”. In fact several Western European nations have already been exploiting this fact in North Korea while we as a nation have been on the sidelines. In fact they state the manufacturing potential is excellent. Swiss companies are already manufacturing game software there.
Now what about U.N. sanctions? Well if you have any intelligence at all you know these are meaningless.
So just what does that mean to us here in America? In my opinion it means we have already passed the point of being a power as we used to be and are on the decline in everything but service industry, investing and making money. Even our Military, although they say otherwise cannot possibly fight two wars at once. Although they will say we are there are just zero resources left to commit anywhere else. That’s people and that’s equipment, etc. Very soon we will realize the effects of this slow dismantling of our capabilities for the Global ideology. It will require more on us taxpayers, as they have to replace what isn’t on the shelf. Our military runs on parts made over seas, perhaps even in China and countries against our way of life produce critical components we must have.
The swamping of the nation with Illegal workers has and will continue to drive down worker pay and benefits and cost the citizens in increasing billions as well as changing the face of the nation. We have lost a considerable amount of our manufacturing capability and what we have left are assembly plants.
Well how can you say that just look at how strong our economy is and certainly we have the mightiest military? Well why bother to even write on this. If you don’t know who has it you never will. Yes, the global dream may not have impacted you but it has already changed the face of America and it will never be in my opinion, as we once knew it. People are making money and that is those who have it already. As for the military we are depending on robots to do the job. Technologically strong yes, boots on the ground and ground holding capability, no.
I had a problem with a cell phone the other day. I got to speak or at least attempted to speak to someone and wound up talking to two people in Mexico. Prior to that it was Argentina. In fact I was surprised I did not get India. I finally called corporate headquarters and they did help me. This is after two days of being unable to get anyone to even understand just what I was saying. Their “service” policy was we are “family’. Their response when I informed them they would not pass me through to someone in America was “we are an international organization”. You know what I told that representative? Be happy with your job while you have one.
So as for us my fellow whatever the heck we are these days, enjoy what you have now, get used to low wages, no benefits and working until you drop and working the off the books jobs. No gloom and doom from me just the truth if you want to accept it. That is your choice just like everything else you do in life. Yes that $7.25 will be a blessing if someone will hire you when they can get a Mexican for much less. Yes, even the churchgoers do it and have no problem. Just ask those who hire the millions of illegal workers and show up in the pew on Sunday.
As I said making money has only one allegiance as the title says. To those who foster this I can only say no man takes their riches with them. You are reaping what you sow for you and yours but will it be what you think it will?
Nothing evidences our monolithic approach to international politics better than our response to a little foreign criticism coming from any quarter. Such criticism may come from nations that we usually identify with, and which have always been considered allies; or from nations that resent our meddling in their internal affairs and confront our behavior. It doesn’t matter. We trash them all: messengers as well as messages. How dare anyone challenge us!
We have seen French fries become - ‘freedom fries’ - courtesy of one very ‘patriotic’, and very crooked, politician, Rep. Robert Ney of Ohio; and democratically-elected leaders of nations, who dare challenge our imperialistic ways, become thugs, last such naming coming from Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California, a ’supposedly’ liberal leader in the Democratic Party, as she referred to Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez. Ours is an equal opportunity thrashing from either side of our political coin, which unfortunately is the only currency we’ve got!
Why are our politicians, of either party, so quick on the draw to insult just about anyone? Anyone outside our borders, that is! Because it’s safe, and it garners votes, which for them is the end game. If everything else fails, there is always that ‘rally around the flag’ that will save the day. American exceptionalism, the high-grade pot we all appear to be smoking, will always come to the rescue of the scoundrel politicians that infest our ailing nation. Honesty and truth be damned!
Heck, we give them all a democratic treatment regardless where they are from. Banana republics, or nations with low-yield nuclear weapons and deficient delivery systems; we hold no bias towards one or the other. All we ask of these leaders is be responsive to our whims and, unequivocally, follow our directions. Why make things difficult for themselves, and their nations? See how placid things turned out for Pervez Musharraf, and Pakistan, after he followed - counsel he couldn’t refuse - from Richard Armitage? Musharraf will soon be collecting royalties from his memoirs, “In the Line of Fire,” and Pakistan doesn’t need to worry about finding its way out of the Stone Age. Look at the bright side of capitulation: you get to keep your life, and the roof over your head. This Pakistani head of state prevented a lot of pain and suffering for the people of Pakistan.
