Many Problems, One Response

As a kid (child) I often saw my grandmother cut off the head of a chicken, then let it run around for a couple of minutes before hanging it on the clothesline by its feet to drain the blood.

Initially, it was funny. As I grew older, it became much less amusing. Now it is impossible to avoid an analog that was never amusing: our reaction to the destruction of the country. In this case it is not the head that is being discarded. It’s the body.

Have you recently corrected the problem of climate change by purchasing a Toyota Prius, a Chevrolet Volt or Nissan Leaf? Did you replace all of your light bulbs with compact fluorescents? Is your wardrobe drying on that new clothesline?

So, you’re feeling pretty smug. You solved the problem. Except, that corporations consume three quarters of all energy in this country.

You categorize your garbage. You recycle. You proudly display your three barrels of sorted garbage at the curb.

Brace yourself. Municipal waste totals only three percent of what this country produces. Corporations put you to shame.

You only wash your car once a year. You don’t flush your toilet. You don’t piss in the lake. You know how precious clean water has become.

You might be ahead of me by now. You and me and our city uses ten percent of the total.

What Is Your Cause?

What’s important enough to you to get you up off your duff? If a bunch of people are going to rally or demonstrate on climate change, or pollution, or against war, or on the subject of immigration, or to build a museum to the art of air guitar, would you add your voice?

We have a host of problems. You didn’t know? Do you really see any of these protesters having their desired effect? What do all, or essentially all, of our problems have in common? That’s easy. Corporations.

All For One

The one response? One response.

Coalesce. Focus. Merge.

It appears that everyone upset over this problem or that issue is running around as chickens that have lost their heads. One group is protesting over there. Another’s demonstrating over here. Oops. There’s another bunch marching down Main Street. Oh, and another occupying the park.

All will fail. All are actually protesting against the same thing. They just aren’t necessarily aware of it. Whatever they are protesting, it is one of the results of corporate control.

Corporations have bought almost every politician. They get what they want. You don’t. Therefore, the answer at this time is not electoral politics. The Tea Party did surprisingly well in getting a fair number of their people in office. Still, they didn’t get what they wanted.

There are reasons they have failed. First, their “grass roots” movement was subsidized by the same parties responsible for the problems they wanted to address. Second, they had no idea of how the system really works. Third, they elected a bunch of bozos. I will be nice and forgo spelling out the rest.

Corporations do not support a free market. Why? Because, if there was one, it wouldn’t support their goals. Right. There is no such thing. There never has been.

Corporations do not support capitalism; at least not for themselves. Remember the bail out?

Corporations lie. Corporations bribe. Corporations cheat. Corporations steal. Corporations have destroyed the system that our founders envisioned. The Founding Fathers even expressed their apprehensions that corporations would destroy their handiwork. They were prescient.

If corporations don’t support capitalism, do they support socialism? If that serves their purpose. It makes no difference. Let’s spell out just what corporations want. Benito Mussolini was something of an expert on fascism. He stated, “Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power.”

You hear the term thrown around indiscriminately by people who have no idea what it really means. now you know. It is the scourge of everything most Americans value. It is the description of the powers that be. It is the description of those that presently control this government.

It’s ironic. The Soviet Union merged their corporations with the government. In their case, the government was in the driver’s seat. In our case, the corporations and the government also have merged. There is a difference. Here, the corporations control the government. Which do you prefer? My answer is, “neither.”

The response, the single response is that, regardless of what you rank as the most important problem, everyone needs to combine in a single movement to mass our scattered efforts against the real problem, the real enemy.

Benjamin Franklin said it best, at the signing of the Declaration of Independence,  “We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.”

There may be some issues where you find yourself on one side or another. It makes no difference. The real problem is that the corporations have made the decision for you. They have left you no viable option.

How do we begin? We identify one or more people with a high profile, great contacts and the possibility of creating a network of the like-minded.

Build the pressure until the politicians feel their careers are in jeopardy; until the powers that be are off balance from a response of the hoi polloi that was unplanned for.

It will likely take a few, or several, election cycles to gather the strength necessary. Until then, our politics must be every kind except electoral.

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