Image Source : Wikimedia. org (Public Domain)
Detail of Preamble to
Constitution of the United States
.....
We, The "Unwanted" People...
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 01/27/2014 22:13 -0500
Submitted by Golem XIV via Golem XIV's Thoughts blog,
The fact that the phrase sounds antique should warn us of the scale
of our folly. We have lost, given away, pawned the power we once
claimed. We have ceased to be who we once were. Or at least who we
claimed and hoped to be – The People.
Now who are we? The Consumer? The Unemployed. The Unwanted? ”We,
the Unwanted” does not have the same ring about it does it? And yet
that is what we are fast becoming. It is time to chose. Sit in front of
your television or computer screen and let it sooth you, until one day
you too find you have have become one of the unheard, unlamented,
Unwanted. Or reach out to others and grasp hold.
It is surely time that we re-assert what the phrase “We, The People” once meant. It is suybolic I know. But symbols are powerful. And the powerful fear them.
For too long now we have been supine, docile and cowed. There
have been sputterings of resolve when a million people took to the
streets to oppose the War in Iraq. But the rulers of the day ignored us
and ‘the people’ simply went home vaguely disquieted, perhaps a little
hurt at being ignored but mainly just confused as to what to do next –
if anything.
For decades now we have let others have the initiative, let
others define what was acceptable and legitimate. When it was never
their position to do so. This must stop.
Once, a certain people declared, “No taxation without
representation.” It was and still is a simple idea. You may not tax me
unless you represent my interests. Only those with my interests in mind
may ask me for taxes. Today that
definitiion of democracy has
withered and been quietly replaced by another similar sounding but
actually radically different version – I would say perversion – of
democracy. Today we are taxed by people who represent every
interest but ours. They are still representatives but not of our
interests. Democracy has now become a kind of opera – more and more
lavish in direct proportion to its separation from ordinary people and
their lives. Every four or five years we get to chose between two teams
who represent some interest which is not ours. They may represent the
interests of bankers, or global corporations, or militarists and the
industrial complex which gets rich from their adventures, or some other
grouping within the machinery of the State, or the intersts of a
powerful global 1% – whatever interest they serve it is never yours and
mine. For those who will clamour and say the Democrats or Labour or La
Gauche represent the interests of the labour unions, WAKE UP! It’s been
decades since that was even partially true. Labour under Blair and
Brown was Thatcherism by another name and ignored a million people who
said very clearly and en masse, that the Bush/Blair war was unjust,
illegal and unwanted. The Democrats under Obama followed the same
financial and economic ideology as Bush, even chosing the same people to
run things, and was as warlike and arrogant as well. Change? Tell it to
a moron. He might believe you.
Democracy is broken. No one represents us. We are allowed
only to chose between different teams of The Entitled who, once chosen,
ignore us completely. The whole idea of a mandate has mutated.
Once that idea meant that a government could do what it had said it
would do when it was trying to win our votes. Beyond those things, it
had to consider ‘The People’. Today all parties consider that being
elected means to be handed absolute power to do whatever they feel like
doing, whatever they can ram through the tattered remains of
accountability and oversight.
Elected dictatorship in installments is what we have today. And
when each installment, no matter the different names and colours of the
teams, is almost indistinguishable from the last, what is
representative democracy if not a street parade of oversized cartoon
characters and their pantomimed arguments. Are we not amused?
If we do not speak up soon we will find when we finally do,
nothing is heard but grunting and bleating. We are, to borrow a phrase
from the brilliant Roberto Callaso, already walking through a vast
slaughter house. And those who run it have no good intent.
It is past time when we must revivify what We the People means.
We must stop reacting like frightened animals and take the
initiative.We cannot allow those who presume to rule over us to continue
to tell us what ‘must’ be done and to over-rule all debate by
insisting ‘there is no alternative.’ We must state what We the People
will accept and what we won’t, what we regard as legitimate and what is
not. It is for us to decide these things not them. It may seem like just
words and on one level of course it is.
But it was only words
when it was said the first time. What those words did the first time and
can do again, is to stop our rulers’ proclamations always being against
a blank and passive background. Simply by declaring what We
will and won’t tolerate or accept we force their proclamations to appear
as what they are – aggressive, partisan and debateable.
Read More Here
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Does the Left Have a Future?
