For the past few months I've been cringing at the barrage of fundraising emails from the DCCC. Every day there’s multiple emails groveling for even just $5.
“We won’t sugarcoat this. We’re in serious trouble. And we need your help.”
“This is your LAST CHANCE to get your donation to President Obama’s call-to-action TRIPLE-MATCHED.”
I’ve also been “On Notice” from the DCCC and have received emails addressed by “CANCELLATION NOTICE.”
When did the DCCC stoop to the lows of sleazy predator debt collector tactics? They must really be hurting bad.
Is it any wonder why?
If they had just enacted some real fucking progressive liberal policies, I write back, they’d have a tornado of volunteers knocking down their campaign doors. For starters, why don’t you try prosecuting some Wall St criminals, rescinding tax breaks for Exxon Mobil and GE, enacting a progressive taxation to levels in the 1950’s (when income over $1Million was taxed at 90%) immediately instituting a major overhaul for sustainable, renewable wind and solar energy, abolishing student debt, enacting a single-payer healthcare system for all and levying massive taxes on all computer-generated financial transactions.
Had the Democratic Party done any or some of these things they’d unquestionably be a long-standing majority. But they haven't and because of it they're not. Our craven political operatives, think tanks and public relations hacks told them otherwise. They’re so far removed from reality, or rather so close to their lobbyists, Wall St benefactors and corporate masters, that they remain wholly beholden to them, and not their constituents. The whole fucking thing is a charade, filled with endless scare tactics, empty promises and fealty to an institution long-since worn out.
Let me say before people begin defending our democratic election system (the electoral college system, open-ended campaign finance, voting only on Tuesdays, horse-race addicted news media informing the citizenry? That's not democracy): all societal change has only ever come from the bottom up; without people forming mutual aid groups, striking, disobeying orders, boycotting or forming cooperative alternative institutions the status quo of elite control remains unchanged. The powers that be don't change policy until loads of people get organized and get out onto the streets to let them know they exist. Outside of making concerted decisions of how we spend our money, it's the only voice we truly have. So, nobody should be surprised when the Dems get the expected shellacking.
They'll deserve it too, because they've not been interested in listening to the millions of unemployed middle-aged Americans, or who have been fraudulently ripped off by the banks, or the small farmers fighting behemoth Monsanto, or how Big Pharma have become drug dealers dispensing their dope through malleable doctors, or that the middle class forced to negotiate the cunning minutea of health insurance companies coverage "plans." Perhaps only when things get even worse (why does human nature always need a major calamity to respond?) we’ll have the long-overdue epiphany that the whole game is rigged on a seesaw of illusory power shifting. It’ll never be fully tilted toward the people; it just rocks back and forth gently between the tiny minority wealthy elite.
Just as I was faced with another serious wave of nausea opening my inbox, the refreshing and affirming antidote of Russell Brand’s brilliant, vibrant, fearless, edifying populism soared in, on a round of media appearances in the past few days (here he is on Letterman - listen to the explosion of applause after he gives a nutshell of his Occupy political worldview, and then Lawrence O'Donnell). It was like being lifted out of a stifling New York subway station during rush hour in August and onto a breezy island under a palm tree sipping a mint iced tea on a blanket with a book. The guy’s searing cogency, potent ability to think on his feet and joyful expressiveness leave one with a distinctly more humane and hopeful view of things, and inspired to get active locally.
Brand’s decision to launch his new book “Revolution” at the home of Occupy Wall St was a meaningful symbolic gesture. In all of his many interviews and political writing he perhaps more than anybody else has been able to lucidly articulate the essence of Occupy Wall St in a way that is perfect for streamlined media, an uncanny ability to formulate larger concepts into easily digestible nuggets for the uninitiated. Examples are numerous, here's a couple:
I had not been familiar with Brand until about a year ago when I saw his riveting interview with Jeremy Paxman in the UK. His handling of noted British RW blowhard is a textbook example of how to handle blustery, heavy-handed media lapdogs whose objective, in this case, is to discredit anyone from outside their smug elitist club. Similarly, he cut like a laser through the stultifying vapidity of American talk shows when appeared on the Morning Joe show with skin deep Mika Daughter-of-American-Foreign-Policy- Statesmen. Since then I’ve read much of his writing and watched many of his appearances. He took a lot of shit from accusations of telling people not to vote. But this was the mainstream media’s way, just as with Occupy and hounding the movement to produce one demand to explain a complex tangled web of malfeasance, of evading having a nuanced and adult conversation in favor of a sensational misleading headline. The bigger point he was making is that when there are no major parties currently worth voting for he doesn't vote. I agree. Though I vote for the party i believe in, whether Green or Socialist, if they're on the ticket (which is a whole other story, reminding us of the monolithic, suffocating hold the two parties have on our political system).
There will be detractors (I was trolled heavy on Twitter by British guys who seemed to attend a tutorial held at a local football hooligan club), here also I’m sure, who will want to reduce his evolved philosophy and excellent grasp of the breadth of the current political problem to simply "voting vs. not voting." That would be an intellectual disservice. The totalitarian playbook 101 is aimed at discrediting dissenters, revolutionaries and artists, via means of a “legitimate” press and accepted nomenclature ("He's an actor, not a politician...hippie idealism will never work," etc). Young Turks does a good job of explaining this. I’m so tired of a narrow world in which the same retreads on Meet The Press, Face The Nation, etc are defacto political forums. Everybody agrees we need fresh voice, ideas and implementation. Open Source is coming whether we want it or not.
