We can all see where that has led us, at least those of us who don’t refuse to see.
"The ballot box doesn’t help when all you have to vote for are crooks," I said to my father. He laughed and acknowledged that was true. Or when they steal your votes by disenfranchisement, gerrymandering, the kind of crap the repubs are up to in California, or outright theft as we have seen in every election since at least 2000. The ballot box (as a solution) is a myth. It is magical thinking. It is the opiate of the masses.
When you continually choose between the lesser of two evils, what you end up with is...evil. That has never been more abundantly clear than it is today.
When we do manage to elect good people with the best of intentions they tend to get co-opted, corrupted, or otherwise end up letting us down – if not stabbing us in the back.
Someone wrote a diary recently cautioning us not to alienate moderate republicans or conservative democrats, as if we could persuade those idiots to support intelligent positions. Yeah right. Anyone who still self-identifies as a republican is an enemy of everything that is desirable for our country’s future (IMHO). And any democrat who votes against our interests might as well be a republican. I’m sick of begging the democrats to help us. It’s clear they’re not going to. They’ll stroke us, tell us how cute we are and then hit us up for money – but they are not going to help us. They all work for corporate America. And as long as that is true, they are the enemy.
If you’re thinking I have nothing but scorn for our political system, you are right. Just look what it has wrought. It deserves nothing but scorn.
Now I am not talking about the American system as conceived by the founders of this nation, which we would do well to get back to, I have the utmost respect for that bit of genius. I am talking about the corrupted parody of it that our system has since become. I am talking about the corporate oligarchy.
"America is on the verge of losing everything it was meant to be," I told my father. He immediately agreed.
"It’s what Eisenhower warned us about," he said, to which I immediately agreed.
In his farewell address to the nation on January 17, 1961, after eight years as President (and motivated no doubt by guilt over his part in establishing this dynamic), Dwight David Eisenhower had this sobering advice for America.
"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
"We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together." Source
The military-industrial complex, perhaps more accurately referred to as the military-industrial congressional complex, is generally defined as a coalition of the military, Wall Street bankers, industrialists and those enablers (politicians) and hangers-on (the investor elite) who profit by manufacturing arms and selling them to governments around the world without regard for how they will be used or upon whom. Eisenhower points out that until World War II the United States did not even have an armaments industry. Even though "American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well," the United States could "no longer risk emergency improvisation" of the country's national defense.
So Eisenhower saw us as stuck with the need for a weapons industry but imperiled by its growing influence and power, and by its essential amorality. Few people have ever been so right about anything. The fact that we failed to adequately heed his warning will forever be seen as one of the great tragedies of our era, or as I have said many times, a pity beyond measure.
THIS is the beast that pulls the strings of our government. THIS is why we must be lied to and cannot be trusted with the truth. Because the truth is so horribly ugly that it could cause a spontaneous rebellion. If enough of the population were to ever ‘get it’, there would be rioting in the streets, politicians would be hung in the public square, the NY Stock Exchange would be razed to the ground, the mansions of the rich would be ransacked and their occupants slain (no I don’t advocate this – I’m just sayin’). THIS is the reason for all the lies, all the twisting of reality, the subterfuge, obfuscation, and spin. THIS is why they have corrupted our government and usurped the power of a no longer existing free press.
The truth is anathema to these evil fucks. They will stop at nothing to perpetuate their lies.
There are two ways to deal with a reality like this, you can fight them or join them. Sadly, many of those to whom we would look to for leadership in changing this awful reality have chosen to join them instead of leading us in opposing their evil agenda of perpetual war for profit.
Some uniformed officers, too, said that the Clintons were more associated with a ’60s culture than a military one, and that only time would tell if Mrs. Clinton’s appreciation of the military would go beyond niceties and expressions of concern.
Donald L. Kerrick, a retired general and former deputy national security adviser to President Clinton, acknowledged that some people inside and outside the military were skeptical of Mrs. Clinton’s intentions and wary that she would shift federal dollars to domestic programs like health care.
NY Times
In response to that last paragraph, our friend Booman at the Booman Tribune had this to say:
Apparently, the only way to have good relations with the military and be tough enough to be commander in chief is to throw money at the Pentagon and not at cherished domestic programs or health care. Of course, no mention is made of what should be funded at the Pentagon. Do we want to raise a few more divisions? Do we want to improve our Veteran's hospitals? Do we want to build an orbiting ray-gun that can destroy underground laboratories? It doesn't seem to matter as long as we throw money at the Pentagon.
We have a lot of work to do in this country to provide a hospitable political climate for questioning the direction of the military-industrial-congressional complex.
from Booman’s Hillary and How the Media Drives the Military-Industrial Complex
But that is what we’re going to have to do: build a hospitable political climate for not only questioning but also changing (and changing in a big way) the direction of the Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex
No one is going to give us back our government – and the ballot box (as it stands) will not help us. We are going to have to take it back, and we will have to do so without the help of dishonest politicians – not without extraordinary pressure applied by we the people. The first thing we have to do is purge our government of the influence of money with publicly financed campaigns and elections, and outlaw all but the most legitimate lobbying.
