Well, the Democrats have done us a favor.
They’ve shown us that this country is officially under One Party Rule by the Corporatocracy, which hires the GOP, paying Big Money, to “represent” them.
What the Democrats did today was a cry for help. An admittance that they are utterly powerless.
The Democratic Party conceded today that they have absolutely no ability at all to do anything in this country, not even against The Worst President In History.
Welcome to the New United States, a place of One Party Rule.
What will it take for people to escape the fantasy of denial and see this?
Endless war? We’ve already got that.
A hyper-criminal near-dictatorial bunch of corporate-backed gangsters who have hijacked our electoral system and thus our Executive Branch? Yup, we’ve already got that.
The elimination of our most Basic Human Rights, including our right to privacy, our right to NOT be spied upon, our right to Habeus Corpus?
Yup. Done deal there.
The elimination of our Free Press through the corporate take-over of all of our media institutions, through which they now feed us a steady diet of right-wing propaganda, along with the new “bread and circuses” like American Idol (and you gotta love it how they not only give us this show as an example of a “Democratic” system, but then also make sure that most of our NEWS is also about this same show)?
Yup, we’ve got that, too.
Tell me one way in which we actually have a 2nd party in this country that isn’t just a mechanical show-pony, a virtual Santa Clause of politics.
Tell me one way that our Democratic Party isn’t just the Official Opposition Party (a la Colmes of Hannity and Colmes) of the people who REALLY own things in this country, the Corporatocracy and the GOP.
Our Democratic Party is a fraud. Our two-party system doesn’t exist anymore. Oh, they’ll try to tell you it does. Kerry will e-mail you a request to help end the war which links to his “donations” page. So will the others. They still want our money. It’s all part of the smoke and mirrors.
After all, nothing makes us feel like we’re active and doing something quite like shelling out a few of our hard-earned dollars! By God, if I paid for something, I expect to have something to show for it!
But can anyone tell me how this country is any different now than the old Soviet Union? We’ve got total political control by one corrupt party, which is funded by an empire the size of which the world has ever seen — the U.S. Pentagon and the War Toys and War Support Industry.
We’ve got a nationwide high-tech system of surveillance by which the goons behind the curtains can read our e-mails, listen to our phone conversations, and determine our location any time we have our cell phones with us or drive our cars with OnStar. We’ve got a Wall Street darling, Google, who has now developed a system by which they can listen to us, and monitor us through our computer microphones, and they tell us it’s for “marketing purposes” so that they can listen to what we’re watching on our TV’s in the background (yeah right).
They’ve shipped our entire manufacturing base to China, where 15 year old girls make 6 cents an hour to build our crap, and in a “bipartisan” fashion they support the Credit Card Industry in its efforts to sell us debt, and actively help us SO incredibly in debt that we can never get ahead, and will forever be virtual slaves to this system where we’re constantly taking paycuts (while the ruling class gets unimaginably richer than any group of people in history). If we’re all enslaved to our debts, we have very little power, right? It’s perfect for them. People with money and time on their hands make them very nervous.
They brazenly reward their own, publicly, with lucrative jobs, and even when they’re guilty of fraud and corruption they’re given huge bonuses to “resign”. (Wolfowitz and his 400K)
Democrats barely make a fuss about any of this. Most of it they actively support. Yet they talk tough to us in e-mails, make promises to get our money and to perpetuate this FANTASY that they in some ways are an opposition party.
They are NOT an opposition party. Well, okay, they are, but they’re in opposition to the wishes of the American people, the world, and what’s so morally reprhensible about them, the people who have always been faithful and loyal TO THEM, the people who have given them blood, sweat, ears, and money, only to be laughed at behind their backs, insulted publicly (you listening Obey?), lied to, and betrayed.
Louise Slaughter’s diary here was an insult to all of us, the excuse the cheating husband makes the next morning when he’s busted — blaming the woman who “seduced” him, blaming the alcohol, blaming his wife for not putting out enough or making him feel old, blaming EVERYONE BUT HIMSELF.
And now we’re told “it’s all aboutt 2008”! The excitement of the Presidential Election! Finally we can get rid of “the bums”, right?
Wrong. Our Constitution provides a way to get rid of these bums right now, these crooks who have brazenly and openly committed crimes and misdemeanors, it’s called “impeachment”, but heaven forbid anyone should mention THAT. Oh, no, it’s “off the table” according to the official Opposition Party. Hell, even demanding resignations for those who have slaughtered thousands, let hundreds of others drown in our own cities, looked the other way while we suffered the worst attack in the history of the United States, who have broken the law to spy on fellow Americans, who have kidnapped and tortured, who have erased the Bill of Rights, oh my God no that too is unthinkable — we can’t demand resignations from THOSE people, oh no, my gosh we might piss them off and THEY are really in charge and it is THEY that we fear.
The most basic way to see who actually has power over someone else is to ask the following question: Who do they fear?
Who do the Democrats fear?
Do they fear us? Obviously no. Not one stinking bit.
Do they fear the American people? Same answer.
Do they fear the wrath of The Corporatocracy Gang of Which George Bush is the official Figurehead? BINGO
Well that tell us who’s in charge of them, doesn’t it?
The Democratic Party, by its actions today, has made it abundantly clear who is in charge of the Democratic Party: THE SAME PEOPLE WHO ARE IN CHARGE OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY.
