Representative Demockery

We are told that we have a Democracy and our will is being done through our representatives in Congress. We are told that our votes matter, that we make a difference when we go to the polls. As long as you are happy with the extremely subtle options you have from one candidate to the next, you can make some difference. But if you are considered "left of center" or "far right" you may be forever politically banished from participating in real change. The ruling political factions are constantly pulling the wheel in both directions so that no person is heading in the direction they favor and no one will ever be able to turn this ship of state around should we be heading in the wrong direction completely.

Where ever you are in America you have a representative in Congress, WOW! There's someone in Washington DC right now who is willing to go to bat for you, to bring your concerns to the table, to reconcile your interests with the interests of others. What? You've never met your Congress person? You haven't given them your list of things you need done? What are you waiting for? They're there to serve you. That's why they're called representatives, right? Does anyone believe this? Does anyone out there actually think that they have a hot line to the government in their Congress person? Of course not, except,... unless... you're a corporation. Corporations have lobbyists, they make campaign contributions, they know they're represented.

So, average American, ha ha, the joke is on you: your representative is not representing you to the government, they are representing those corporations who give them money, oh yes, and themselves. Look at our Democracy from the standpoint of Corporations and industry representatives and it begins to make perfect sense. There are over 300 million Americans with interests and concerns that are opposed to your interests and concerns, oh no, how do we get what we want? Don't worry about them, because they have relinquished their power to a handful of career politicians, less than 600! As a corporation you can't vote for these people, but you can finance their elections, and you can inundate them with lobbyists, sometimes as many as six lobbyists for each representative!

Of course you can do a lot more as a corporation, you can give politicians gifts, discounts, favors, perks, and sometimes drugs and prostitutes, why not? Sure there are laws against these things but, ha ha ha ha, seriously, as if you can jail a corporation. You're perfectly safe from prosecution, theoretically you can get in serious trouble but come on, you own this country. And the more politicians you buy the more of this country you own, and that country over there too. So don't worry about "We the people" just keep the people content enough, they have too much to lose to take back Democracy from your greedy clutches. Most of the people are apathetic and have lost faith in Democracy long ago, isn't that great?! They had some hope with Obama and now they know that it's completely hopeless because you own Obama now too, success!

We will not have true Democracy until we have direct Democracy. No more representatives, they have never represented my interests and they never will. If we can have such low voter turn outs for electing people, then why don't we just vote on each issue ourselves? If you don't care about an issue don't vote, but don't trust anyone to vote in your interest, that's just plain stupid. There should not be parties lumping votes together in a Democracy, the whole purpose of block voting is to sabotage Democracy. Instant runoff voting would be far better than our current system as it would eventually break the duopoly imposed by the Democrats and Republicans, who represent the same interests. But I prefer to make my own decisions and I am not dumb enough to trust any politician, especially when they are selling hope and change.

An Inconvenient Revolution

"You say you want a revolution, we better get it on right away"

John Lennon

The fore fathers of America were "revolutionaries" but they merely succeeded in creating a new empire to take the place of the old one. At any given time in every country around the world there are a number of people who would join a rebellion against that country. Not for the thrill or glory of an impossible battle, but for the crimes they have witnessed by those in power. Modern forms of government are not perfect to put it lightly, but from their foundation perfection is unattainable. Only from fear of an evil chaotic anarchy do we hold fast to these systems that are failing us and destroying the lands we cherish and every form of life that inhabits it.

The lines between country and corporation have blurred so completely they have all but vanished, so that politicians only decide how the planet will be raped for short term gain. And war, the biggest business of all, will continue to be a booming industry as long as there's anything left in the universe to blow up. Workers will forever teeter between being worked to death and starved to death all for the promise of a brighter day. The possibility (however improbable) of the average worker becoming wealthy in their lifetime is the carrot, and the prison in every town and city is the stick.

Our corporate models are designed to squeeze every resource more tightly every quarter to bring back bigger and bigger profits to the shareholders. This is a machine designed to make the rich richer and the poor poorer at an exponential rate. Their wealth buys them every material possession they could imagine, but wealth is also power, and the wealthy enjoy more rights than those of the poor. Justice and democracy do not exist in the realm of capitalism because wealth buys elections and wins court cases. Health is even for sale and many people simply cannot afford to pay medical bills, to make people poorer is to take from them their health.

Those who sit in the executive positions of states and corporations also enjoy the security of almost complete insulation from those who suffer from their decision making. The wealthiest 5% do not just get bumped into on the streets, they have their own worlds and rarely do they leave them. They can go from their massive estate to their country club, and then off to the VIP section of the local airport to have their private jet take them to their private island in the Bahamas. The rich and powerful spend much of their money on security to keep us away from them so they never have to listen to our cries for justice. All one has to do to experience this is demonstrate at the meetings of the WTO, the G8 or G20, or any other conspiring of these entities.

For some people there is nothing left to lose, the police are at the door with the eviction notice from the bank and there's no place else in the world for them to go. Maybe they have unpaid medical bills and just lost their job, or they have been looking but there is no job and unemployment cut them off. Isolated and afraid some people take desperate actions like the man who flew his small plane into an IRS building, some just suffer in silence. For most people in America revolution would be a major inconvenience, they still have something left to lose and they think they can keep it and still have more. It has always been important for the wealthy to keep a balance between the desperate and the content, but this equilibrium has ended.

What is revolution? Well it can be a lot of things, it can be a violent upheaval or it can be a grassroots campaign gone global. I do not condone the use of violence but for those in power violence is the solution to every problem, and when they engage people in violent ways they are spinning their own fate. I believe we can have a peaceful revolution world wide with the majority of the 10 billion souls willing to lay everything on the line for a new lateral world without corporations creating modern day aristocrats to rule over the peasants. Money is the contract by which we sell our souls to our governments and relinquish our power to the wealthy. You can be a revolutionary with a wallet, a ballot, or a bullet, but it's not revolutionary if it doesn't change the world.