Regardless of what I just wrote I Am Not A Communist.
Really.
Listen to this segment from The Mike Malloy Show here Permalink: http://www.voicesinourheads.com/2017/07/14/regardless-just-…communist-really/
Now that we’ve established that the primary cause of the destruction of our country, and the rest of the planet, is Unregulated Capitalism on Steroids … where psychopathic corporations pollute the air, water, and the dirt beneath our feet … where the food and water we depend upon for our existence has been poisoned by the mega-conglomerates who claim that their rights take precedence over human beings … where the political process has become so corrupted that the majority of our elected representatives are simply paid shills for corporate interests … where the final arbitrators of our rule of law, The Supreme Court, are not exempt from this Corruption by Corporations … where wars are fought, not to defend the country and its citizens, but to increase the profits of the Military-Industrial-Energy Corporate Complex … and where Corporate-Controlled Media fulfills its obligation to their owners by never reporting accurately on any of the above …
Um … I may have jumped the gun a little bit here because I don’t think we’ve actually established that yet … so for brevity’s sake … here’s everything I know about Capitalism in 100 words or less.
Capitalism is an economic system in which the means of production and distribution are privately or corporately owned. As a profit driven system it values profits over the labor that produces the profits. Capitalism starts wars, destroys people and the environment, and stomps all over the world in search of cheaper labor and new markets to capture. The Capitalism model of infinite growth is ultimately unsustainable in that the resources needed to maintain the system are finite. It is conceptually silly and disastrous in practice.
We could tweak that definition all day and still not satisfy everybody but I’m happy with it so let’s move on.
Depending on where you live, Capitalism is a dandy little system. Americans represent 5 percent of the world’s population and consume about 30 percent of the world’s material resources and 26 percent of the world’s energy.
The main problem with Capitalism, besides the fact that it ultimately doesn’t work, is that it is so damn seductive. Other countries want to live like we do too. It doesn’t take too long to figure out that if the rest of the world lived like we do … we’d need more resources than the world possesses … and unless we’re all set to colonize other planets … it looks like there’s going to be some serious losers in this zero sum game we’re all playing. And when we should try to figure out how best to share and share alike … to be flexible in the face of reality … there’s always some selfish blowhard that screws everything up.
http://www.baltimorechronicle.com/080304ThomasWheeler.shtml
… Many feel the “American way of life” is an entitlement that operates outside the laws of nature. At the Earth Summit in 1992, George H.W. Bush forcefully declared, “The American way of life is not negotiable.”
With that statement as a starting point … we cannot help but fail.
But are any of our political leaders saying anything different? Or is it understood that it would be political suicide to tell Americans that The American Way of Life doesn’t work? Is there a politician out there somewhere who isn’t hooked into the death cult of Capitalism? I reluctantly placed my trust in Barack Obama but over the last week or so he’s been selling himself out as fast as he can before a fair price has even been agreed upon. What did I expect? He’s a politician y’know.
I almost completely agree with George Carlin:
“Now, there’s one thing you might have noticed I don’t complain about: politicians. Everybody complains about politicians. Everybody says they suck. Well, where do people think these politicians come from? They don’t fall out of the sky. They don’t pass through a membrane from another reality. They come from American parents and American families, American homes, American schools, American churches, American businesses and American universities, and they are elected by American citizens. This is the best we can do folks. This is what we have to offer. It’s what our system produces: Garbage in, garbage out. If you have selfish, ignorant citizens, you’re going to get selfish, ignorant leaders. Term limits ain’t going to do any good; you’re just going to end up with a brand new bunch of selfish, ignorant Americans. So, maybe, maybe, maybe, it’s not the politicians who suck. Maybe something else sucks around here… like, the public. Yeah, the public sucks. There’s a nice campaign slogan for somebody: ‘The Public Sucks.”
He ended by saying something you can’t say on the radio. (Imagine that.) Paraphrasing, he said “Screw Hope.”
That’s what I don’t agree with. His last two words. Because there is Hope.
We know that Americans fought and won concessions from Capitalism and the government it controls.
We organized.
We organized and demanded fair wages and decent hours. Women organized and demanded the right to vote. African-Americans organized and demanded Civil Rights.
We organized, demanded, held strikes, boycotted … and won. That’s what Americans did and that’s how it worked for most of the last century.
And the only way it won’t work now is if we deny that we are not like Those Americans. For some reason the DNA in our bodies has changed and we are not the same kind of people our parents and our grandparents were. For some reason we can’t imagine turning off the TV and organizing a movement made up of our friends, families, and neighbors.
Maybe the only thing that has changed is that we may have forgotten how to begin?
If that’s the case then everybody can go out and buy this book:
Rules for Radicals by Saul Alinsky
In 1971, Saul Alinsky wrote an entertaining classic on grassroots organizing called Rules for Radicals. For Alinsky, organizing is the process of highlighting what is wrong and convincing people they can actually do something about it. This book tells the “have-nots” (you know … us) how they can organize to achieve real political power for the practice of true democracy.
Isn’t it about time that we acknowledge that the situation we are in now will not stay the same … it won’t get better by itself … it will only get worse … Unless we do something.
Because if we don’t … every single crappy science-fiction story ever written about “The Future” will come true and who the hell wants their kids to grow up in a Charlton Heston movie?
Soylent Green Rations Are Up!
Regardless of what I just wrote I Am Not A Communist … Really July 1, 2008
