“FASCISM should more appropriately be called CORPORATISM because it is a merger of State and Corporate Power.”
Benito Mussolini
I am 61 years old and of French-English and Native American blood. I am recovering from tonsil cancer and am much weaker than I was. As long as I am breathing in and out my intention is to continue to enjoy my time here. I am not afraid of dying and I am not afraid of living. I have a wonderful woman I am proud to call my wife and a good life. I am grateful to the Goddess.
I would in normal times have better things to do with my time than getting involved with politics. Politics SUCK! Most politicians are ego-tripping manipulators who pretend to be speaking honestly from their hearts while lying like a teenager caught smoking dope. I am so bloody tired of them claiming to be our friends and promising to help us out of the shit they helped put us in and then turning around and screwing us some more.
But these are not normal times. I sincerely wish they were. But they are not. This country is closer to falling into fascism than at any time since the Robber Barons.
(If you want to know more about the Robber Barons go to the my links section))
I am very proud of my country and love the people of the United States. I honor our fore-fathers and mothers who gave their precious blood and lives creating a free country. The United States, when it has stood for freedom and democracy, has been an inspiration and light for the world. This country is in danger of losing that freedom and democracy. I cannot stand idly by and let that happen and neither can you.
In the beginning of this blog I wrote that the ancient Chinese healers expressed the belief that it was impossible to be or stay healthy in an unhealthy society or physical environment, we live in both an unhealthy society and an unhealthy world. The Chinese healers who wrote about the reality of the relationship between a society’s health and the health of the people within it understood the implications. Those who spoke the truth to loud or acted to fight corruption or abuse by the powerful were killed, tortured and imprisoned. Soon Chinese healers stopped talking about the relationship between the health of people and the society they lived within.
I believe our society has reached a tipping point. If nothing is done soon and profoundly we will become so toxic in this society and world that life will be unbearable for the majority of us. I cannot write and speak about healing and not point out the underlying cause of so much of our pain and suffering.
I had hopes that things would get better after Obama became president and I could stop worrying so much about the future of our democracy. Things are certainly better in many ways. But, sadly, the recent Supreme Court decision that granted corporations the right to spend unlimited funds to influence federal elections and the Democrats failure to provide strong leadership has me very worried. I have lost all faith in the Democratic Party and President Obama.
I believe a new Progressive Party in needed. But there is something needed more than a new party. We need a new commitment by the people of this country to stand up and take back our country from the politicians and the Oligarchy they serve.
(oligarchy [(ol-uh-gahr-kee, oh-luh-gahr-kee)]A system of government in which power is held by a small group.)
Yes the Oligarchy. The robber barons who brought so much misery to our people in the past are back. In fact they never left. They just hid behind politicians, economist and religious leaders while they manipulated us. Now they are trying once more, the way they did in the Gilded Age, to step out of the shadows and crush us economically and politically.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt understood the truth when he wrote in a private letter to Colonel House on November 21st 1933,
“The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the larger centers has owned the Government ever since the days of Andrew Jackson”
Our grandfathers and grandmothers were desperate and close to a revolution during the Depression. FDR’s New Deal coupled with the ruthlessness of the federal police and the power of the army were the only thing that prevented it. The New Deal eased the worst aspects of economic and social oppression and redistributed just enough wealth and political power to make life tolerable for the people. The Oligarchy and their corporations still ran and still run things but just not as openly or intolerably as before the reforms of the New Deal. I won’t go into what happened to the people who tried to organize against the Oligarchy. Suffice to say they were crushed.
The right wing of the elite that form the Oligarchy never stopped fighting the New Deal. They and their descendants were and are very patient and persistent. Their long term efforts are paying off. They are winning. The amount of wealth and political power that has flowed back to them from the pockets and lives of the working people of this country since Reagan is staggering and frightening.
In the sixties the right wing of the Oligarchy’s political party the Republicans made a decision to take advantage of the racism of most southerners in the face of the Civil Rights struggle. The Republicans poured a tremendous amounts of time and money into a long term project to turn the democratic South into servants and soldiers of the right wing of the Oligarchy. You got to give them credit. They did it. These Right Wing jerks succeeded in turning southern poor people into the most ardent and militant supporters of the the party representing the richest people in the country. That makes my blood boil.
One of first and most important targets for the Republicans was the Southern Baptists preacher. The Republicans understood the power of the church in the South. If you controlled the church the people would follow. Republican operatives in many guises met repeatedly over a long period of time with preachers all over the South. Republican organizers blatantly played the race card. They used white southern fears about blacks gaining political and social power to scare the heaven out of these men. Clever and emotional lies and half truths as well as money and promises of power flowed freely until the Republican organizers succeeded in their intent. Soon many if not most southern preachers became not only registered Republicans but also dedicated political organizers for the right wing agenda. I cannot help wondering how race relations would be now if the Republicans had not chosen to play the race card.