Then we have to purge our government of those who would continue to lie to us – ever - about anything. It’s time to shed the secrecy, pull back the blackout curtains, and let some light into our government. It’s time to stop living a lie. We deserve to know what our government is doing in every circumstance. We deserve a government that operates in plain sight and that tells us the truth. We deserve a government that acts in ways that the American people would approve. No more School of the Americas. No more Abu Ghraibs. No more Guantanamos. No more aggressive wars. We should all be sick of being lied to. I know I am.
Until we face the truth that our country has been hijacked by war profiteers, we will not muster the enormous will required to change it. We desperately need to re-purpose the MICC and turn its genius and might to peaceful pursuits. Only then might we be able to save ourselves from global warming, the energy crisis, and all the other challenges that face us. If we continue to foolishly pour our treasure and blood down the black hole of war we are doomed. Our only hope is to face the truth.
I say down with the liars and down with a government that runs on lies. We need to demand the truth, for only the truth shall set us free.
In this day and age when we face multiple crises that could spell doom for all life on earth, wars are a horrible distraction – one we can ill afford. We must stop being tricked into supporting them. Period!
War is barbarism. At this point in history we should be above and beyond such degenerate madness.
WAR is a racket. It always has been.
It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.
A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small "inside" group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.
General Smedley Butler, Two-Time Congressional Medal of Honor Recipient
All wars in the modern era have been sold on the basis of black-hearted lies. Our culture is awash in them. Nixon, Kissinger, Reagan, Bush’s I and II will all go down in history as among the world’s greatest and most horrible liars and murderers.
Another famous advocate of lying was the man who is no doubt Karl Rove’s favorite Nazi, Joseph Goebbels.
"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State."
Joseph Goebbels
Some people think it’s inflammatory or hyperbole to mention Nazis when discussing Bushco. I respectfully disagree. I say it’s a qualitatively accurate comparison, and I think it’s clear that Rove studied Goebbels.
"Intellectual activity is a danger to the building of character."
Goebbels
"As people do better, they start voting like Republicans - unless they have too much education and vote Democratic, which proves there can be too much of a good thing."
Karl Rove
And I haven’t even mentioned Leo Strauss and his central role in neocon philosophy.
Many neoconservatives like Paul Wolfowitz are disciples of a philosopher who believed that the elite should use deception, religious fervor and perpetual war to control the ignorant masses.
Source
That’s a very telling quote given our present circumstances - don’t you think?
It’s all about lying, obfuscation and concealing the truth. My friend, the preeminent French writer, Jerome a Paris sums it up nicely.
The right has perfected a very simple technique: repeat your lies on every occasion, dismiss any alternative position as partisan and extremist (or even treasonous), and cast yourself as moderate, balanced and in the mainstream. When caught in flat out lies, never admit to anything, just attack the source, attack your opponents of what you're criticized for, and change the topic.
from Jerome’s The Reality War
Most of what most Americans believe are lies - lies that have been concocted and deliberately foisted on the entire culture so that rich and evil men can profit from the horrors of war while enjoying the support of the masses.
Knowing the history of our country and knowing that our government derives its just powers from the consent of the governed makes me a radical.
Knowing that we have the right to abolish and reform the government when it fails to serve the needs of we the people makes me a radical.
The understanding that timidity, simple solutions, or half-measures such as ‘voting for better people’ will not have any appreciable affect on the entrenched and corrupt machine our government has become makes me a radical.
The realization that our government constantly tells us all terrible lies makes me a radical.
The certain knowledge that our government spies on peaceniks and ordinary Americans as though they were heinous criminals makes me a radical.
The knowledge that our system is so compromised by corruption that it will never (in its present form) serve the people makes me a radical.
The understanding that the greed-driven dynamic dominated by the Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex will doom all life on earth in the foreseeable future if not changed and changed radically makes me a radical.
The hope that we can re-purpose this evil machine and refocus our intelligence, talent and treasure on solving the very real problems of impending environmental disaster, sustainable agriculture, alternative fuels, providing food and potable water for the world’s population, providing rational and meaningful healthcare to all, fixing our broken system of public education, repairing and replacing our crumbling infrastructure and etcetera and etcetera makes me a radical.
The painful awareness that we are running out of time makes me a radical.
I refuse to fall for meaningless distractions and misdirection, and I refuse to give up and just kiss all of our asses goodbye without a fight.
And that my friends is why I am a radical.
EDIT! teacherken had an excellent diary up earlier that spoke to some of the same points. If you missed it you should check it out. It's a damn good read. Opportunity during crisis: A preliminary response to Kid Oakland
