Nobel: "Put Up or Shut Up"

I have thought very carefully before adding my voice to the discussion about the 2009 Nobel Prize for Peace. What I've discovered is that few, if any, have written or talked about the irony of the award, concentrating on whether Obama "deserved" the prize.

It is obvious that Obama has not "earned" it. But that's not the point. As many have noted, the Peace Prize has indeed been awarded in the past on an "aspirational" note in the hope that certain efforts had sown the most fertile seeds in the soil of hope. But y'all know how I feel about "hope": hope don't feed the bulldog.

I think what the Nobel Committee is saying to Obama is nothing less than "Put Up or Shut Up". It is a recognition that Obama talks a good game most of time, even considering the contradictions between what he speaks about on the stump and the policies he's continued or created. The actions don't match the words - it's as simple as that. The Committee is saying, "Look, man. Talking peace and making peace just ain't the same breed of cat".

Truth be told, some pretty nasty folks have been in the mix in the past. Hitler was nominated. Stalin made off with one. Run your finger down the list of 208 winners and you get the impression that the criteria are sometimes pretty questionable. Even more questionable when you factor in the resouces of the Nobel Institute, the organization of scholars, researchers, and impressive resources which advises the Committee on its selections. George Will's recent on-the-air comment about "seriousness" is well taken. So awarding the prize to a man who has done little besides make speeches about peace is really not so odious. At least they didn't choose Ahmadinejad.

As Matt Taibbi notes in "On the Nobel Prize for Occasional Peace",

It’s hard to believe, but there have been sillier moments in the history of the Nobel Peace Prize than this recent fiasco involving Barack Obama — it’s just so hard to remember them when you’re rolling around on the ground and spitting up greenish foam in a state of shock, as most of us were this past weekend as the news of Obama’s amazing award rolled over the airwaves.

The Nobel Peace Prize long ago ceased to be an award given to people who really spend their whole careers agitating for peace. Like most awards the Prize has evolved into a kind of maraschino cherry for hardcore careerists to place atop their resumes, a reward not for dissidence but on the contrary for gamely upholding the values of Western society as it perceives itself, for putting a good face on things (in Obama’s place, literally so).

Even when the award is given to a genuine dissident, it tends to be a dissident hailing from a country we consider outside the fold of Western civilization, a rogue state, “not one of us” — South Africa from the apartheid days, for instance, or the regime occupying East Timor.

You never, ever get a true dissident from a prominent Western country winning the award, despite the obvious appropriateness such a choice would represent. Our Western society quite openly embraces war as a means of solving problems and for quite some time now has fashioned its entire social and economic structure around the preparation for war ...

Therein lies the problem - and bolsters the question of whether the Nobel Committee is to be seriously considered or just another version of Dancing with the Stars.

Taibbi brings out the most obvious contradiction: we are a culture that has succeeded because it has, for the most part, made war (although, starting with Viet Nam, not so much lately). Thus, the Nobel "aspirations" seem to me very disingenuous. For the paradigm change needed in order to contribute fully to a culture of peace must be just that: fundamental and total.

In a recent piece at Common Dreams ("If We Want Peace, We're Going to Have to Learn to Say No"), Daphne Bramham notes ...

Ending war means a massive societal shift.

"We must create the idea that to even think of war is horrific," says [Irish Nobel laureate Mairead] Maguire, whose own peace prize was awarded for her work in ending the fighting in Northern Ireland.

It means transforming millennia of solving problems by fighting with solving conflicts through talking. It will be hard, but perhaps not impossible, says Maguire, who cites the mind-shift about smoking. In a very short time, smokers went from being cool to being pariahs.

As with smoking, it starts with children and education. Kids are already taught at home and at school that violence is bad. But as a number of University of B.C. researchers are finding, using programs that emphasize empathy and compassion can reduce children's aggression.

But much of what children learn doesn't come from either parents or teachers. It comes from television, movies and video games. All of which are becoming increasingly violent.

A decade ago, UNESCO research found that 93 per cent of children in 93 countries with access to television watched for three hours a day and saw five to 10 violent acts every hour ...

It is not, unfortunately, just the surface violence that we must reject. We must root out and replace all the sources of and justifications for violence, even in its seemingly subtle forms.

Capitalism, for example, is a very violent sport. Profit at any cost seems to be the only rule, competitive greed the object in play, destroying the competition the only goal. The field is covered with dead and dying players, while the owners are building castles with uncrossable moats. Many of their owners have turned war into a profit center - some even supplying all sides with the means of production destruction. Religion and nationalism are not far behind in undermining our deep desire for peace.

I am sorely tempted to call the honor bestowed on Obama the "Nobel Peace Pipe Dream". As noted by Taibbi, Obama is no dissident. His philosophy and his policies are fully rooted in the same garden that has grown war for centuries and he will continue to strive to "win". His message to Muslims and others is clearly, "We must have peace, but on Western terms - or else!"

Some commentary on the prize has suggested that it represented a hope that America would rise to world leadership in a grand journey to world peace. Sigh. I, for one, think we need to look elsewhere. I don't think we're up to it, judging by the actions of late at town meetings and the words of threat from a familiar "news" channel. It just doesn't seem to me that a country moving so quickly toward civil war is a likely beacon of peace on a troubled planet.

Others have said that Obama was not so pleased to receive the prize - that it challenged his true imperialist, bellicose agenda. It undoubtedly presents a conundrum, seeing as how making peace by making wars has been thoroughly discredited. We can hope as we might, but Obama will have his wars.


Categories: Americanism, Nobel, peace, war

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It's the Culture, Stupid!

I'm a pretty tolerant fellow. I was taught by my elders to appreciate the fact that there is usually a good reason for someone to believe, think, and act as s/he does. But I never thought I'd say this ...

I can understand why the Rockefellers and their rich, cultured, educated friends are so terrified of the common person and propose that the discipline of a centralized, fascist world order is the only thing that will save mankind. Or, at least, save their own asses from eradication by the great, rude, selfish unwashed.

After witnessing the spectacle of tea parties and town meetings, children being beaten to death by other children in urban streets, and political and other celebrities dusting themselves off after public acts of adultery, I get it, Mr Rockefeller. We just have failed to prove we can handle the responsibilities of democracy, open society, and popular liberty. We can't govern our individual behaviors, much less govern ourselves as a "civilization". It just seems as if the percentage of our icons and citizens whose motto is "fuck you very much" grows exponentially every time I look around.

I'd like to blame it on Ronald Reagan, but I really can't. He was just an opportunist who jumped on the lead horse of the "I, me, mine", "All for One and All for One" movements of the late 1970s and the 1980s. He merely articulated what most Americans were already screaming: "I paid for this microphone, pay for your own."

Reagan - and his counterpart Meg Thrasher in Britain - declared that there was no society, only individuals and families. By that time, they were only stating what they observed, the crumbling ghetto of Anglo-American civilization. The Left likes to think of Reagan/Thatcher as arch-conservatives, but in reality they were quintessential liberals, valuing individual rights above the need for responsible membership in the community in order for that community to survive.

It didn't take me very much effort to find this nugget at Mithmëoi the other day:

I read things like this or this everyday, I see teens that brag about how and when they lost their virginity, I see how lewd jokes are just shrugged off, kids can just back talk their parents and other adults and suffer no consequences at all. I keep hearing how we are the most advanced society of all time, yet we cannot treat each other with respect, most people lack any common sense, and things that were incredibly unacceptable fifty years ago are now just brushed off. I wonder if we’re so advanced, why do simple things like respect and common sense escape us? The more we start to push away from morals and a belief in God and the more we rely on ourselves and our creations, ie machines etc, the worse we seem to get. We have become arrogant and rebellious and we pay the price. We pay it with loss of freedoms, a generation of people that cannot think for themselves, a generation that cannot function unless someone tells them what they should or should not do by listening to not their elders, but the mass media. This is an apathetic generation. A generation that goes with the flow, do what feels good and do it now. There is no patience, there is no conscience. There is no value of life among them.

