Steven D wrote a wonderful diary today titled Why We Will Stay in Iraq. Here is my comment in the diary:

Excellent diary Steven and I agree with you 100% except for this:

The only thing that can prevent this catastrophe from occurring is the political will and courage of our elected representatives.

I don’t think we can afford to put the responsibility on our elected officials. My take on things is that, at least at the national level, democracy is over. The sooner we recognize that – the sooner we’ll begin to define our alternatives. Northdakotademocrat used to write wonderful diaries here about the effectiveness of non-violent resistance. For me, our only hope to prevent the catastrophe you describe is if enough of us start to think about those kinds of alternatives.

Of course we all know that Bush/Cheney have done everything in their power to destroy democracy in this country and build their vision of the American Empire. But I began to give up on democracy in this country when I saw how the media and the Democrats treated Howard Dean. The final blow came after our most recent elections. From what I can see, the people spoke loud and clear on the issue of Iraq – but it seems that folks inside the beltway aren’t listening to us. They are too busy listening to the corporate contolled media and the military/industrial complex.

My conclusion is that we have now entered a period where democracy is over and we live in an oligarchy. Here’s how wiki defines the word:

Oligarchy (Greek Ὀλιγαρχία, Oligarkhía) is a form of government where political power effectively rests with a small, elite segment of society (whether distinguished by wealth, family or military prowess). The word oligarchy is from the Greek words for “few” (ὀλίγον óligon) and “rule” (ἄρχω arkho).

Does that mean we are powerless – NO!! As I said in my comment to Steven, it just means that we need to find other ways than electoral politics to express ourselves. The first thing to do is to decide where our power lies. And as I’ve already said, I don’t think that is with our elected officials. That means that trying to influence them is not likely to work. Even if we were to get several million protesting on the streets every day – if our goal was to influence them, I think it would be a waste of time.

Given that everything in our system is based on money/profits/greed, I think our power is in our pocketbooks. But it would take some real intelligent organizing to harness that power. We all know the years of back-room organizing it took to finally culminate in the Civil Rights movement. That’s where I think we should be focusing our efforts.

I’ll leave you with a wonderful story I just found on Margaret Wheatly’s web site:

Yitzhak Perlman, the great violinist, was playing in New York. Yitzhak Perlman was crippled by polio as a young child, so the bottom part of his body doesn’t work well and he wears these very prominent leg braces and comes on in crutches, in a very painful, slow way, hauling himself across the stage. Then he sits down and, very carefully, unbuckles the leg braces and lays them down, puts down his crutches, and then picks up his violin. So, this night the audience had watched him slowly, painfully, walk across the stage; and he began to play. And, suddenly, there was a loud noise in the hall that signaled that one of his four strings on his violin had just snapped.

Everyone expected that they would be watching Yitzhak Perlman put back the leg braces, walk slowly across the stage, and find a new violin. But this is what happened. Yitzhak Perlman closed his eyes for a moment. Yitzhak Perlman paused. And then he signaled for the conductor to begin again. And he began from where they had left off. And here’s the description of his playing, from Jack Riemer in the Houston Chronicle:

“He played with such passion, and such power, and such purity, as people had never heard before. Of course, everyone knew that it was impossible to play this symphonic work with three strings. I know that. You know that. But that night, Yitzhak Perlman did not know that. You could see him modulating, changing, recomposing the piece in his head. At one point, it sounded like he was de-tuning the strings to get new sounds from them that they had never made before. When he finished, there was an awe-filed silence in the room. And then people rose and cheered. Everyone was screaming and cheering and doing everything we could to show how much we appreciated what he had just done. He smiled. He wiped the sweat from his brow. He raised his bow to us. And then he said, not boastfully, but in a quiet and pensive and reverent tone,

“‘You know, sometimes it is the artist’s task to find out how much music you can still make with what you have left.'”