"The
greatest objective of mankind in this century should be to eradicate
imperialism and capitalism as models for society." Evo Morales
As we approach the end of our most recent contamination of
the ideal of national democracy with possibly its worst example we would do
well to consider the words of a democratically elected leader of a nation that
could teach us about the word’s meaning.
A representative of the real majority of his people, a
former farm worker who rose to the presidency on the shoulders of ordinary
Bolivians and not the bank books of his nation’s rich, Evo Morales and his
supporters understand more about the state of the world than many of us
understand about the state of our nation. Whichever of the ruling parties unpopular
wretches is elected on November 8, they will contradict Morales’s words,
possibly with more savagery than ever before, and the need for a political
economic transformation of America and the world will become greater than ever
before.
Our ruling oligarchs have reacted with a vengeance in suppressing
two dangerously democratic threats to their dominance. First, Bernie Sanders leading
a popular movement motivated by social desire, and second a more ego centered
individualist struggle led by an economic millionaire and intellectual pauper,
usually a winning combination in the empire of capital but not this time. In
fact, the populace has received daily bulletins about Donald Trump’s outrageous
practice of capitalism and its profitable by-products of division by dollar,
race and sex. Who knew?
If we are to believe polls which measure how much we absorb
the message of our consciousness controllers, the assault on our collective mentality
has never been as blatant, corrupt, single minded and seemingly successful; we
will soon coronate a historic first for the empire as the glass ceiling above
the CEO presiding over the slaughters perpetrated by our warfare state will be
broken and a woman will lead the foreign policy that creates many people of
color: blood red.
The further destruction of the Muslim world and the creation
of more terrorists who murder us because we murder them will continue. Heart
breaking photos of a Palestinian, Yemeni, Iraqi or Syrian parent carrying what
used to be a son or daughter, reduced to a bloody pulp form of unidentifiable
gender fluidity by an Israeli, French, British or German aimed, American
created bomb, will not go viral. Only those dramatic and sometimes staged
photos of alleged victims of America’s adversaries are assured such coverage, while
we beseech one and all to take in refugees created by our destruction of their
nations.
Frighteningly worse for all of us than terrorist attacks
would be a nuclear war that could happen if Russia reacts with as much arrogance
and stupidity as the USA and responds to menacing provocation on its borders to
enter such a confrontation that could spell the end of everything.
Hopefully, there will be enough americans who identify with
humanity’s wholeness and refuse forced acceptance of membership in a fictitious
minority with warped identity sense that makes it somehow less or more politically
correct by having different genitals, skin tones or belief systems and
remaining oblivious to being members of the one and only race: human.
Historic problems dating back to the nation’s origins in
being brutally stolen from the original inhabitants, built on slave and
indentured servant labor abused in order to create wealth enough to trickle
down on what many of the descendants found a middle class status in a dream
society that offered material hope to many but depended on continued
exploitation of many more to maintain a lie. We are a nation built at the
expense of the semi-voluntary poor thrown out of europe, Asia and Africa to become
supporters of a national dream nearing a nightmare for too many and needing a
wakeup call from the world, in the words of Morales.
Government of the people, by the people, for the people, our
supposed ideal, obviously has nothing to do with the present owned and operated
by great wealth entity that can be defined as democracy the way that rape can
be defined as love. But as long as great wealth maintains dominance and keeps
democratic power from the rest of us in part by controlling what we think we
know, genuine concern about government can be played as a skirmish between the supporters
of a market without any control and supporters of a market with minimal
control, both assuring that wealth will be defended, only differing in how much
of it will accrue to the minority rulers, how quickly it will occur and how
acceptable that will be found by the poorly informed.
Neither government nor banking nor finance will work for the
majority of the people until the people create democracy in deed as opposed to
the sham we have. As long as minorities, growing smaller in number as their
private wealth grows larger, are allowed to dominate there is no difference
between modern capitalism and ancient feudalism. We now tolerate billionaires
whose material wealth and power would stagger some phony royal/god/pharaoh of
the ancient past and our innumeracy in failing to understand that - how the
hell does anyone have a billion dollars while more than a billion humans
survive (?) on not much more than a couple of dollars a day? - while we are fed
a steady diet of consumerist garbage by these rulers can only change when we
grow angry enough at what is happening to the planet we live on and most of its
people by having it and us treated as products in a free market where nothing
is free, all to benefit them while we carry the ever more staggering cost. For
openers, we ought not to vote for the lesser evil deadly duo but the greater
good of Jill Stein and the Greens and then join any group opting for change
that is systemic and not simply individual.
The Trump and Sanders expressions of disgust with things as
they are and the great followings that resulted, despite the twisted treatment
by established power, are signs that the end of this system is near even if the
people who want it over aren’t yet sure what it is they want it replaced by.
Democracy does seem to be an agreement they can focus on in building a future
coalition. Morales, Bolivia, Ecuador, Venezuela and many more leaders and
nations are right. Capitalism must end or humanity will.
1 comment:
"... the monopolizing of the communications media, which would impose alienating examples of consumerism and a certain cultural uniformity, is another one of the forms taken by the new colonialism. It is ideological colonialism." --Pope Francis, at the World Meeting of Popular Movements in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, 9 July 2015
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