“Our
problems stem from our acceptance of this filthy rotten system.”
Dorothy
Day
Strong
words from a brave woman unknown to most Americans because her bravery and
boldness didn’t just concern a minority group but all of humanity. She demanded
radical change in a system and not just one or another representative to
operate that system in a more beneficial way for her group. And the Catholic
Worker, the organization she founded and led, operated on behalf of the poorest
of americans while working to both help them and everyone else by advocating
and working for radical social change of a system and not just its board of
directors. She called a spade a spade, unlike most political leaders of her
time and ours. They give euphemism a really bad name and are more likely to
identify a spade as a club, hypocrisy as democracy, war as peace, and humans as
a market.
Euphemism
in words and phrases can be thoughtful when used to protect feelings, as in “he
passed” rather than “he died”, but they can also be employed to hide truths for
more malevolent purposes. Even when used in innocence or naivete, language softening
or word substitution can be harmful in covering up material reality with labels
as harmful as calling a bottle of arsenic a health drink.
The
present near hysterical public mental state brought about by a far worse
material situation is a clear and dangerous case in point. Visiting a therapist
to confront a psychological problem when one is actually suffering a crippling
physical disease could become fatal. Social assaults on physical reality covered by language to make them seem personal problems more suited to
therapy, meds or individual criminals can mask the need for social
transformation to end the illness before it kills far more than individuals but
society itself.
A failing system
is one that benefits fewer and fewer people while costing more and more and
making the benefits enormous for the few and the costs almost beyond belief for
the many. Thus American capitalism that rewards a tiny % of the population with
incredible wealth while increasing numbers descend into poverty with larger
numbers in danger of joining them the moment their credit is cut off. People
rightfully concerned and demanding change can be herded into seeking criminals
– some very likely – but miss the systemic root of the problem and so kept searching
for villains and scapegoats when a social disease is what must be cured before
the epidemic kills everyone while they’re kept busy lynching doctors, drug
sellers and delivery crews.
Cancer is
not a multi billion-dollar industry because of evil oncologists, mendacious
pharmaceutical workers or greedy truck drivers. It is subject to the rules of a
system dependent on the procurement of private profits at the market and as
long as cancer treatment is a bigger profit maker than a cancer cure would be, investors in treatment will prosper, the disease will increase in the population, and the
cancer death rate will rise.
We do not comfortably house tens of millions of
our pets while hundreds of thousands of our fellow citizens live in the street
because we are nasty individuals but because the private profits available in
sustaining those animals is greater than that of housing those humans.
All of
us, whether accepting or hiding behind labels like liberal, conservative,
democratic, republican, of color, no color, straight, gay, bent, crooked or
transpecies, are part of that system. We play roles at vastly different levels
of power but we need to understand that value system which Dorothy Day passionately
labeled filthy and rotten. And in a system in which my dog is deemed more profitable than your
child, maybe words like filthy and rotten are euphemisms.
While it
may seem easier to provoke dislike for a company CEO or a political
representative of supposed democracy who really stands for corporate capital,
pursuit of such villains is often supported by the richest and most powerful
dominators of the economic system who can thus focus attention away from
themselves and be rid of some scapegoats while remaining the leading profiteers
in the anti-democratic politics of capital.
Under
capitalist market forces of private profit, public loss, individualism and dog
eat dog competition, anti-democratic government is a subsidiary of ruling class
wealth and acts against the interest of most of the people. This invites the
kind of criticism from conservatives and liberals that says,
understandably, get the damned government off my back, or, get it to support
and work for me and not you.
In
a truly democratic system government would be controlled by the people and act
for public profit first, and there would be far less, if any, contradiction
between it and the people. Whether we think of that as political democracy as
opposed to political hypocrisy, or social as opposed to anti-social economics,
we have neither now and that is the problem. We need both, which is the only
solution.
