|
I mean Corporate Rule, here. Cuz that is the problem, everywhere--that we, as a people don't rule our government any more, and thus our presidents, our military, our lawmakers and our courts do whatever they damn please on behalf of the super-rich.
It's hard to think of anything uglier than this. The wars on Iraq and Afghanistan, for oil and for pipelines. Torturing prisoners. Katrina. The BP spill. The Exxon Mobil spill. An induced Great Depression. The rich making billions and billions in profit from war, malfeasance and disaster.
Then this--which has to be one of the dirtiest, slimiest, most disreputable, dishonest, underhanded, bought-and-paid-for court rulings I've ever heard of. Except for it not being from the U.S. Supreme Court (yet), it's right up there with Bush vs Gore and Citizens United. Blatant misrule! Arrogant misrule! In-your-face misrule!
I'm afraid we are going to be Egypt before this is over. There, they have a single dictator as the vortex of corruption and the focus of the rebellion. Here, we have a dictatorial consortium with many of its actors hard to see, and none of them having loyalty to us or any people. They are "The Octopus"--as novelist Frank Norris once put it, re the power of the Railroad Barons in California--but much more complex and hard to focus on today, for these corporate powers monopolize the entire economy of the western world and control its most powerful governments including ours. But the thin veneer of democracy that they have used to fool and rob our people, here, keeps getting slashed, ripped, torn up, by their own out-of-control greed, leaving gaps in their facade where reality peeps through.
I thought that the 'TRADE SECRET' voting machines--now largely (80%) controlled by one, private, far rightwing connected corporation--ES&S, which just bought out Diebold--which were spread like a plague throughout the U.S. over the 2002 to 2004 period, would be the wake-up call. It has not been, yet. The "black holing" of this most shocking reality, by the corpo-fascist press, has been near total, sucking all light into its maw. It is the ultimate in Corporate Rule.
But one thing that the 'TRADE SECRET' voting machines make very clear is that this dictatorial consortium FEARS US. They are terrified of what the American people would do if we had transparent elections. Their non-stop brainwashing, their filthy corporate campaign donations, their filthy lobbying, their control of the Supreme Court in Bush vs Gore--none of this was enough to contain us. They had to take direct secret control of the vote counts.
And that's where we are now--an entirely controlled, "bushwhacked" people, with a very hard to see "dictator"--a multi-headed, multi-armed, monstrous dictator--and with our sovereignty and our democracy being ripped to shreds before our very eyes. And when the shredding is complete--when this "octopus" no longer feels the need to delude us--we will be Egypt, where hundreds lay dead, and thousands are being beaten, imprisoned, tortured, for demanding democracy.
We do still have an option--and that is, to get rid of the 'TRADE SECRET' voting machines, still a doable thing, since decisions about the voting system remain local. You can't fight an "octopus" everywhere at once. You have to focus on strategic points--in this case, the very point of our power as a people: our votes. If we can peel off the monstrous grip they have on our vote counts, we have a chance.
There is an election integrity movement, started in 2004 (with DU as a major starting point, as a matter of fact) but it needs to get much bigger, and more widespread, in every county throughout the U.S., with individual communities demanding transparent vote counting--vote counting in PUBLIC view, vote counting that everyone can SEE and understand. These local actions will reverberate throughout the land and throughout the world: The American people demanding vote counts that we can SEE!
It won't solve every problem at once, but it is where we MUST begin: restoring our control over our main power mechanism, our vote.
Without the power to nominate and elect presidents, congresspeople, and some judges, and to influence the appointment of other judges, and to elect governors, state legislators and other "public servants," of OUR choosing--the best, the most honest, the most intelligent, the most loyal to democracy--we have no hope of reform and can easily become a vulnerable "mob"--or rather, in this vast land, scattered "mobs" of intensely frustrated, oppressed people expressing their outrage at particular grievances, with no strategic goal--easily crushed by the violent powers of government, or bought off, or "divided and conquered." The issue of the vote count is universal, and either it is transparent--SEEABLE--or it is not. Once its non-transparency is exposed, nothing but total transparency will be acceptable. Either you can watch the votes being counted or you cannot. It is THE rallying point of democracy and, once this final coup d'etat against our democracy gets exposed and starts to fall, the entire edifice of Corporate Rule will be exposed.
The fight against the Railroad Barons in California at the beginning of the last century precipitated a huge democracy movement in California which spread throughout the country. This is how California became "the Golden State." It wasn't just the sunshine. It wasn't just the natural resources. It was the fervent struggle to throw off Corporate Rule and the establishment of real democracy, during the Hiram Johnson* era, which unleashed the creativity of the people who lived here and the people who immigrated here. Without democracy--and its promotion of both political and economic equality--a society will inevitably deteriorate into tyranny and ruin. We are on that precipice now, with our democracy and our ability to correct our nation's course nearly gone. We must get our power back from this predatory, octopus-like Dictatorial Consortium, starting with our voting system.
---------------------------
*("The first casualty when war comes, is truth."--Sen. Hiram Johnson, re WW I. But his greatest legacy was his big democracy and political reforms in California as governor.)
|
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
