Wednesday, September 10, 2008
The Political Fallacy of Voting
I can't even write anymore. The profound corruption of the American society by capitalism is so rank, so blatant, so egregious that I don't see any purpose in writing. Surely, everyone knows by now.
That puzzles me is why no one does anything about it. A recent Associated Press story outlined how medical costs are rising, and that corporations will be passing on these cost increases to employees by raising their deductibles. This move is a thinly-disguised pay cut. On average, according to the article, costs for medical insurance is rising 5 to 7 percent each year (recent years have been even higher). Accommodating the cost increases by increasing worker deducible is tantamount to a pay cut. The entire American medical system is so thoroughly corrupted by corporate control that it's the most expensive system in the modern world that yields less than top-notch service.
The only reason the U.S. does not have nationalized health care is because that's the way the corporations want it. They don't give a damn. They can't give a damn. Corporations turn everything they touch into an immoral activity.
The people want nationalized single-payer health care, but the people are so marginalized and atomized by the corporate media that expectations are continuously lowered. If you don't know that your neighbor wants nationalized health care, maybe its better to remain silent. If you don't learn from TV "news" that millions of other people just like you also want nationalized health care, maybe you should not organize, maybe you should remain silent.
The shibboleth of the right wing in the sixties was, "The Silent Majority." This falsely asserted that most people supported the war in Vietnam. What is true is that most people were not only opposed to the war but considered it immoral. The American populace might be more accurately described as, The Silenced Majority. What the people want, they don't get. When TV fails to reflect what is true, what the people want, we question ourselves. What we get is a focus on "leaders" instead of the will of the people.
The super-rich can control the "leaders" thus the enormous attention on them. The super-rich can't exploit the people without emphasis on "the leaders."
Voting does not a democracy make. Voting is a necessary, but not a sufficient condition for a functional democracy. People knows this and act accordingly by not voting.
Class warfare was once represented by the conflicts between the Democratic and Republican parties, but no more. The Democrats represent a slightly different set of corporations when compared with the Republicans. The political dynamics of America have been co-opted by the corporations. Who is anointed the nominee in either party is determined by candidates running the corporate funding gauntlet. No corporate approval? No money for you. No money for you, no national media exposure because you're not a "viable" candidate. A viable candidate is one which has corporate funding. Catch-22.
Today, a news article related how recent increases in the price of gasoline were controlled, not by supply and demand fluctuations, but solely by speculators on Wall Street. I really can't write anymore. The evidence is so profoundly evident of the corruption in American society and the economy.
We live in a culture controlled by a tiny minority of the super-rich who play games with gasoline to make money on Wall Street, play games with your health to make more money off of your illnesses, and play games with the electoral process to make it seem as if we're having an election this year for president. Nonsense. The corporations anointed McCain and Obama--and they don't care much which one wins because which one wins doesn't much matter. Neither candidate supports real change. It's a scam. A public relations scam.
To get excited about Obama is pathetic, but then that's what the super-rich want. They want the people to have such diminished expectations from government and the economic system that we all get excited about nothing.
The "change" in electing either Obama or Palin will be so superficial as to make me cringe. Corporations will do anything to distract the American people from policy. Race? Gender? Why not a Black lesbian vegetarian for president? Corporations recognized that the power of the purse financing campaigns is sufficiently effective filter to remove policy positions from the debate. Just as Pelosi took impeachment off-the-table, corporations take serious public policy debate off-the-table in national elections by introducing irrelevancies. It's not enough to be black, but are you going to pull U.S. troops out of Iraq on day-one of your administration? Are you going to toss corporations out of the American health care system by nationalizing it? These are the substantive issues which corporations will do anything to prevent from "leaking" into the corporate media.
McCain understands cogently how superficial race and gender are to American politics. The gates to power are opening to women and minorities--as long as they reflect the dominant interests of power and moneyed interests. Doing the people's business has vanished from the American political arena.