In the best way possible, Brand has bravely made a conscious decision to use his celebrity platform to call attention to the destruction being wrought by global capitalism. In a world dominated by self-absorbed, coddled, carefully crafted media figures his level of commitment is literally stunning. In the same way Rolling Stone magazine in 1971 suggested that a meeting between John Lennon and President Nixon would be more important than a US-USSR conference, Brand’s inclusion at the highest levels of politics would be a welcomed and edifying. Having seen him think on his feet, espouse cogent theories and show an uncanny ability to synthesize a breadth of information I’m fairly convinced he could hang with any DC politician, bar none. He’s eminently conversant in ways even insiders would have to reckon with.
Worth watching (and subscribing to) is his YouTube show “The Trews.” It’s a truly wonderful manifestation of the Occupy credo that believes the 99% must develop alternative institutions to fight back against the corporate stranglehold, as well as the mantra to “become the media.” And I say without hyperbole it’s one of the most important things (along with John Oliver’s show) happening right now in media. He's singlehandedly taken it upon himself to - with quick wit, astute observation and great compassion, to expose the intricacies of media manipulation, sloganeering and propaganda disguised as news. He’s more than refreshing, he's stunningly revelatory. Few things are more important, I feel, than shining a light on how craven and dangerous the mainstream media have become. With the rapid departure of the news world into fantasy, distraction and manufactured controversy his 10 minute video service is downright essential these days. Thom Hartmann to me is one of the most brilliant intellectuals and best journalists we have in this country. His videos hardly ever break over 100 views. Brand's "The Trews" videos, made from the couch of his home or from the back of his car, break tens of thousand of views within 24 hours of publishing. The interview with Paxman has over 10 million views. Stewart and Colbert entertain, while Brand and Oliver squarely challenge.
He's an unflinching Socialist too, and that's important too. It's high time we had an serious adult conversation about capitalism and socialism. His colleague Lewis Black is also and aptly referred to the economic system as "enforced Christianity.” They're in good company with that espousal: Kurt Vonnegut, George Bernard Shaw, George Orwell, to name a few literary giants. Time to reclaim that most humane and dignified philosophy, fuck the Right Wing fear mongers. Hardly any casual observer knows anything anymore about The Red Scare and McCarthyism, which is when the socialism scare tactics were created, but the average person just hears the word and reflexively reacts negatively (same goes for protesting). That’s got to end. The sweet ironic truth is that America is already filled with socialist policies, like our schools, infrastructure, Social Security and Medicaid. We still lag behind the rest of the Western world, where most governments are Social Democracies, with full implementation of such an economic system to include govt subsidized free healthcare, higher education and child care for all.
We continue to pretend we live in a democracy, though in reality we have a stagnant and corrosive two-party system, beholden to oligarchs. As Americans we pat ourselves on the back with great hubris that we're the best at everything, and praise capitalism and the “free market” as if it were a religion. What we refuse to discuss however is the cold hard facts, that the end game of capitalism invariably is monopoly and oligarchy. Along with which comes the financial elites' further solidifying their positions by ensuring favorable legislation permits their endless profit schemes to remain legal, or in the case of the financial meltdown, still not prosecuted (again, their consolidated money buys impunity). Further havoc is wrought, under the auspices of the "free market," in world swimming in fine print culture of unreadable contracts and clauses designed to protect companies instead of consumers, an excess of lawyers on retainer to gum up the works to render the judicial system ineffective for common man to access, until the very foundation that binds society, a fair justice system, is deemed unattainable because it’s also become pay to play. Obamacare is fundamentally a sellout to insurance companies, who still control our personal healthcare decisions despite all the hype, through a miasma of confusing plans and stipulations, while debt collectors prey on the most vulnerable by garnishing wages from people already decimated by the Economic Terrorism of Wall St. If you’ve got money you’re in the game; if not you don’t rate. This is capitalism firing on all cylinders.
My city of New York is ravaged with banks on every corner, corporate ads blaring from every cab, elevator, building and even in the toilets, but worst of all the savaging of real estate by global financial elites who use their public-stolen ransom money to gobble up swaths of the place. Wall St continues to mock us every minute running amok with more evil schemes, consolidating more power with it, paying themselves outlandish bonuses and leading Marie Antoniette lifestyles, sneering down at us from helicopters and rooftop bars atop high-rise luxury condos, their consciences never confronted by having to look into the eyes of the human wreckage of their endless greed.
Yes, the whole thing is ripe for "Revolutiion," the title and basis for Brand’s new book. That was also the gist on a panel the night before the Climate March last month. That much has been evident for quite some time. It’s been in the air, globally, for years now. Let’s not bury our heads on the sand of partisan politics too much not to see the bigger picture.
If only we had just one Democrat speak the truth with the kind of temerity, clarity, and conviction Brand has we wouldn’t have to witness a panicked horde of craven DC insiders, groveling for votes, ultimately only biding their time holding onto jobs that allow then to fill up their digital rolodexes before they breeze right through the revolving door, re-entering the turnstile with new business cards and desk plates.
One man won't change it all. But if Brand can inspire an even larger movement than Occpupy to coalesce from those seeds in the Fall of ‘11, then he’s moved mountains. Apathy, obedience and fealty to a failing system just won’t do anymore. Just about everybody knows the system is rigged.
Now what?
Postscript:
Last night I attended the launch of the new book by former NY Times reporter and author Bob Herbert called “Losing Our Way: An Intimate Portrait of a Troubled America,” in which he was interviewed by Leslie Stahl of 60 Minutes fame about it. Herbert spent over 40 years at the Times. No one is going to confuse him with being a radical or activist.
He talked vividly about traveling the States and the massive infrastructure problem we are not addressing, as well as a failing underfunded education system and a serious unemployment epidemic. He concluded: “I’ve lost faith in the political system.”