As repugnant as this behavior in American foreign policy might seem to some, it’s a fact of life that it’s carried with the consent of the American citizenry; indirectly, or by default, but with little indication of concern by the governed. For all the touting of our democracy, where the political centerpiece rests on - checks and balances - between the three branches of government, we find nothing wrong with having the Supreme Court select our president, or have Congress de-facto tender its powers to the President. Autocracy by default, it would seem, rather than democracy; thus, our foreign policy.
But, getting back to the subject of thugs and how quick we are to classify as ruffians, hoodlums and gangsters anyone unwilling to bow to us, let’s get real. Thugs, just like many other derogatory terms, including terrorists, are more indicative of our emotional state than the rational classification of those people by the what and why of their actions. It’s the “N” word in international affairs, often wrong and never appropriate.
However, there are thugs and there are Thugs; yes, thugs with a capital T. The latter were assassins operating in time past in northern India who paid homage to Kali, goddess of death and destruction - depicted as black, red-eyed, blood-stained and wearing a necklace of skulls - and offered their victims to her. The first group is the result of our insulting emotions - the second group, the creators of hell on earth. No longer operating in India, Thugs have found their way, their re-birth, among those who hold the reins of world power. It’s these Newborn Thugs that the world needs to worry about; and most of them, unfortunately, carry US passports: Armitage, Bolton, Cheney, Rumsfeld - the list of Thugs goes on and on. Most, however, would rather be called ‘men of war’ since they couldn’t be taken seriously as, ‘defenders of democracy and freedom.’ Men and women of war, true Thugs!
It is sad that we show our displeasure of those who confront us by calling them thugs, while we seem to show our respect and appreciation for our own Thugs.
We the sovereign people are powerful beyond imagining, if we’re organized for anything. Not just casually organized for anti-war protests, flash mobs, NGOs that prop up the failed status quo, and the corrupt political parties, but formally organized into cross-country citizen action groups for every proactive anything, as well as for remedies outside the box of mega-corrupt representative govt.
A hundred years ago, such citizen organizations were driving the Reform Era — the greatest democracy movement in recorded history. Citizens then put together the greatest corruption-fighting machine ever devised by ordinary people. (See especially, “2nd Look–State Govt Unconstitutionalities Against Citizen-Proposed Law”, 08 October 2006, on my blog, DD Revival.)
Massively, seriously, formally organized outside the corruption box of of pure representative govt and its two major political parties, we can do any of the many things that have to happen so that we get our country back from the fascist superrich, corporate predators, and predator politicians. And not only get the country back, but prevent any future recurrence of a three-branch fascist despotism.
Unorganized, we’re nothing.
Organized, we can field third and fouth parties whose roles will be as minimally corrupted focus points of reform idelolgies within a national govt of direct democracy melded to nonpartisan rep govt. The DD/nonpartisan-rep-govt political dynamic is the only way to eliminate the systemic problems that led to the Bush-Cheney fascist despotism. And we desperately need third and fourth parties whose “genuine candidates” will supply the reservoir of human resources for a heavily regulated, subordinate, but still-strong representative govt.
Unorganized, we can’t reach minimal corruption — or the fascist despotism cure and preventative of DD/nonpartisan-rep-govt.
Why do you want to go on grinding your same old axes, wringing your hands, pointing fingers, doing nothing, waiting for govt to save you, staying unorganized? Why the insanity of constant repetition that always gets the same failed result in corrupt rep govt? Why put servile and failed consumerism above societal improvement — above citizen responisbility? Why do you want to be unorganized?
Organized, we could attract most of the 100 million withdrawn, non-voting citizens to help take back our country. Unorganized, we can barely attract the failed status quo’s servile of the left. Unorganized, we’re nothing.