Class warfare is won by the people when they organize. As long as white-collar workers hold on to the illusion that they are "better" than poor people, and believe that only poor, unskilled workers organize unions, we are lost to the forces of corporate oppression--lost in a massive intentional delusion crafted by the media.
The U.S. is not the "greatest" nation on Earth. The U.S. is a disgrace. I'm ashamed of U.S. foreign policy and I'm angry as hell with the American domestic policy.
Don't we all get it by now? Surely, not another word need be spoken. They are taking away your health care, taking away your money right out of your wallet every time you buy a tank of gas, taking your money when they charge tuition for your children to attend college, taking away a trillion dollars out of your own pockets to line the pockets of war profiteers and to steal gas from Iraq, Georgia, and Azerbaijan--so the speculators on Wall Street can make even greater profits.
Global climate change is a function of corporations run amok on the planet. Changing individual human activities (e.g., using CFL lights instead of incandescents) avoids the core problem: the economic system managed by corporations. Corporatism is fundamentally, profoundly a flawed system, lacking democratic principles, and lacking appropriate restraint.
There is no end to corporate greed. They don't know the word enough.
We all have an enormously important choice: Shall we content ourselves with what is handed out to us by the super-rich--and in doing so escape the reality of exploitation through religion, or staring into the abyss of TV? Accepting a socially-condoned delusion comes with a steep internal price.
To recognize that we are exploited and powerless,is ironically the first step toward political empowerment.
Perhaps at a later date s I can muster a word on the 59,000+ nonprofit organizations in California. The meaningful core of American society can be found not in the corporate workplace or in the voting booth, but in the marginalized "nonprofit" associations. The core human values are nonprofit. The things that matter to humans: truth, justice, freedom, equality, fairness, opportunity, have nothing to do with money or corporations. More on Jeremy Rifkin's provocative elucidation that the core of American society has been co-opted, or colonized, by moneyed interests.
Freedom from the fallacy of voting and the pernicious illusions of the corporatized marketplace constitute the challenges of consciousness for the twenty-first century.
That puzzles me is why no one does anything about it. A recent Associated Press story outlined how medical costs are rising, and that corporations will be passing on these cost increases to employees by raising their deductibles. This move is a thinly-disguised pay cut. On average, according to the article, costs for medical insurance is rising 5 to 7 percent each year (recent years have been even higher). Accommodating the cost increases by increasing worker deducible is tantamount to a pay cut. The entire American medical system is so thoroughly corrupted by corporate control that it's the most expensive system in the modern world that yields less than top-notch service.
The only reason the U.S. does not have nationalized health care is because that's the way the corporations want it. They don't give a damn. They can't give a damn. Corporations turn everything they touch into an immoral activity.
The people want nationalized single-payer health care, but the people are so marginalized and atomized by the corporate media that expectations are continuously lowered. If you don't know that your neighbor wants nationalized health care, maybe its better to remain silent. If you don't learn from TV "news" that millions of other people just like you also want nationalized health care, maybe you should not organize, maybe you should remain silent.
The shibboleth of the right wing in the sixties was, "The Silent Majority." This falsely asserted that most people supported the war in Vietnam. What is true is that most people were not only opposed to the war but considered it immoral. The American populace might be more accurately described as, The Silenced Majority. What the people want, they don't get. When TV fails to reflect what is true, what the people want, we question ourselves. What we get is a focus on "leaders" instead of the will of the people.
The super-rich can control the "leaders" thus the enormous attention on them. The super-rich can't exploit the people without emphasis on "the leaders."
Voting does not a democracy make. Voting is a necessary, but not a sufficient condition for a functional democracy. People knows this and act accordingly by not voting.