If you’ll look through history across the world you’ll see something interesting. The more a culture strays from their moral values they were founded on, reject God or just decide that they don’t need archaic rules anymore the more it degrades and eventually collapses. A nation cannot survive without moral values, without respect and a value on life. Once you lose those you are on a path to destruction. Everywhere I look I see this happening in every nation of the world, save for maybe the isolated tribes, but I’m referring to the major influences of this time. Every single one is suffering from the same thing, reliance on self and machine, crumbling morals, life losing its value and people who will not stand up for themselves, sheep.

Recently, at least one network news show (and I chose that word specifically) did a feature piece on the denigration of civil discourse. Plenty of talk about angry adolescent types shouting and pumping their fists in the faces of elected officials and other angry adolescents, carrying their assault rifles on their shoulders, just itchin' for a fight. The Silent Majority finally empowered to screeching by the spectre of "socialism". The programs failed because they treated the behavior as the illness, rather than more accurately as symptoms of something fundamental - the grinding narcissism I have spoken about in these pages so often.

From a strictly personal perspective, what absolutely devastates me is that there's a hefty percentage of my Woodstock Generation among these people. The generation that sang about and demonstrated for Peace and Love. Sheesh. It seems that a bunch of my brothers and sisters replaced their need to protect their stashes of marijuana and magic mushrooms with the need to protect their iPods and HDTVs. I now see most Americans as cave-dwellers, surrounded by appliances and guns to protect them.

If we have rejected society, what now? If our culture is demanding that government simply disappear, where does law come from. I think those who say that it will just naturally occur once the bureaucrats and regulators and cops disappear are terminally naive.

As a culture, we have descended into chaos. It's not just about money. The same folks who are screaming so loud for unrestricted personal liberty and rights are about to lose it all, for all of us. I'm not going to yell at you or point a gun. But I am going to tell you that that ticks me off.

Categories: new+world+order, Americanism, communitarian, community, post-society, principles, responsibilities

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Firing Up the Fear Factory

Does anyone else find it more than a coincidence that lately the fear factory in Washington has stoked the fires up pretty close to a meltdown? The last time there was as much collective dread, I believe, was during the 1962 'Cuban Missile Crisis', a few days in October forty-seven years ago when the theory of Mutually Assured Destruction was challenged and stretched to a literal snapping point. We could hear the Nuke War Clock ticking down in our sleep. At that time, our national fear was shared and focused on just one thing. Now it is much different. Now there are a hundred fears and, it seems, as many factions.

After the September 2001 'attacks' on Washington and New York, I was not particularly afraid of terrorists. I was, however, terrified of what I knew would be the government's opportunistic response. After eight years, there is no doubt that my assumptions were totally justified. The US government - and I don't mean the Bush or Obama administrations, per se - now rules in an atmosphere of terror, mainly self-generated.

We are bombarded often by the specter of "another 911". That event is unlikely, unless there is further fore-knowledge, complicity, or even participation. And frankly, such an occurance is not needed. Whoever pulled it off accomplished the intended purpose.

When a goverment claimed to be democratic functions independently of its people, making laws, policies, and procedures in its own interest and that of a both domestic and foreign alliance of ruling elites, it can do so only behind a shield of implied or overt threat.

Since we all feel them, the threats - manufactured or not - are easily enumerated: economic collapse with attendant poverty, crime, and general destitution; military or paramilitary attack; loss of security; loss of freedom and rights, perhaps taking the form of martial law; fear of socialism, communism, fascism, anarchy, and rascism. And these fears are factionalized in such a way that we a now afraid of each other. During the Cuban Missile Crisis we were afraid of a common enemy. Now we are all afraid of each other and our government; our government is afraid of us. In short, the nation is afraid of itself. It's no way to live.

In a recent interview with the TimesOnline, Gore Vidal remarked:

America has “no intellectual class” and is “rotting away at a funereal pace. We’ll have a military dictatorship fairly soon, on the basis that nobody else can hold everything together. Obama would have been better off focusing on educating the American people. His problem is being over-educated. He doesn’t realise how dim-witted and ignorant his audience is. Benjamin Franklin said that the system would fail because of the corruption of the people and that happened under Bush.”

Vidal adds menacingly: “Don’t ever make the mistake with people like me thinking we are looking for heroes. There aren’t any and if there were, they would be killed immediately. I’m never surprised by bad behaviour. I expect it.”...

The implication here is that Obama is no hero, and I agree. But I'll bet he's as afraid as the next guy. As an aside, aren't we taking free speech just a little too far when we allow people, even ordained ministers, to pray openly for the president's death?

Fear is normally a healthy reaction to both perceived and actual threat. It is a survival mechanism. But when the threats, real or not, are seemingly uncountable, consistent, and long-lived, the fear turns into a state of rage alternating with catatonic numbness, followed by systemic breakdown. This happens to large, complex systems like governments, as well as to small systems like people.

I believe that the government's intentions are clear - to engender a dark fog of fear with which to cow and confuse the people - because it has done nothing to defuse either the fear or the anger. At times, in town halls, teaparties, and demonstrations it has stoked the fires, notwithstanding the occasional pronouncement that the economy is on the mend. Instead of directly confronting the flames with cooling water, Obama makes grand speeches about more war; lies about the economic non-recovery; flies off to Copenhagen to advocate for a scheme that would probably bankrupt Chicago. Meanwhile, the fires rage up the hills through the dried thorny brush of hate and terror. It is difficult to believe the result will not be a meltdown.

Washington, in fact, is purposefully making things worse. Although the "intelligence" community apparently knew about the alleged nuke lab at Qom for many years, it chose to reveal it during a few weeks in which several alleged domestic terrorists and their heinous plots were uncovered.

Added to that, just yesterday the FBI director added to the fuel supply:

They could strike the United States. That grim assessment is the first time the FBI director or any other senior law enforcement or intelligence official has stated on the record that the Al Qaeda-linked group al-Shabaab is no longer content to strike within the East African nation of Somalia.

During a hearing on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, FBI Director Robert Mueller was asked if members of al-Shabaab, which translates as "mujahideen youth," would send American recruits back to the U.S. to launch attacks.

"I would think that we have seen some information that the leaders would like to undertake operations outside of Somalia," Mueller told the Senate Homeland Security Committee ...

I must admit, I'm not immune. Although I'm still not afraid of "terrorists" (there still are elements of the FBI, CIA, and NSA who do a good job if they are tasked correctly and can operate without political interference), I am afraid of my government and a growing slice of the American citizenry. Lack of mutual respect and self-discipline, a sense of personal responsibility, and ignorance are not new. I've now been around for over sixty years and I've watched American culture dissolve steadily. We've long lost our moral edge. Fear will do that to you.

At CounterPunch, David Michael Green echoes my own feelings to a great degree ...

I really don’t know what to say anymore, about a country in which proposing a new and better version of corporate-plunder masquerading as national healthcare gets you burned in effigy for being a socialist stooge by gun-toting angry mobs.

I really don’t know what to say anymore, about a country in which the same people who hate you for being a socialist simultaneously hate you for being a fascist.

I really don’t know what to say anymore, about a country in which angry mobs of supposed anti-socialist demonstrators scream at their congressional representatives to “keep your government hands off my Medicare”.

I really don’t know what to say anymore, about a country in which claims that the government is going to start killing off seniors are taken seriously by tens of millions of people.

I really don’t know what to say anymore, about a country in which people are all worked up about government czars, but sat silently while the Bush administration destroyed the Bill of Rights and used a thousand signing statements to write Congress out of the Constitution.