John Stauber on Wall Street’s Political Monopoly
by JOSLYN STEVENS
This week I spoke with John Stauber, an investigative journalist, author, founder of Center for Media and Democracy, and most recently a self-professed outside agitator, on the benefits of voting two party.
In an article you wrote for CounterPunch back
in March, you zeroed in on the “Progressive Movement” a democratic
money and propaganda machine/echo chamber run by liberal elites like
OFA, Mother Jones, Van Jones, The Nation, and largely MoveOn.org to name
a few who sometimes fool progressives into supporting corporate causes
and have co-opted messages from OWS to appear populist. Considering the
far right has the left beat in the messaging game, how successful has
the professional left been at advancing their neoliberal agenda on a
larger scale? Are liberals really buying it?
A. These terms — progressives, liberals, left, populist, far right,
neo-liberal — have different meanings for different people. I like to
keep things simple and get back to basic principles and terms like
democracy, individual rights and liberties, corporate power,
concentrated wealth. The situation today is this: both the Democratic
and Republican Parties represent the interests of the most powerful
corporate elite in America. Neither party will ever represent the
fundamental radical democratic changes we need to take wealth away from
the small percentage who have concentrated it in their hands, and to
empower people in a democracy.
Let me repeat that: neither party will ever serve economic and political democracy.
The so-called “progressive movement” is made up of corporations run
by paid staff and contractors who believe that the key to the future is
to defeat the corporate Right, the Republicans, in elections. They
believe that their own elite-funded propaganda campaigns on behalf of
the environment, social justice, human rights, anti-monopoly politics,
unions, can mobilize a public that can move the Democratic Party as a
whole in this direction. That’s a farce and a fraud.
The crises facing us — poverty, ecological devastation, increasing
concentration and power in the hands of the super rich and their
economic institutions — are simply worsened by both corporate Parties,
and those Parties run on elite wealth and massive propaganda. They are
fully supported by all the established institutions of the society,
including the corporate media.
But of course those of us who are radicals outside the corporate
political parties are depicted as friends of fascism and the far right
when we refuse to lend our support to electing Democrats. That will
always be the case. And the extremely articulate and financially well
rewarded pundits, flacks, and hacks of the professional “progressive
movement” are dependent on the myth of two-party “democracy” to pay
their bills, put their kids through school, buy houses, appear on TV,
sell their books, and further their careers. They need deeply to believe
this myth of American Democracy being advanced best through the Two
Party system, because if they didn’t they’d be lousy at their jobs and
would have a hard time living with themselves. It’s the cognitive
dissonance of the salespeople; if you stop believing in the car or shoes
or whatever you are peddling, you won’t be very good at selling it. So,
they believe!
The problem we face is simple. It is the capitalist corporate
economic system itself that is destroying the very ability of the planet
to sustain life. Massive global poverty, super concentrated wealth and
power, mindless consumerism, final destruction of the biosphere’s
ability to sustain the industrial civilization — these are not issues
that will be solved by the “professional progressives” with their
clicktivism, talking points, game changing PR campaigns, and their
support for reform via the existing political establishment. The evil
shit is going to just continue to hit the fan, with no effective
mobilized response because the professional reformers and their big NGOs
suck all the air out of the room, and pose as a viable path to change.
They are not.
Hillary Clinton is playing coy about her eventual presidential run in 2016 by saying, “I
will look carefully at what I think I can do and make that decision
next year.” Like Obama, she talks the talk but doesn’t walk the walk and
like Obama’s skin color, her gender is a driving force behind
propelling her back into the White House. What can we expect from a
female President Clinton?
A. Nothing will come from any Clinton but more of the same
concentration of wealth and power in the hands of the corporate elite.
Spying, war, destruction of the main street economy is what we can
expect. But of course the billion-dollar sales pitch will be, “save our
country from the Tea Party extremists, elect the first woman president!”
It might work to get her elected, but don’t expect change.
Elizabeth Warren and Hillary Clinton appear to be polar
opposites, 99% vs 1%. Can Warren’s passion for economic justice rebrand
and revive the long-dead democrat party? She’s got the brains and
influence but given her defense of Obama and the Clintons at last year’s
DNC, I highly doubt it.
A. Nothing can “revive” the Democratic Party. Democratic
“progressives” promote this myth that somehow “we” can “take back” the
Party of the people and need saviors like Elizabeth Warren to do it.
Read More Here
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