As the South was being organized the right wing spent vast amounts of money developing Think Tanks and media outlets to help further their agendas to manipulate and control middle and working class Americans. They have obviously studied the fascists and communist use of propaganda and manipulation in Germany and Russia. In fact they have improved upon them.
What an incredible con job. Blame all the pain and suffering working people suffer on the people and groups trying to ease that pain and suffering. Claim to be the friend and supporter of the very people you are robbing and killing. Man, what balls they got. And how sad and infuriating that so many people continue to buy that poisonous snake oil.
Convincing us that the Right Wing was on our side and the progressive people were the enemy was the key to their whole strategy. But that begs the question, why did it work? It worked and continues to work because not to many people bother to look behind the curtain and find the real Wizard of Oz. It is so much easier for many of us to just sit back on our arses and turn on our televisions or radios and go into a trance while we listen to the hypnotic, lying, right wing crap coming out of "False and Fascist" Fox News, and radio talk show hosts like Limbaugh, O'Reilly and Beck.
Scaring the public with chicken little stories, “The sky is falling, the sky is falling and it’s the liberals and left wing that are behind it,” has worked well for them. Projecting their crimes on perceived enemies is rampant. For instance, claiming that so called liberal judges are “activist judges who use their positions on the courts to turn the country to the left” is one of their tactics. Meanwhile right wing judges are gutting the constitution and leading us towards fascism The right has succeeded to the point that Fox News and talking heads like Rush Limbaugh and Glen Beck are some of the most trusted sources of news for a large percentage of our people. Air America by contrast has just declared bankruptcy and gone out of business
The right did not neglect the education or legal systems. Religious colleges were funded to produce teachers, political philosophers, lawyers, prosecutors and judges. These people would be used as part of a long term effort to infiltrate and take over the schools and courts of this country. The current Supreme Court is now effectively in the hands of the right wing of the Oligarchy. If you doubt that take a long hard look at the actions of the Robert’s Court in relationship to the rights of the Corporations when it conflicts with the rights of workers. Imagine what it would be like if their were no liberal justices.
If you think things are bad now just wait until the next Republican President and congress and that is coming. If we have not laid at least some of the ground work for a political organization that fights for our rights our fate is sealed. The Democrats will not stop what is happening to us. They might delay it but that is the best we can hope from them. The Democrats also serve a part of the Oligarchy and will never do anything that endangers the core wealth or power of their masters.
The struggle for freedom is world wide. The forms of our oppression may differ and the oligarchies that oppress us may or may not be same. But their intentions are the same. They want unlimited power, vast wealth and complete obedience and they want it from us. Our oppressors work across national lines and so must we. Our oppressors support each other and so must we. The need to struggle for freedom increases as those boots on our necks grows heavier. Everyday they try harder to press our faces ever deeper into the mud of obedience and silence. It is time to build our awareness and our strength and get theses bloody boots off our necks here and all over the world. Iran, Myanmar, Tibet, North Korea and so many more countries are but the tip of the bloody iceberg of oppression. What the people in those countries are experiencing now will be all our fates sooner or later if we do not get off our bellies and our asses and do something.
We know the oligarchies intent. Let them know ours. Let our intention be to create societies and a world where the people are free, sheltered, fed, educated, healthy, and live lives worth living. Let us create societies and a world we can be proud of passing on to our children and their children.
The first step towards freedom is simple. It is to get the sleep out of our eyes and look around at our societies and world. Commit yourself to try to understand what is happening in your country economically and politically and how those two things are intertwined. We cannot act blindly. We have to understand what we are experiencing before we can act. As our understanding matures our actions will evolve. Act creatively and non-violently. We will never defeat them with force of arms without becoming them, history has repeatedly prove that reality. How awful to fight so hard for freedom and end up becoming the oppressor. Let that not be our fate.
We do not need to follow leaders blindly or enslave ourselves to ideologies of the left or right. Those paths have only led to exchanging one master for another. We need to be the leaders in our own liberation and we need to be free of all ideologies. Ideologies blind our eyes and harden our hearts. We need clear eyes and open hearts to transform our societies and world for the good. Let us step out into the beautiful unknown and stay clear of old ideas and outmoded actions. Let love, joy, creativity and courage be our guides to transforming ourselves and our societies and our World. This is the song I sing to you. Let us sing and dance our way to victory this time. “Any revolution that asks you to kill or die for it is daddy’s revolution.” These words appeared as graffiti on a wall during the student uprising in Paris in 1968. They are good words to remember as we go forward.
No comments:
Post a Comment