I really don’t know what to say anymore, about a country in which deficits have all of a sudden become the source of enormous anger among people who said nothing about them previously, as the tax cuts for the wealthy, off-budget wars based on lies, and unfunded prescription drug Big Pharma giveaway transmogrified the biggest surplus in American history into the biggest deficit ever.

I really don’t know what to say anymore, about a country in which politicians can rant incessantly about other peoples’ sexual morality, get caught screwing prostitutes, and then still be reelected to the highest ranks of government by trashing the president.

I could go on and on, but what would be the point? ...

Indeed. Sigh.

Categories: new+world+order, 911, black+hole, democracy, fear, hopelessness, post-politics

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The Silence of Freedom

I know I'm not the only one, but I have to ask ...

Who's watching the store? Who is leading the Cabinet? Who is corralling the Democrats? Where does the buck stop? Instead of a presidency, we've bought into nothing more than a traveling wild west variety show, complete with gunslingers and the Snake Oil Salesman-in-Chief. The deluge of words over the weekend was simply over the top. For once, Faux Noose had the right idea in snubbing the guy.

Maybe it just ain't so great that we got ourselves a president that can string a few intelligible words together. At least Dubbleduh tended to be hilarious on the podium from time to time and we really didn't have to listen to him very much. This Obama cat just won't shut up. Nothing more than a cheerleader, but it remains to be seen just where the team is and where the game plan is supposed to get us.

It's not just the volume of words in his grand speechification tour. It's that the content still means no more than "hope" and "change". This man brings nothing to the table but thousands of vague generalities.

John McCain remarked that it might not be a good idea to put such an inexperienced man in the Oval Office. He was onto something. The problem, however, was not much Obama's lack of experience, as his total lack of any real political power to forward what may have been a "progressive agenda". He has no political capital to wield, no deals to cut, no long-term alliances with powerful Senators and Congresspersons. As a result of continuing the previous administration's policies of self-defeating wars, indefensible war crimes, obeisance to criminal banksters, and ignoring the now non-working poor, he has lost the support of all but the most hypnotised so-called progressives who swung the election for him.

A quick reminder here that he has betrayed no one. He promised nothing of substance. The people who insisted on endowing him with qualities he does not possess are culpable. They voted for their dreams, they elected an illusion - an arrogant, self-worshipping one, but an illusion nonetheless.

Witness John Pilger ...

The clever young man who recently made it to the White House is a very fine hypnotist, partly because it is so extraordinary to see an African-American at the pinnacle of power in the land of slavery. However, this is the 21st century, and race — together with gender and even class — can be very seductive tools of propaganda. For what matters, above race and gender, is the class one serves ...

During his brief period in the Senate, Obama voted to continue the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He voted for the Patriot Act. He refused to support a bill for single-payer health care. He supported the death penalty. As a presidential candidate, he received more corporate backing than John McCain ...

In his book, Dreams From My Father, Obama refers to the job he took after he graduated from Columbia University in 1983. He describes his employer as “a consulting house to multinational corporations.” For some reason, he does not say who his employer was or what he did there. The employer was Business International Corporation, which has a long history of providing cover for the CIA with covert action, and infiltrating unions and the left. I know this because it was especially active in my own country, Australia.

Obama does not say what he did at Business International; and there may be nothing sinister, but it seems worthy of enquiry, and debate, surely, as a clue to whom the man is.

During his brief period in the Senate, Obama voted to continue the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He voted for the Patriot Act. He refused to support a bill for single-payer health care. He supported the death penalty. As a presidential candidate, he received more corporate backing than John McCain. He promised to close Guantanamo as a priority and has not. Instead, he has excused the perpetrators of torture, reinstated the infamous military commissions, kept the Bush gulag intact and opposed habeus corpus ...

The horrible truth, therefore, is that Barack Obama was not elected ... he was elevated, as a shining symbol to mesmerize the population, by the elite class, to be their spokesperson. Nothing more than a cheerleader, but it remains to be seen just where the team is and where the gameplan is supposed to get us, although a great many more folks now have an inkling.

It is clear that Obama loves the spotlight. He loves it when all eyes are on him, enraptured by his rhetoric. But that's the problem, isn't it? If he stays in our face, pouring out his fine ideals with empty, vague "promises", we forget to look at all the Machievellis behind all the curtains. We forget about the Kissingers, Brzezinskis, Emmanuels, and Geithners who continue to connive and pull the puppets' strings. Obama, I'm afraid, is a shill. A front man. Just another political con artist.

So what do we do? A good first action is to stop listening. Just turn him off.

An old and dear friend of mine wisely counseled me once to listen very little but watch very carefully. He said, "Don't tell me you love me. Show me." I admit Obama's very good at what he does - but all that is is talking. He has already proven that he's a bit thin in the integrity category and thick with contradictions.

Next, we can try to overcome our deep ideological differences and learn something from the rabid right. In my opinion, they are better organized and significantly more motivated than the majority of liberals, progressives, and moderate Democrats. Although I loathe their values, laugh at their political poverty, and reject much of their methodology, they were able to put a noticeable few thousand in the streets of DC. They were heard. They had an impact. Ridicule them if you must, but give them credit for at least some measure of concerted action.

The best the Left seems able to do is organize yet another fruitless - and perhaps violent - anti-globalization rally for the up-coming G20. Borrrring.

At any rate, if we can't silence Obama, we can turn our silence against him. We can turn a deaf ear. We can find no more joy in listening to him than listening to talking barracudas and silly sock puppets on Fox and MSNBC. Turn them off. Let them fight it out with words with each other.

I have a small daydream. In it, I am walking up Pennsylvania Avenue in the midst of two million people. There are no speeches, no slogans, no shouting. Except for the echo of four million feet on the pavement, there is utter silence. A silence of protest. A silence of sadness. The silence of true freedom. A few people carry signs. But they all just say one thing ...

"NO MORE".

Categories: change, conscience, democracy, post-democracy, post-politics, presidency


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Blind Staggers

The bluesman Chris Smither, an old friend of mine, in our mutual drinking days would sometimes disappear after a coffeehouse appearance. The following morning, when questioned where he'd gone off to, would only say that he'd had the "blind staggers".

Medical dictionaries claim that the condition effects only horses and cattle. Its primary symptoms are an unsteady gait and the appearance of blindness. I beg to differ. From what I observe, there is a human pandemic of that same disease in the United States that makes the swine flu look like a match dying in a birdbath. And there's no vaccination; there's no foreseeable remedy ...

If there ever was a need for calmness and truly rational thinking, for measured discourse, and for intellectual contribution, this is it. But I see them appearing over no hill in shining armor to rescue us from the quicksand of this putrid swamp we've entered. Chaos reigns.

Here's a great example: Charles Bouley, writing at HuffPo, with "America is Losing Its Collective Mind" ...

I am leaving the Democratic party. It is with heavy heart that I change my affiliation to Independent. I'm 46, have been a registered Democrat since I was 18. My parents were from the East Coast, and proud Democrats. But it took the Democrats taking over, being in power, for me to see that Democrats talk a good talk but do not have the spine to walk the walk. They buckle under pressure, even ridiculous, obtuse pressure.

But it's not just the Democrats. I'm going to ask my country soon the horrible question, "them, or me." Truly; either we start listening to, following and promoting educated, sane, individuals and doctrines or I will seriously consider leaving the country. Because after all, what kind of country is it now, or will it be if this discourse and noncourse of action keeps up? ...

I certainly don't disagree, but my question is, "leave the Democratic Party for what?" Presently, there is no where to go. Period. Libertarians? Greens? They can't even get on the damned ballot in most states. The hard campaigning for the 2010 mid-terms is right around the corner. And if you think the non-existent leadership of either of those parties has a chance, I can connect you with your next crack dealer.

