I am viewing American politics from a distance now, but I’ve not been involved on the ground level for eleven years, since the 2000 Nader campaign. I won’t vote again unless there is someone or something that is worthy of the effort. Not voting enables me to speak my mind, like the bumper sticker says: “Don’t blame me. I didn’t vote.” It’s the ultimate expression of citizenship: not to participate in the sham.
There are issues of importance. Who will be the next president/senator/mayor are not among them. I might vote for coroner, as when someone dies I want to know if foul play was involved, so a vote matters there.
The primary issues that are important to me regard civil liberties. Citizens United is a good focal point for confronting and exposing corporate power. The current amalgamation of corporations and government is eroding what we have left of our civil liberties, and the name of that game is fascism.
(Just for historical perspective, the Bush family does have history of support for fascist causes, namely Adolf Hitler via Brown Brothers, and an outright coup d’état against FDR by Wall street types where one of the participants was Prescott Bush. But they are nothing, really. They have no talent to speak of. They are merely the public face of private power, but behind them resides real power. It just so happens that they are attractive enough to hold office and garner votes, where truly dangerous men like Henry Paulson are not, and so must be appointed.)
The other front where the battle must be fought is in transparency in government. There are far more secrets than need exist. The reason for this secrecy is illegal, immoral and despicable behavior by governments and corporations – murder, mass murder, corruption, support for dictators around the globe, building of a world-wide police state with 800+ military bases in place to advance American business interests. Wikileaks and Bradley Manning have taken up this dropped and rusty sword and are paying a price. The (insert name here ) administration is fighting for secrecy at every level with all it’s might, as they realize the importance of the issue. Glasnost can bring down this corporate fascist state.
The sad part is that this is pretty much it. Look at all of the energy wasted on party politics! There’s nothing to be won or lost there! Bringing in Obama not only did not undo what Bush had done, but because Democrats are now snoozing, is making matters worse. He is much more dangerous than Bush because of the narcotic of party switching to sooth us when too much of the corporate agenda has succeeded.
So we need little uprisings, like a walkout in a Hershey plant in Pennsylvania. Of course it was foreign kids who did that, as Americans are too debilitated by propaganda to even know that they can act up.
It was but little leaks of information, a little bit uof transparency, set off the Arab Spring. That’s how vulnerable our corporate government is and why Obama is fighting so hard to contain and enclose the Internet and to bring Julian Assange to the US for a show trial, followed by imprisonment and/or death.
We very badly need an uprising, but good heavens what a wasted, fat and stupid people we have become. The 2012 electoral orgy will change nothing and yet will absorb all of the civic energy available – what an ingenious system!
Piece of Mindful 
Classic unabomber stuff.
‘Cept Ted hated computers.
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This comment is quite inane, as I threaten violence on no one, in fact deplore violence, cannot even bring myself to kill a large spider. So on that end, you’re full of shit as usual.
What I wonder about you is this: Ellul says that agitation propaganda destroys the intellect. I don’t read anything coherent coming from your brain. You reach for little links or quick easy thoughts to fill the gaps in your brain, that is, those many, many things that you have not thought through. But there’s no reasoning or rigor on your end. You have been given things that you believe must be true and you spend your life looking for the reasons why those things must be true. That is classic indoctrination. The “agitprop” (agitation propaganda) part is this: You are coerced by fear, once of communists now of terrorists, and that is what has destroyed your mind – constant fear. It wears you down as your limbic system, or primitive brain constantly interferes with your neocortex, where rational thought originates, ultimately making mush of it.
This is a large part of why we have so many stupid Americans – agitprop and fear. It is what has made you into a crypto-fascist airhead zombie.
And the sad part is that you will never recover. You have no intellect. The constant input of fear and agitation towards violence have destroyed your reasoning capabilities.
No disrespect.
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I’ve waded into Ted’s manifesto. Reads like your drivel.
Ted bashed corporations and their spawn of advanced technology. He at least forbade using their wares, you exist-albeit thrive off the money changers.
Your vacation. Funded by investment capitol perhaps?
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This is what I mean about you – everything is so jumbled in your mind that you cannot distinguished between reason and insanity. Ted was probably overcome by anger, his own limbic system overriding his neocortex. His manifesto read like raving nonsense.
Again you’re searching for reasons why you must be right about things, not knowing that your beliefs were planted in your brain full-grown. You never reasoned through them. You arrived fully baked. This is indoctrination, a mind destroyed. You are tauht not to think, but only to believe.
Our vacation is furnished to us by us. That you cannot disentangle savings, which everyone everywhere wants, from American monopoly capitalism, is merely part of the jumble we call the mind of Swede.
No disrespect.
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None taken.
I was thinking about the meaning of your latest posts and wondering why all the anti-American crap you’re spewing.
Then it came to me. The anniversary. 50 years ago today communism failed.
“This was the month, 50 years ago, that communism had to admit its complete and total failure, so much so they penned in their people behind a wall, and enslave them.”
I feel your pain Mark.
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Now this requires some thinking, but give it a try: Glasnost meant transparency. Gorbechev felt it important to come clean about Soviet history, including the Katyn massacre. There were many other things going on too, of course. Improved information allowed people to know what they were missing in terms of consumer goods. Oil prices had collapsed, so that their chief export and source of foreign currency disappeared. The Afganistan trap turned against them.
So without a drop of blood being shed, they withered and died.
Please think about this some more. It’s most interesting and instructive. Many American liberals flirted with and idealized the soviet system in the 1930’s. They turned out to be very misguided.
Are you capable of introspection?
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This story will end only once what feeds the system, cheap and expanding energy supplies, runs out. At that point the system of power and control that has been built will no longer be able to function.
And even with the Arab Spring we are seeing the old power structures retrench themselves, all that has changed in Egypt are the names of the people at the top. The institutions of oppression still exist and still function and are simply adapting to a new reality whereby the Egyption people aren’t afraid to express themselves. This is one of the reasons there is continued unrest and protest even with Mubarak out of power.
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Yes, the Europeans are very happy to let the US carry on with the white man’s burden. They were so decimated by WWII that they had to step back and let the US take control. But the old instincts are still there, especially in Britain, but in France as well.
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Sounds a lot like the ruling class in N. America. The institutions of oppression work the same way here, by controlling actions through the minds of juvenile adults some call true believers. Our cup runneth over with these self-made brain magnets. Maybe denial is a river in Egypt.
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Integration into the system takes place via the education system, TV. And movies. The agitprop is constant and ongoing. It is very hard to learn to think properly in this system. That is why we are, more than survivors, escapees.
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