In the beginning there was trade, and trade beget currency, and currency beget power, and power beget usury, and usury beget compounded interest, and compounded interest beget more currency and power.
After that? Pretty much power and money cycling in a incestuous orgy wherein the planet and all its denizens were their personal concubines, to be used and disposed of at will.
I could end the story there. Its truly the only story ever told, though the rationales (religion, race, political affiliations) have changed, and the transitions between the retelling have slightly differed.
I cannot, however, while thinking-therefore-I-am, and drawing the ever diminishing amount of my allotted breaths abandon my appointed role in this telling into which I have been thrust. This is only the latest retelling of the Only Story Ever Told.
It is the Revolutions between the Stories I want to address.
The Revolutions need to be the “Only Story” now, more than the Failed Empires.
This is our turn, our story now……
I have often compared America to pre-Nazi Germany in these times. I now think we are perilously close to full blown Nazi Germany. The economic stressors. The over-developed sense of Nationalism. The blurring lines between State and business, between the Military Industrial Complex and the Policy.
The idea of a People’s Revolution always sounds wonderful. Hey, how’s that Bolshevik Revolution working out for you so far? Even John Lennon dissed Chairman Mao. The Religious Reformists brought us Witch Trials.
The point is the begets. Whether you tap the populace to support a system that promises equality and gives you despots, or promises security and gives you despots, or promises democracy and gives you despots? Ultimately it is all a system of eventual fascism when the people themselves still subscribe to a system that begets power, thus assets to a ruling class.
We undoubtedly will rise against our current incarnation of greed and avarice that has driven us to austerity and suffering. Frighteningly enough, the majority may follow a charismatic leader like a “Palin” into a “security state” where flag waving and utter loyalty is paramount to survival. The surveillance capabilities have never before been seen in our history, nor the weaponry if you really dare to think about it. It could be dire.
Even a decent Socialist leader could lead us easily revolting for the People, and a more economically equitable solution for all. But at what cost? Will they use that same surveillance system to counter and silence those who wish to expound on the glories of exploitation Capitalism?
We are sitting here, in the quiet between those chapters. I have had a lot of that quiet time to think as of late.
I look to South America, and some of the countries moving toward a sane blend of these things, their Revolutions and struggles, and wonder why against all odds (those odds being the oppressive full weight of the extraction Capitalist Nations trying to bankrupt or subvert them)
they have burgeoning economies and small wage disparities, and are meeting the basic needs of all their citizenry for survival. Their model, like the Social Democracies of Northern Europe, are imperfect, yet striving. Striving is key.
I think those of us born in the early 60’s harbor a resentment that the movement did not succeed, for the reason that it was one of the only Revolutions that was borne less of economic stressors than of cultural and humanitarian ones. Every other one prior (to my limited knowledge) had not happened in a boon time, it had happened because it HAD to. We were suckled on hope, and weaned on Watergate.
So, before we are spun into this tornadic downward spiral… I have to caution.
It is wise, nay DIRE that we think about what we want to (r)evolve into.
We need to abandon the idea that others are “above” us, and remember every man born is no more worthy than we are. Period. We need to remember our own faults and realize no man is more pure. We must take great pains not to look for a “prophet” or “leader” to save us from ourselves. We have to stop the lack of self esteem that makes us adulate celebrities. We need to share ideas, and be willing to take stands on the principles which guide those ideas.
What we truly need to do is rethink the system. Rewrite the laws.
It is not enough to want to “hang all the bankers from Wall Street lamp posts” until usury is illegal.
It is not enough to decry War, until producing weaponry is illegal.
It is not enough to ask others to take less, when what we should be asking is for all of us to have MORE.
The point in case on this last? How many are supporting the concerted effort to kill low-level government worker’s Unions, rather than Unionizing their own places of employment?
Perhaps the models in SA are working because they are nowhere as near as bombarded with subliminal seduction as their counterparts here. Greed is not good. Bad Guys and Good Guys is not clear cut. Crime is not a voyeuristic thrill, nor abusive cops demi-gods.
The bloodshed in the street method has been tried.
Pacifist resistance has been tried.
Hybrids of the two have been tried.
What I think, at this point?
The only original story that has been told in a LONG time is that of the 60’s. An ethical/moral revolution.
Unless we try to use that as template? Rewrite the laws. Ban the practices that lead to the begets. Value everyone. Come from the angle of Love and Unity. Incorporate the ideas of sustainability and stewardship for the Planet. Unionize and Organize. Create Foreign Policy based on assistance rather than exploitation. We are all related.
We are retelling the same story.
I want a fucking revolution, but not revolution for the hell of it.
I want to tell a new story.
And let THAT become the only story ever told.
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The American military is a totally immoral institution, with no decent purpose at all, that is sucking the American people dry.
That’s the first step towards anything we want to build. Repudiate the military.
Defense contractors as well.
Such a young thing. No wonder I like you. I barely made the fifties by the skin of my teeth.
remain gaping. The positive difference is that efforts are being made, after 400 years, to begin closing the gap. But the reality of the shakiness of the hold of a Morales or a Chavez is that their opposition can always finance a rent-a-riot at any time. So there’s a long way to go, an endless struggle that will see at the least setbacks, if not outright defeat and reversal of the efforts toward equality and justice. Nonetheless, there does seem to be a chance for some sort of progress in Latin America, not least because there are so many alternative approaches to a post-neoliberal society being tried simultaneously, something’s gotta work!
Northern Europe on the other hand has as of now quite limited income differentials. However, not wanting to be left behind, no nations are embracing harder and faster the dogmas of neoliberal Reaganism-Thatcherism than the northern European (soon to be former) social democracies. The Social Democratic parties are for the first time in decades suffering repeated, consecutive defeats in elections, right and hard-right parties are on the rise, and the Social Democrats response has been the same as the US Democrats–“move to ‘the center'”, which means, adopt complete Reaganism-Thatcherism.
generations. It solidified with the crusades, pitting the western world against the infidels who conquered the holy land in the name of the usurpers from the “east”. It reached its second crescendo during the reconquest, and now it erupts again like an infection that just won’t go away. And it’s amazing how there’s always a group of people behind the scenes making money.