The fact is that we're at a point where there are no parties. There is no real leadership in any one, no party discipline, no discernible platforms. All that's left of the two "major" parties are a bunch of very pissed-off people calling each other names and accusing each other of everything from pedophilia to high treason. Instead of paying attention to real issues and concerns, we're now subject to rumors about whether Glenn Beck raped someone a few years ago and a controversy over whether our children should watch a presidential speech about education. Frankly, the "Left" is no better than the "Right". If this is not a massive national mental breakdown, it'll do until one comes along. But, no matter where you are on the post-political "spectrum" (or kaleidoscope?), the other guy is not the problem. We all are.

We have all clearly lost our way, stumbling blindly through a morass of our own making. You would think that eight years of The Dubbleduh-Chainey Gang would teach us some clear lessons about electoral politics and who really runs this country. It's not as if the information isn't out here. But we failed. We took the easy way out. Instead of rejecting a failed system and building our own, we embraced it once again and allowed ourselves to entrust our lives to the slick concoction of professional snake oil salesmen. Now everyone is shocked and dismayed that we got snake oil. Go figure.

Let me take a bit of a side road here. Government is the problem. But the solution is not the elimination of government, as the anarchists and libertarians propose. The solution is in taking the government back from the powers to whom we gave it and in making it work again as a tool of the citizens.

Edward Jayne, writing at Dissident Voice, in "Running on Empty", explains ...

Nor can much help be expected toward an effective solution from our government in Washington, D.C. Congressmen, for example, are almost entirely in the pockets of industries opposed to economic reform that might bear a negative impact on their profits. These elected officials are amazingly unprincipled in their acceptance of hefty campaign contributions in exchange for services rendered, and indeed big business, big banks, big agriculture, big labor, and inclusively anything “big” engages in the practice of paying them off. The amount of these contributions might seem large, but it turns out to be nominal compared to the yield, often more than 100-1 in federal subsidies obtained through earmark legislation and comparable services provided by these congressmen. The few Congressmen unwilling to go along with this arrangement quickly disappear from politics because of inadequate campaign funding. When others more willing to depend on corporate donations finally retire, most find the means to transfer their remaining campaign funds to their own bank accounts and often join the ranks of lobbyists who, like themselves, had first learned the ropes as congressmen. The situation is strictly plutocratic verging on klepto-plutocracy when the law is broken to make it happen. Meanwhile, ordinary citizens have little if any influence except to the extent that they belong to issues-related public constituencies represented by their own variety of lobbyists.

Not only are the government and the governed divorced, but the government increasingly does its business in the shadows, thumbing its nose at any remaining curiosity on the part of people. In The Nation recently, in the article "The Secret Government", Christopher Hayes details the struggle to rein in the forces of the burgeoning security state, beginning with the Church Committee hearings in the 1970s. He writes:

In 1976 the Senate created the Select Committee on Intelligence, and the House followed suit with its own Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence a year later. Also in 1976 President Ford signed Executive Order 11905, which flatly stated, "No employee of the United States Government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, political assassination." Two years later, Congress passed and President Carter signed FISA, which provided clear procedures for covert action, surveillance and oversight. The law created the special FISA court, which grants warrants for wiretapping and surveillance of anyone on American soil as well as Americans abroad. The Church Committee's revelations also had a profound effect on the bureaucratic culture of the CIA, NSA and FBI. At all three agencies, internal legal controls were put in place requiring layers of attorneys to sign off on any possibly questionable activities.

But for all these needed reforms, it's impossible to look at the past eight years and conclude they were sufficient. If cold war presidents were surreptitious and/or cavalier about the lawlessness of their actions, the Bush administration perfected a kind of perverse legalism, using sympathetic lawyers to decree legal that which was manifestly illegal. It was an ingeniously devious approach. By relying on John Yoo, a loyal ideologue inside the OLC, Cheney et al. were able to perform an end run around the extensive legal checks and restraints created precisely as a response to the Church Committee's findings. Indeed, the reason the infamous OLC memos are so garishly specific is that CIA lawyers, still operating with a memory of the Church Committee, were insistent on obtaining explicit sign-off for every action and technique that they (quite rightly) believed to be of dubious legality.

Similarly, Congressional oversight proved no match for a determined executive. Many critics from across the ideological spectrum, from Clarke to Scheuer, note that this is at least partly because Congress often would rather not know what is going on behind the curtain. But the controversy over just what House Speaker Nancy Pelosi knew about the CIA's use of torture, and when she knew it, underscores how dysfunctional the notification system has become. Created as part of the Intelligence Oversight Act of 1980, the so-called Gang of Eight system allows a president, under emergency circumstances, to restrict briefings on covert activities to the leader of each party in both houses and the top member of each party of the House and Senate intelligence committees. What was intended as a limited briefing to be given only temporarily during crises has emerged, instead, as the standard.

Clarke explained its shortcomings to me this way: "Essentially what happens, you're a member of the Gang of Eight. You get a phone call: 'We have to come and brief you.' They ask you to go to the vault. They brief you. You can't take notes, you can't have your staff there and you can't tell anybody." In addition, each member is briefed separately and individually, so they can't even discuss the briefing and ask questions in a group setting. "That's oversight?" Clarke asks. "That's a pretense at oversight. That's a box check. The law required us to do that, and we did this."

I must repeat here that the solutions to these problems do not lie in simply eliminating the government. The fact is that even if the United States of America ceases to exist - is broken up into several sovereign entities - government(s) of some order will remain. The solution, therefore, must be based in the people once again taking personal responsibility for that government. And that, indeed, is hard work.

Our downfall, it seems, is the degree to which we actively participate in self-government. What can we expect when that participation is limited to waiting until all we can do is vote for the choices that international finance and corporate media give us? It is insufficient to simply growl and howl that there is no difference between the major parties without committing to put viable alternatives on the ballot, while actively working to bar corporate campaign contributions. We will, in this instance, continue to get what someone else is paying for.

Of late (and perhaps too late), many Obama supporters have awakened from self-hypnosis and begun to abandon this new, young administration. As I have noted at length in the past few months, the cry is that "we were lied to". But we were not - we didn't do the work to examine Obama's true political character. So we lied to ourselves and got caught. What now?

David Michael Green, in "After Obama" at Common Dreams, writes:

Eight months into it, it now seems pretty clear that the Obama administration is finished.

There were some of us -- indeed, many of us, myself included -- who thought there was a possibility that Barack Obama might seize this moment of American crisis, twinned with the complete failure for all to see of the regressive agenda, to become the second coming of Franklin Roosevelt ...

Right now, the question is what comes next? The Obama presidency is probably already toast, though of course anything can happen in three or seven years. But he is on a crash course for a major clock cleaning and, what's worse, he doesn't seem to have it remotely within him to seize history by the horns and steer that bull in his preferred direction. Indeed, near as I can tell, he doesn't even have a preferred direction.

Obama was complete fool if he ever believed for a moment that his campfire kumbaya act was going to bring the right along behind him. Even s'mores wouldn't have helped. These foaming-at-the-mouth lunatics have completely lost all sense and proportion, and were bound to viscerally hate any president left of Cheney, let alone some black guy in their white house. Meanwhile, centrist voters in this country seem pretty much only to care about taxes and spending, and so he's lost them, too, without the slightest rhetorical fight in his own defense. And he's blown off a solid progressive base by spitting in their eyes at every imaginable opportunity, beginning with the formation of his cabinet, ranging through every policy decision from civil rights to civil liberties to foreign policy to healthcare, and culminating with his choice not to even mobilize his email database in support of his policies ...