Class warfare was once represented by the conflicts between the Democratic and Republican parties, but no more. The Democrats represent a slightly different set of corporations when compared with the Republicans. The political dynamics of America have been co-opted by the corporations. Who is anointed the nominee in either party is determined by candidates running the corporate funding gauntlet. No corporate approval? No money for you. No money for you, no national media exposure because you're not a "viable" candidate. A viable candidate is one which has corporate funding. Catch-22.
Today, a news article related how recent increases in the price of gasoline were controlled, not by supply and demand fluctuations, but solely by speculators on Wall Street. I really can't write anymore. The evidence is so profoundly evident of the corruption in American society and the economy.
We live in a culture controlled by a tiny minority of the super-rich who play games with gasoline to make money on Wall Street, play games with your health to make more money off of your illnesses, and play games with the electoral process to make it seem as if we're having an election this year for president. Nonsense. The corporations anointed McCain and Obama--and they don't care much which one wins because which one wins doesn't much matter. Neither candidate supports real change. It's a scam. A public relations scam.
To get excited about Obama is pathetic, but then that's what the super-rich want. They want the people to have such diminished expectations from government and the economic system that we all get excited about nothing.
The "change" in electing either Obama or Palin will be so superficial as to make me cringe. Corporations will do anything to distract the American people from policy. Race? Gender? Why not a Black lesbian vegetarian for president? Corporations recognized that the power of the purse financing campaigns is sufficiently effective filter to remove policy positions from the debate. Just as Pelosi took impeachment off-the-table, corporations take serious public policy debate off-the-table in national elections by introducing irrelevancies. It's not enough to be black, but are you going to pull U.S. troops out of Iraq on day-one of your administration? Are you going to toss corporations out of the American health care system by nationalizing it? These are the substantive issues which corporations will do anything to prevent from "leaking" into the corporate media.
McCain understands cogently how superficial race and gender are to American politics. The gates to power are opening to women and minorities--as long as they reflect the dominant interests of power and moneyed interests. Doing the people's business has vanished from the American political arena.
Class warfare is won by the people when they organize. As long as white-collar workers hold on to the illusion that they are "better" than poor people, and believe that only poor, unskilled workers organize unions, we are lost to the forces of corporate oppression--lost in a massive intentional delusion crafted by the media.
The U.S. is not the "greatest" nation on Earth. The U.S. is a disgrace. I'm ashamed of U.S. foreign policy and I'm angry as hell with the American domestic policy.
Don't we all get it by now? Surely, not another word need be spoken. They are taking away your health care, taking away your money right out of your wallet every time you buy a tank of gas, taking your money when they charge tuition for your children to attend college, taking away a trillion dollars out of your own pockets to line the pockets of war profiteers and to steal gas from Iraq, Georgia, and Azerbaijan--so the speculators on Wall Street can make even greater profits.
Global climate change is a function of corporations run amok on the planet. Changing individual human activities (e.g., using CFL lights instead of incandescents) avoids the core problem: the economic system managed by corporations. Corporatism is fundamentally, profoundly a flawed system, lacking democratic principles, and lacking appropriate restraint.
There is no end to corporate greed. They don't know the word enough.
We all have an enormously important choice: Shall we content ourselves with what is handed out to us by the super-rich--and in doing so escape the reality of exploitation through religion, or staring into the abyss of TV? Accepting a socially-condoned delusion comes with a steep internal price.
To recognize that we are exploited and powerless,is ironically the first step toward political empowerment.
Perhaps at a later date s I can muster a word on the 59,000+ nonprofit organizations in California. The meaningful core of American society can be found not in the corporate workplace or in the voting booth, but in the marginalized "nonprofit" associations. The core human values are nonprofit. The things that matter to humans: truth, justice, freedom, equality, fairness, opportunity, have nothing to do with money or corporations. More on Jeremy Rifkin's provocative elucidation that the core of American society has been co-opted, or colonized, by moneyed interests.
Freedom from the fallacy of voting and the pernicious illusions of the corporatized marketplace constitute the challenges of consciousness for the twenty-first century.