You really think any of these Democratic Presidential hopefuls is gonna change anything? You really think Barack Obama is gonna go up against the people who really run this country and actually come out on top? Or John Edwards, or any of them? You really think it can possibly work that way?
Well I’ve learned otherwise. The SYSTEM ITSELF is FUBAR. (Fucked Up Beyond All Reason)
We need to start a movement that exists OUTSIDE OF THE SYSTEM that can replace the system we now have with something different. I don’t know what that is. Yet.
Read this. This is a start. It’s by Chalmers Johnson and explains just what needs to happen to get this country back. It’s slightly depressing because what needs to happen seems very very far away. But it’s the first thing I’ve ever seen that shows an actual end-goal, and a path, for us:
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/IE17Ak04.html
The hope that things will change under the existing system is NOT your friend. Hope is a fantasy, hope is that thing you resort to when you are completely powerless. The important thing that we do here is this:
WE GET OUR POWER BACK.
WE QUIT HANDING OUR POWER TO OTHERS.
ONCE WE GET OUR POWER BACK? WE USE IT. AND WE KEEP IT.
“If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself.”
That has become glaringly apparent. We have to do this ourselves. And NOT through the Democratic Party.
(those of you who think I’m advocating an all-or-nothing approach, well, that is not the case. Those, like Kos himself, who insist on changing the party from within? Well, great. That’s admirable and it’s worthy, but we should NOT put all our eggs in one basket. NOT AFTER TODAY)
And if you’re feeling hopeless? So what. Hope is for pussies. Read this article about Hope. It’ll blow your mind. Apply it to your own life, and your life will change. Here it is:
http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/170/
And here’s an excerpt:
Frankly, I don’t have much hope. But I think that’s a good thing. Hope is what keeps us chained to the system, the conglomerate of people and ideas and ideals that is causing the destruction of the Earth.
To start, there is the false hope that suddenly somehow the system may inexplicably change. Or technology will save us. Or the Great Mother. Or beings from Alpha Centauri. Or Jesus Christ. Or Santa Claus. All of these false hopes lead to inaction, or at least to ineffectiveness. One reason my mother stayed with my abusive father was that there were no battered women’s shelters in the ‘50s and ‘60s, but another was her false hope that he would change. False hopes bind us to unlivable situations, and blind us to real possibilities.
Does anyone really believe that Weyerhaeuser is going to stop deforesting because we ask nicely? Does anyone really believe that Monsanto will stop Monsantoing because we ask nicely? If only we get a Democrat in the White House, things will be okay. If only we pass this or that piece of legislation, things will be okay. If only we defeat this or that piece of legislation, things will be okay. Nonsense. Things will not be okay. They are already not okay, and they’re getting worse. Rapidly.
But it isn’t only false hopes that keep those who go along enchained. It is hope itself. Hope, we are told, is our beacon in the dark. It is our light at the end of a long, dark tunnel. It is the beam of light that makes its way into our prison cells. It is our reason for persevering, our protection against despair (which must be avoided at all costs). How can we continue if we do not have hope?
We’ve all been taught that hope in some future condition—like hope in some future heaven—is and must be our refuge in current sorrow. I’m sure you remember the story of Pandora. She was given a tightly sealed box and was told never to open it. But, being curious, she did, and out flew plagues, sorrow, and mischief, probably not in that order. Too late she clamped down the lid. Only one thing remained in the box: hope. Hope, the story goes, was the only good the casket held among many evils, and it remains to this day mankind’s sole comfort in misfortune. No mention here of action being a comfort in misfortune, or of actually doing something to alleviate or eliminate one’s misfortune.
The more I understand hope, the more I realize that all along it deserved to be in the box with the plagues, sorrow, and mischief; that it serves the needs of those in power as surely as belief in a distant heaven; that hope is really nothing more than a secular way of keeping us in line.
Hope is, in fact, a curse, a bane. I say this not only because of the lovely Buddhist saying “Hope and fear chase each other’s tails,” not only because hope leads us away from the present, away from who and where we are right now and toward some imaginary future state. I say this because of what hope is.
More or less all of us yammer on more or less endlessly about hope. You wouldn’t believe—or maybe you would—how many magazine editors have asked me to write about the apocalypse, then enjoined me to leave readers with a sense of hope. But what, precisely, is hope? At a talk I gave last spring, someone asked me to define it. I turned the question back on the audience, and here’s the definition we all came up with: hope is a longing for a future condition over which you have no agency; it means you are essentially powerless.
I’m not, for example, going to say I hope I eat something tomorrow. I just will. I don’t hope I take another breath right now, nor that I finish writing this sentence. I just do them. On the other hand, I do hope that the next time I get on a plane, it doesn’t crash. To hope for some result means you have given up any agency concerning it. Many people say they hope the dominant culture stops destroying the world. By saying that, they’ve assumed that the destruction will continue, at least in the short term, and they’ve stepped away from their own ability to participate in stopping it.
I do not hope coho salmon survive. I will do whatever it takes to make sure the dominant culture doesn’t drive them extinct. If coho want to leave us because they don’t like how they’re being treated—and who could blame them?—I will say goodbye, and I will miss them, but if they do not want to leave, I will not allow civilization to kill them off.
When we realize the degree of agency we actually do have, we no longer have to “hope” at all. We simply do the work. We make sure salmon survive. We make sure prairie dogs survive. We make sure grizzlies survive. We do whatever it takes.
Let’s all go do whatever it takes to get our power back.