Put it all together and it's pretty hard to see how Obama gets a second term. Which can mean only one thing: We're looking at a Romney or a Palin or some sort of similar monster as the next president, despite the fact that their party was absolutely loathed only a year ago, and actually still is today. It won't matter. People will be voting against the incumbent, not for any candidate, and that will leave only one viable choice, especially for centrist and right-wing voters. Whoever wins the Republican nomination will be the next president, crushing Obama in the general election (assuming he survives the Democratic primaries). And that's a particularly scary notion, since the party's voting base who will make that choice in the Republican primaries is the same crowd you've seen featured all this summer at town hall meetings. Olympia Snowe is not going to be the Republican nominee in 2012. Know what I mean? ...

Let me finish this in a somewhat more concrete way, because at this point we must have solidarity with a solid foundation. Cindy Sheehan, at her Soapbox blog, just wrote an impassioned piece, "If McCain Were President". It is not very kind to the sitting president. In it, she offers some specific suggestions ...

There will be two major opportunities to put our bodies on the gears of the Machine this fall….

The anti-globalization movement will be out in full-force during the G20 nations’ meeting in Pittsburgh September 23-27 despite the jackbooted thuggery planned by the organizers of the G20 summit. Not only will there be 4000 riot police, but there will be 2000 Pa. National Guard there to suppress opposition. This is merely a bullying tactic designed to scare us away from the global “elite” while they plan more economic devastation for the world.

On October 5th, we will be gathering in front of the White House to protest Democratic wars of aggression (especially Af-Pak, since the 8th is the anniversary of the US invasion) and there will be opportunity for civil disobedience that is not just symbolic. We will also be reading the International People's Declaration of Peace (IPDoP) in front of the White House that day and kicking off the campaign to build an effective grassroots movement against all violence, but particularly, state-sanctioned violence.

The face has changed in DC, but the odious policies of the Machine remain the same.

Remember, if you don’t actively oppose the policies of this government, then you are passively supporting them and you are responsible for helping to oil the Machine and keep it running.

If you can't physically attend the protests, please consider making a contribution, even if it is tiny, to help defray expenses.

It may be a small one, but it's a steady step. Will it lead to a series of such purposeful steps, eyes open and clear? Or are we doomed to just stumble around in the dark of the Blind Staggers?

Categories: change, corporatism, democracy, elections

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Elegy

I was "introduced", you might say, to the Kennedys when I was thirteen, in 1960.

My father, who had supported Eisenhower in 1952 and Stevenson in 1956, was supporting Kennedy in the 1960 election. JFK and my dad both graduated in the Class of 1940 from Harvard. Although I was born in California, to where my father had escaped his Bostonian parents after World War II, there was a little Kennedy in both of us. I inherited mine from my dad, of course. As for him, it was impossible to grow up a middle-class Catholic in Boston without being touched by the politics - Honey Fitz, the Saltonstalls, the McCormacks, James Curley, the Cabot Lodges, the O'Neills.

My dad died in November of 1960, just days before Kennedy became president. Three years and 11 days later, Kennedy was dead. By then, Teddy Kennedy had been elected to John's Senate seat and I had been taken to Boston with my grandparents - the same people from whom my dad had fled after the war.

My father, Paul, and the Kennedys had something deep and abiding in both their souls and hearts: a sense that one's purpose was to be of service to others. Paul did that in the only way available to him, as a high school teacher (and just before he died, a college professor) dedicated to the highest level of education for all his students. He was always on the edge of trouble with his employers, because he saw and fought the evils of educational institutions' morphing into corporate training camps and statistically tracking children into segments destined to be marched into predestined careers. My dad, you see, was not a "go along, get along" sort of guy. He died, I think, of a broken heart.

My father's sudden death of a heart attack triggered a depression in me that I carry a bit even to this day. I miss him. The violence and unearthly suddenness of John Kennedy's death, when I was sixteen, in turn, triggered a month-long psychic break that nearly hospitalized me with fear and grief. It was impossible, but shattering, that two men so young and with such depth of value could just cease to exist without reason or warning.

My father and JFK did share other similarities, but dedication to helping others be the best they could be was key. My dad did that is his way, Kennedy in his. I think they both died because of that dedication. The ruling class did not much appreciate an up-start Irish Catholic rich boy challenging their power and agenda ...

I have had much in common with Ted Kennedy. I guard my anonymity carefully in these pages, but it seems appropriate to reveal that, in "real" life, I share his nickname. We also share a history of debilitating struggles with alcohol, as well as late-in-life resolution of those struggles; failed marriages ('though Kennedy's second turned out a lot better than mine); and some serious life mistakes.

But most of all, we shared a common vision - that a society which works for the happiness, safety, justice, and health of all is a society which will endure and flourish. One which does not, one which nurtures divisions, competitiveness over cooperation and consensus in social matters, and hatred, will wither and die.

Let me share one of my personal experiences with Ted Kennedy, for having worked in Massachusetts and national political settings, I had the opportunity to meet him several times:

In the late seventies, I served as a program director with a community action agency in the "war on poverty" effort, as it was being strangled by the Nixon and Carter administrations. In this position, I traveled several times to Washington in lobbying efforts to attempt to restore funds that had been stripped from pending federal budgets.

On the first trip, we were scheduled to meet with Senator Kennedy at about eleven a.m., just after he finished with a senate judiciary committee hearing.

We went to the committee room about ten o'clock to listen and wait. We noticed that Kennedy seemed saggy and pale. Sure enough, after ten minutes, two very large men approached Kennedy from the aisle and, obviously physically supporting him, escorted him from the room. A minute later, an aide informed us our meeting would be on the senate office building steps later that afternoon.

We had some lunch and kept our other appointments with George McGovern, Jacob Javitz, and others, then gathered in the appointed spot at quarter after three. At exactly three-thirty, three men, the senator and his two "assistants" strode toward us at a lively pace, Kennedy at least ten yards in the lead. He bounded up the steps with that massive grin of his and greeted us, all twenty, with a hearty "Great tuh seeyuh!". Then he shook each of our hands with a personal quip to each (mine was about our nickname) and talked to us for a solid half hour about our concerns for the budget and strategy to restore funds. He knew the issues thoroughly and pledged support. He later followed through with masterful floor moves.

During the meeting, I looked in his eyes several times. He was thoroughly stoned, undoubtedly on painkillers he took for a back injury sustained in a small plane crash several years earlier. Although I had several years of sobriety under my belt then, I felt a kinship. He was a very human individual who took his job very seriously. He carried a heavy burden with a zest that seems to have been lost to the public servants we see now in those rooms on the Hill.

Because of the myopia of the media, Ted Kennedy may be narrowly remembered: Chappaquiddick, drinking problems, womanizing and ... health care. But, know it personally or not, Kennedy was involved in every aspect of American politics. I might be dead if it were not for public funding for jobs programs, social and mental health services programs, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and other programs that help people who need it, all championed by Ted Kennedy.

I do not agree with every stand he took. He voted to become involved in Afghanistan; he initially support No Child Left Behind; he was a strong friend of Zionism. So be it. There's not one woman or man on this planet with whom I totally agree. And Ted Kennedy, better than most people, knew instinctively how to deal with that.

I will miss Ted Kennedy - for his dedication and commitment; his integrity; and for all the joy and sadness that he, as a human, presented to so many millions.

Good night, Senator

Categories: Kennedy

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Antiestablishmentarianism

If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issuance of their currency, first by inflation, and then by deflation, the banks and the corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their father's conquered. ~ Thomas Jefferson

Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers. The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present -- and is gravely to be regarded.

Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite. ~ Dwight Eisenhower

We're back to school. This semester is going to be a long one. The mid-terms are in fourteen months, on November 2, 2010; the finals are in thirty-eight months. The mid-term exam counts for 70% of the final grade. If you ain't got it by then, you don't have a chance with the final exam in the Fall of 2012 ...