Organized, we can form across state lines to review, question, and attack every little unconstitutional thing that our corporate-predator-owned governments are doing to us. You know that’s a lot. Unorganized, we can barely see across our towns. Unorganized, we’re nothing. Why do you want to be unorganized?
Saul Alinski’s efforts, 1940s-1970s, organized ordinary people of the left inside the system and did great things. It won’t work for us. The corruption machines won. The system is sewed up. Every traditional approach inside the failed rep govt system, that we could use to break the tyranny of fascist money-power, has been anticipated and blocked. We have to work outside the system, outside the political party corruption machines. So organizing inside the system won’t work. But Alinski had two other ideas that are still good for us. The first was — see the world the way it is — and organize. The second was — fix on the world that you want to have — and organize.
Nation-ranging citizen action groups (CAGs) can bring us that tandem vision.
Organized, we can have anything. Unorganized, we’re nothing
Organized, we can make political mountains move. Unorganized, we can barely make spit. Why do you want to be unorganized?
Organized, we can get our Reform Era legacy of constitutionally-defined, corruption fighting, direct democracy away from the unconstitutional and arbitrary controls of state govts. Organized, we have the legal power to make state govts stop the unconstitutional delays, alterations, and rejections of the constitutionally-defined, citizen-proposed law that has the power to kill corruption machines. Unorganized, we’re nothing. Why do you want to be unorganized?
Organized, our direct democracy can kill corruption machines and make representative govt strong, adding the sovereign people to the checks and balances of co-equal branches of public servants.
Unorganized, we have to sit and watch as corruption machines in all three branches of national govt collapse checks and balances, make a mockery of our rule of law, obstruct justice for constitutional and felonious criminals, privatize and negate our electoral system with fascist computer hacking, violate our Constitutional rights, commit the constant bribery of “money equals free speech” in our politics, commit felony murder against our soldiers in Iraq, commit felony murder against kidnapped detainees in a worldwide torture/murder gulag, make unconstitutional and treasonous ex post facto law to block their criminal prosecution for torture/murder in their gulag, illegally wiretap US citizen communications and bank transactions to ultimately criminalize dissent, and financially rape our nation in a hundred ways for the benefit of their globalized and stateless superrich, fatally weakening our nation for collapse in any catastrophe.
Organized, we can stop the race of fascist corporatism and the international central banking cabal into Bush’s media-hushed North American Union of US, Mexican, and Canadian fascist governing elites. Unorganized, we will just sit and watch as the treaties establishing Canusmex and central banking’s Amero currency do here what the French referendum barred from happening to the EU member nations last year.
The French 2005 referendum rejected the EU Constitution, which was nothing but an enslavement document ending all national sovereignty in the EU member nations for the benefit of fascist corporatism at its superrich owners. If we remain unorganized and Bush has his way, the NAU will set up with all of the EU Constitution’s corporate-nazi features — all of them dirty, ugly, mean, and nasty — locked up in a Canusmex treaty that we will be powerless to stop and that will become fundamental constittutional law under the US Constitution’s treaty clause.
Organized, our direct democracy and sovereign, fully independent, citizen lawmaking can end the Bush-Cheney fascist despotism, rip its unAmerican laws out of our legal fabric, imprison its treasonous constitutional criminals, heavily regulate corporations and the misuse of money in politics, prevent any recurrence of fascist despotism, and make our representative govts strong for the people. Unorganized, we’re nothing but meat on the hoof for the superrich’s slaughterhouses.
Why do you want to be unorganized?
Pick a national CAG name — CAG-USA, Direct Democracy League, I&R Federation, Citizen Law Society, Unity America, Citizens Union — whatever. Then start a chapter in your small town, city neighborhood, side of the city, local library, rural county, whatever. Claim that you are the so-and-so chapter of the national CAG name you’ve chosen. Begin organizing and advertizing your group online — and network with any other chapter using the national CAG’s name. Change your national CAG’s name if some network with a different name is attractive.
Play it by ear. Just organize, fellow babies, organize.