In 2010, all 435 seats in the US House of Representatives are up for sale; the Senate is raffling off 38 desks. I would imagine that most of those seats, however, are already spoken for, in spite of the rantings and ravings of disaffected "progressives", libertarians, and frothing remnants of the repugnant party. The Greens? Well, you know. For what it's worth, my bet is that Republicans, if only by default, are gonna gain some seats. Apostate dumbocrats just don't have anywhere to go.

The last semester was short, but all of us, I hope, studied hard and learned a lot. We learned that presidents are appointed, not elected, by corporate media propagandists funded by elitist power brokers. We learned that "hope" and "change" don't feed the bulldog. We learned that we have to ask very specific questions, then doubt the veracity of the responses. We learned to follow the money - because we've been fleeced of most all of it, then it was laundered, and reinvested in programs and policies designed to suck every last vestige of freedom, independence, and dignity from us.

We learned that people don't change systems - systems change them. The case study on this one was imagining that Wowie Howie Dean would "transform" the Democratic Party into a responsive, populist champion of the politically disenfranchised that would get us out of useless wars, engender government transparency, turn the economy around, restore the Constitution, and, in short, stop lying. Thanks for playing. Next?

Let me tell you exactly what the mid-term exams will be about. There's just one question: "Will the American people continue to play ring-around-the-party, splashing in the fouled waters of Denial River, hoping to effectively replace a few fornicators and con artists with new souls clean as the driven snow or will they rise up to create a populist movement to completely overhaul a failed system? Discuss."

Here is what the mid-term will not be about: gay rights, women's rights, animal rights; legalizing marijuana; taxes; health care "reform"; guns; swine flu; climate change.

The mid-term won't be about war, as Stephen Sniegoski, writing for infowars, points out:

It appears that most liberal opponents of the wars in the Middle East/ Central Asia have ceased their opposition with the Obama presidency. The liberal Democrats who abhorred Bush’s war policy (and most grass roots liberal Democrats did vehemently oppose the Bush war policy although this was not always the case with liberal politicians and media figures) apparently were simply opposed to wars led by Republicans ...

... Obama can say such things as the war in Afghanistan is “fundamental to the defense of our people” and not be savaged by the former critics of the war. This is not to say that the former anti-war people have become cheerleaders for war. Rather, they have become largely indifferent to it. Their attention has been largely diverted to the health care issue, the economy, the environment, or some other liberal cause ...

The mid-term won't even be about the economy as such. All of these issues are important, of course. But what most folks seem still unable to grasp is that the mid-term will be about all these issues as mere subsets of the bigger issue of whether we will take back control of our very lives.

In a way, the mid-term will be about the "new world order". Not about whether it will occur - because it already is here - but about who will be in charge of it and us. It will be about democracy and capitalism, about society and anarchy, about freedom and slavery.

Of all people, Larry Flynt, writing at HuffPo, has it right:

The American government -- which we once called our government -- has been taken over by Wall Street, the mega-corporations and the super-rich. They are the ones who decide our fate. It is this group of powerful elites, the people President Franklin D. Roosevelt called "economic royalists," who choose our elected officials -- indeed, our very form of government. Both Democrats and Republicans dance to the tune of their corporate masters. In America, corporations do not control the government. In America, corporations are the government.

This was never more obvious than with the Wall Street bailout, whereby the very corporations that caused the collapse of our economy were rewarded with taxpayer dollars. So arrogant, so smug were they that, without a moment's hesitation, they took our money -- yours and mine -- to pay their executives multimillion-dollar bonuses, something they continue doing to this very day. They have no shame. They don't care what you and I think about them. Henry Kissinger refers to us as "useless eaters." ...

The reason Wall Street was able to game the system the way it did -- knowing that they would become rich at the expense of the American people (oh, yes, they most certainly knew that) -- was because the financial elite had bribed our legislators to roll back the protections enacted after the Stock Market Crash of 1929.

Congress gutted the Glass-Steagall Act, which separated commercial lending banks from investment banks, and passed the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which allowed for self-regulation with no oversight. The Securities and Exchange Commission subsequently revised its rules to allow for even less oversight -- and we've all seen how well that worked out. To date, no serious legislation has been offered by the Obama administration to correct these problems ...

I'm calling for a national strike, one designed to close the country down for a day. The intent? Real campaign-finance reform and strong restrictions on lobbying. Because nothing will change until we take corporate money out of politics. Nothing will improve until our politicians are once again answerable to their constituents, not the rich and powerful.

Let's set a date. No one goes to work. No one buys anything. And if that isn't effective -- if the politicians ignore us -- we do it again. And again. And again.

The real war is not between the left and the right. It is between the average American and the ruling class. If we come together on this single issue, everything else will resolve itself. It's time we took back our government from those who would make us their slaves.

I must admit that Mr Flynt is the last person I ever imagined I would quote in these pages. Heh.

I like the notion of a general strike. But it would be just a start. The changes we need - in order to simply survive - will certainly not be won with assault rifles, or mobs, or street demos. It will take more than that to reclaim our bodies and souls from the rich and powerful ruling class. We cannot beat them on their turf.

We have to stake out our own battlefield and make up our own rules. We have to frame the debate. We have to decide the issues. We have to control the game. We cannot beat them with money or violence or anarchy. We can't beat them with better propaganda or political savvy.

We can win, though ... if we drop the factional posturing and rhetoric of "left" and "right", "socialism" and "fascism", "Democrat" and "Republican". It's all a carefully and cynically orchestrated shell game. We must fully reject politics as usual and find a way to meet on common ground and throw out the establishment - completely.

Study for the mid-term, please. Vow to actually learn something. Flunk the mid-term and the finals won't matter.


Categories: new+world+order, Americanism, change, post-democracy, post-politics, principles, values

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Dear Mr President - A Report Card

In January of this year, just a short time after the inauguration, I posted the letter contained in this post. I repost it here, not to crow about my powers of prognostication, but to simply offer a reality check.

You may have noticed that I'm finding it difficult to write lately. I am disgusted and discouraged at the level of division and violence that seems to be feeding on the very tattered fabric now barely holding our society together. Civil discourse has been thrown in the landfill, along with any sense that anybody cares about anyone else.

It is particularly disheartening that there is a rising chorus of threats and calls for violence and an open display of guns - not relative to the class war being fought over the economy or a civil war pitting those who want peace against those who value war - but involving false ideologies of "socialism", "communism", and "libertarianism" and centered on whether we'll be able to chose our doctor. It is clear to me that no one will win in this ridiculous battle except insurance companies; that we are all being manipulated by cynical elitists who would like nothing better than to create a perfect storm of anarchy as an excuse to lower an unfathomable hammer on elements, "right" and "left", who are being driven to psychotic misbehavior. It's a mess.

So, I'm republishing my January open letter to the President as a reminder to all that events are out of control, circumstances have significantly deteriorated, and we are now a leaderless nation in danger of real civil war ...

Dear Mr President (An Open Letter) 1/31/2009

Dear President Obama:

I am a citizen of the United States. I am one of your constituents. Since you have billed yourself as a public servant, one who is honored and even grateful for the chance to be "Leader of the Free World", you owe me. Yes, that's exactly what I said - "You." "Owe." "Me." That might seem a bit, well, cheeky, I guess, but I stand by my demand.

First, I want you to know right up front that I did not vote for you. I did not vote for your opponent(s) either. I proudly withheld my vote because there was no presidential candidate on the ballot in my state whom I believed represented my best interests as a citizen of this country or the best interests of the nation as a whole. My vote is a valuable commodity. I wasn't about to waste it by casting it against someone or for a "lesser of two evils". Evil is evil. I won't vote for it.

I didn't vote for you, sir, because, with all due respect, I didn't buy the hype. I experienced your campaign as a finely-tuned, extremely well-run exercise in creative vagueness and media manipulation. You were too disingenuous for me: "hope" doesn't feed the bulldog; "change" happens, like it or not - try to stop it. In fact, did you not declare finally that the "change" was you? I find that insulting. In a democracy, sir, the change is the people. You represent us, you do not rule us. Governing and ruling are not the same thing.

So, here, Mr President, is what you owe me - owe all of us in America and the world: truth and justice. Simple.

Here is the truth . . .

• The United States of America and its "democratic" government have been stolen from us. We will not get it back. It will now be melded into a Western Bloc seeking a centralized "new world order";
• Capitalism as we have known it has entered its final phase and has neither the means nor the intention of benefiting humanity. It will be all you can do to keep order as millions become poor, desperate , and scared out of their wits;
• Militarism will increase, in spite of your stated intentions, abroad and at home; as unemployment soars, the military and the draft (billed as 'mandatory public service') will become the employer of first, not last, resort. The military-industrial-academic complex will burgeon, developing efficient and horrific weapons of societal control and international imperialism;
• The national debt will soar, as your administration borrows unconscionable amounts of money to hide the awful economic truth from the people;
• Techno-fascism will proceed at alarming speed, as science develops capabilities of changing the very essence of what it means to be a human being or even of life itself; subtle and increasingly mandatory "eugenic" technologies and policies will be put in place to limit populations and change humanity;
• The chasm between the super-rich and -powerful and the rest of us will continue to grow, as human rights and true freedoms decline. The rich and powerful will devise and develop more ingenious and desperate means to control dwindling resources, including the people of the earth;
• The rule of law, already tattered and torn, will continue to disintegrate into the rules of greed and fear;
• Global ecological (not just "environmental") balance will tremble and crumble, overwhelmed by the catastrophic weight of human selfishness, blindness, and desperation.

These are fearsome, terrifying, even loathsome truths, Mr President, but they must be told; delineated in such a way that the public cannot hide in consumerist denial and unsupported "hope" and "faith".

And you must stop saying that you and the "leaders" in Washington, the military, the Congress, and business are the answer to the situation. You have agendas and ideologies. You have your own creeks, canoes, and paddles. You're in your own world. You're on one page, the rest of us are on another. You live in the circles of the Feinsteins, Reids, and Pelosis; the Gateses, Geithners, and Clintons; the Brzezinskis and the Kissingers; the AIPACs and the acronyms. Your administration is made up of the problems, not the solutions.

So justice, sir, must start with truth. You must acknowledge the truth, out loud.

Then you must tell us what we did wrong and how we can make amends to ourselves and our country and the world.

Tell us that we let democracy slip out of our hands as we were taken in by Madison Avenue and their fantasy that if we bought enough "stuff" we'd be OK. Tell us that we diverted our attention from what really was going on and watched cartoons on TVs, movie screens, and DVD players in houses that we bought on credit we couldn't afford. Tell us how we screamed about "rights" and "freedoms" and forgot about "responsibilities" to community and country and the world. Show us that we just lost track of the first part of "give and take".

We've been robbed, Mr President, of more than money. It's true, we left a lot of that get into the wrong hands and they mugged us. They're off counting the proceeds, while we're left here with empty wallets, cupboards, and bank accounts. The uproarious part of it, though, is that our government let these thieves make the rules and laws so that what they did often wasn't illegal! Big joke.

As they say, though, "You ain't seen nuthin' yet!" In reality, the nation's high point occurred somewhere in late 1944. Since then we've allowed our greed and ignorance to erode our national character and international relations to a point considerably lower than it was when the Vietnamese drove us out of their country. The acts and policies of the US government and its financier and corporate cronies have painted every American with a brown and sticky mess. No one trusts us. Not even our "allies". We haven't just damaged ourselves, we've hurt the whole world through incalculable neglect at best, abuse at worst.

So I ask you, sir, how you could stand before the American public and the whole world on Inauguration Day and preach hope, and victory, and change, and national strength and character.

Personally, I've lost trust completely in the Presidency, the whole Executive Branch with its secrecy, its unreliability, its deal-making and corruption, its disregard for all but the richest and most powerful. And the same goes for the Senate and the leaders of the House of Representatives. Finally, the Supreme Court has fallen almost totally from enforcing the rule of law and has betrayed the Constitution and the American people.

So start with the truth. Believe it nor not, we can handle it. Most of us know it, because we live it. We're not as numb, dumb, and cowed as you might like to think or hope. The final truth - the bottom line - for you and your presidency is that if you try to protect the lies and liars, crimes and criminals, and cons, neo-cons, and con artists of the recent past, your presidency will have failed right out of the starting gate.

What will you do if the euphoric glow wears off and people realize we're in danger of four more years of the last eight years? Lock us all up in REX84s and shoot all the folks who won't go quietly? And don't give us that stuff about national security and national image. It's. Too. Late. It's gone. We blew it.

Here are a few musts:

1. Bring the military home, not just from Iraq and Afghanistan, but from everywhere; from all 800 some-odd bases around the globe. Most of the folks in all those countries hate us anyway. And put a total stop to arms sales and other military aid. Make our claims that we are a peaceful nation true through our actions. Oh, and just make sure that when the military gets home, they're fully taken care of and their guns point out against our enemies, not in toward our people. This includes our covert forces, too.
2. Repeal the USA Patriot Acts and their related mechanisms and start over from scratch. Period.
3. Work to overturn the laws that legally endow corporations with conceptual humanity. They're the most inhuman, rapacious entities on the planet. Regulate them, tax the hell out of them, or throw them out of the country. Give the means of production back to the producers and let us make a go of what they've ruined and robbed us of.
4. Reinforce our constitutional rights and freedoms, but remind us constantly of our civic responsibilities.
5. Make us once again the most well-educated people on earth. And the most artistically gifted. And the healthiest. And the most responsible and of the highest character. Give us the example to follow. Treat all of our children the way you treat your own children. Think about the country and world you want your daughters to grow up in.
6. Finally, let us know how to be true democrats. Tell us how each of us must act as if s/he is responsible for the whole country and its people. Give us back the power and show us how to use it. Then listen to us. Maybe we will have learned our lesson. Maybe its not too late.

As far as I'm concerned, Mr President, if you're willing to do even half of that, I'll buy you a carton of whatever you smoke.

Sincerely,

ddjango

Be about peace.

Categories: new+world+order, Americanism, change, community, corporatism, democracy, ecology, essay, eugenics, FEMA, hopelessness, martial+law, military, peace, post-democracy, post-politics, principles, responsibilities, rights, techno-fascism, values, war, war+crimes, weapons



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Reclaiming the Vote

In my previous post (Oblahma: Time for a Moratorium on Talk), I asked, "If there is no really discernible difference between the real agendas of the Democratic and Republican parties, what do we do about the prospect of elections in 2010 and 2012?" Let me suggest a partial response to the question ...

There is strong evidence at present that, in spite of the anger in the electorate, our choices are more limited than ever before and it will take an enormous amount of work on the part of the disenfranchised to create the necessary movement that will create cohesion around specific principles, goals, and strategies, that will result in breaking the status quo stranglehold. Such a movement is as critical as it is nearly impossible.

As one who has several times over the past decade directly agitated for a coalition of the various "parties of the Left" under a negotiated consensus platform, I find that that same Left and its parties have been further marginalized. In some cases that marginalization even takes the form of vilification, as the tide of the radical liberalism called "libertarianism" has gained momentum in reaction to the increased unveiling of the one world government and economic system agenda. The core of the traditional American Left - democratic socialism - has been all but crushed by the call for small government and the insistence of the supremacy of individual rights.

Please do not assume that I advocate the further suppression of the right to choose how to live or what to study or what to believe or whom to love. Nothing could be further from the truth. I just happen to believe that there is such a thing as truly democratic socialism and that, under such an umbrella, freedom, rights, and community can co-exist - thus generating a societal equanimity that is vibrant and inclusive.

My rejection of liberal radicalism/libertarianism and anarchism as solutions is based on my impression that in the United States, the Land of Selfish Narcissism, embracing the fundamental libertarian program (if there really is such a thing) can only lead to an irreparable and destructive breakdown of society and the rise of chaos and violence as individual rights clash with common community values that would strengthen us as a people and as a nation. I must simply refer you to the Einstein quote invoked in the title banner of this humble blog.

To further clarify: a sense of common purpose should tolerate, celebrate, and encourage a diversity of ideologies and beliefs, while insisting on a consensus in melding and molding that diversity into a system of laws and other socio-economic practices and limitations. Unfortunately, at present, we seem incapable of such an attitude, as each ideological group seems bent on crushing different views and attaining total rule and power based only on its own ideals and agenda. A balanced ecology is impossible under such conditions - even a forest of giant sequoias would die if it did not include a great myriad of other species in symbiosis.

In short, just because an idea is old it is not necessarily invalid. So I remind you that your freedom to shoot a gun ends at the border of my body, my family's, my friends', and my possessions.

Now to the vote. I have not voted for a candidate for national office - president, senator, or congressperson, for many years. I did work on Kucinich's 2004 campaign until it obviously was hopeless. I have not voted for a simple reason: The candidates eligible to receive my vote in those elections did not in any way represent my values. Period.

For still far too many Americans, voting is the only direct opportunity to practice popular democracy of which they take advantage. The vote, however, should not be the goal. For by the time a vote is cast, at least in national office elections, the winner is usually already decided by the forces of finance and corporate media, the Coleman-Franken "race" notwithstanding. I refuse to vote in a rigged beauty contest. I'd rather vote for a drooling, inarticulate hunchback if she represented my values, than for a well-dressed, well-spoken, handsome man who can read a script without giving the finger to the audience.

Voting, at best, should be the last step in a process that demands many steps. To vote based on a pre-selection by elitist forces of two foes whose agenda is much the same, after "campaigns" that are cynical spectacles of circus and infotainment is a crime against democracy and society. Campaigns should be a discussion of values and goals, not arguments about cosmetics.

We currently have two chances, in 2010 and 2012, the latter of which I fear may be the final election we experience for a very long time, to regain our democracy and our self-rule. We have two chances - no more - to bring down the entrenched Establishment of the "two-party" corporate monopoly over our nation. I urge those who still cling to the dominant parties to simply abandon them, rejecting any further attempt to "reform" them. It will not happen, especially in the Democratic Party, which is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Council on Foreign Relations, Trilateral Commission, Bilderberg Group coalition of the ruling elite. We must at least recognize that in the post-political, fascist national environment, "bi-partisan" does not really define a discussion between two opposing forces, but an unruly bar fight among people who are really pretty much on the same side.

I also maintain that attempting to energize existing third parties, such as the Libertarians and the Greens, is futile - although I suspect that both may gain some congressional seats in 2010. Perhaps that would be a good start, but would not be enough. A party will not create a movement; movements, however, can create parties and those parties can attract a plurality of candidates and voters if they embrace a consensus of value and purpose. Such a convergence, by the way, can only be successful within a framework of complete freedom of expression and tolerance of divergent viewpoints, rather than intolerant restrictions of ideology.

We have to figure out where we want to go as a nation (or even if we want to be a nation) before we can decide anew what common values we have and how we want to pursue them.

Above all, we must be at and about peace.


Categories: new+world+order, Americanism, peace, post-democracy, post-society, post-politics

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Oblahma: Time for a Moratorium on Talk

Did I read somewhere that the Obama administration just passed the 200 day mark? Hmph. I'm more interested in knowing whether someone has been keeping track of how many words he's thrown at us and the rest of the universe since he took office. A million? Two?

But it's not just him. A few minutes ago, I ran screaming from Twitter, stuffing in earplugs and tying a bandanna over my eyes. To do what? Write words about words. Blah blah blah ...

I want a moratorium. I want some verbal silence, replaced with careful, non-reactive thought and then, effective action. We really need to stop and really need to think. In Twitter parlance, I'd be very happy if Oblahma, his handlers, Congress, and the media (including the "alternative", "social" media) would just STFU for at least a week, better, for a month. What if we all just went for a walk in the woods - some place where the dozers and backhoes aren't parked because the developers lost their funding?

Yeah, yeah: it's really kinda refreshing that we now have a president with a working knowledge of the English language. I do, however, have to say that it grates on my nerves every time he says "tuh" instead of "to". Nobody's perfect, though, even the anointed world spokesman for "hope" and "change". But "refreshing" is not what we need. We don't need to be refreshing the same web page, because the content hasn't changed since Obama's picture replaced Bush's.

The Bush administration's job was clear and they did it well: destroying the United States of America as a national entity. Mainly, it succeeded in nullifying the Constitution, implementing the framework of a security state, and bankrupting the country fiscally, mentally, and emotionally.

There really weren't many words spoken by the President during his administrations. He kept embarrassing himself and everybody else. As Dick Cheney knew, the trick was to act, to just keep moving, and keep giving everyone the finger when they caught on and complained. Lie. Avoid. Obfuscate. Ignore. It worked. All those words from us, claiming that The Dubbleduh-Chainey Gang was "stupid" or "crazy" were just plain wrong. Most of us just couldn't fathom the fact that they had the strategy, tactics, and balls to pull it off.

The Obama administration is no different - not one bit. The agenda is the same. A product of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission, and the Bilderberg Group (as have been the past several administration - see Daniel Estulin's "The True Story of the Bilderberg Group"), it continues to look the other way while international bankers suck the core out of country. It blatantly refuses to prosecute The Gang for treason and crimes against humanity. It keeps clamps on the secrets that might free us all from perfidy if only they were revealed. And it keeps us divided, at war with each other and the Middle East and Asia, fighting about the nuances of health care and race and even what constitutes torture (see the July issue of Harper's Magazine, "We Still Torture").

Even though I'm fairly immune vis-a-vis Oblahma's siren call, I don't listen to his pressers and speeches, because I won't subject myself to mass hypnosis. Although I see some promise that a person of mixed race now sits in the Oval Office, I also see that his selection was an empty victory when it comes to effective and lasting victory for the poor and disenfranchised. All it has done is to fully include all races in the category of the unneeded and unemployed and ignored - a culture of desperation ...

The words will not stop, of course. It has been "the great communicators" (Reagan, Clinton, and now Obama) who have wreaked the greatest havoc on the nation and its people. For me, "charisma" is a a four-letter word. Hitler was charismatic. Look what happened to Germany and the rest of Europe as the result of his speeches.

So the words won't stop - but we need to stop listening to our "leaders", whether they be Obama or Palin, McCain or Paul, Beck or Couric. We need to stop asking them questions and stop believing their words. We need to realize that they talk so much because they're all salespeople and they want something from us - our power, our support, our acquiescence, our silence, or complicity. If they get that, we will surely get nothing back except the sorrow of the status quo.

We need to tune out the words and listen to the urgent beat of our hearts. We must ask ourselves what we truly want and how we can get it. After all, it's supposed to be our country. I'm truly not interested in those "leaders" telling me what I should want. I learned a long time ago that anybody who talks as much as they do just isn't listening.

We must, just for example, ask ourselves questions like these: How can I get back the money the bankers and speculators have stolen from me? If there is no really discernible difference between the real agendas of the Democratic and Republican parties, what do we do about the prospect of elections in 2010 and 2012? If 911 was an "inside job", how do we bring the criminals to justice? Just what the hell are the real stakes in Afghanistan, Gaza, Iran and how do we want them to turn out.

I have a strong feeling that if we really listen to ourselves, rather than the speechmakers, we will have just a three-word answer: "No. More. Blah."

Please don't tell us you love us, Oblahma. Show us.

Categories: post-politics

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