Calling or writing isn't enough. They know what we think. [View all]
Last edited Fri Apr 5, 2013, 06:32 PM - Edit history (2)
Let's be clear, and finally honest, about why Obama proposes Social Security cuts.
Forget the psychological explanations. It's not about "impressing" anyone. It's not timidity or a lack of backbone. It's not gazillion-dimensional chess.
It is corporate purchase of our electoral system, government, and media. Corporate money runs our elections. They choose our candidates. Their money floods both parties. They control our media. In 2016, in the absence of systemic, legislative change, we will get more of the same: two more corporate candidates selected by those who own this country, and the transformation of America into a corporate State will continue. Change is not coming from inside. Change will require a massive citizen outcry that cannot be ignored by the media and propagandized away.
The corporate-political propaganda is heavily geared toward encouraging passivity. The Third Way will pretend to encourage speaking out for liberal policies, but always and only in a quiet way, such as writing letters.
The PTB don't really care about invisible protest by phone or mail. The faith in writing letters is based on the antiquated notion that our "representatives" want to hear what we think and will adjust their behavior accordingly once they are told.
That's not what's going on at all. Our government is purchased by a monied elite. They have an agenda in mind that will make them trillions of dollars, and their goal is to keep us as quiet and passive as possible while they implement it.
They are not interested in hearing what we think, but in managing our anger so that it does not spread into something louder and more visible that they can no longer propagandize away.
Their greatest fear is that we will wake up together to realize that the two corporate parties are colluding on this agenda, and that we will unite as the 99 percent, visibly and publicly, to stop them.
This is an article from the UK, but it's relevant to us:
Where Are the Activists as Austerity Bites? They Have Been Beaten Back
Protesters face violence, arrest and serious charges. Only the brave dare face this savage suppression
by Laurie Penny
Published on Thursday, April 4, 2013 by The Guardian/UK
(Photo: Daniel Hadley/flickr)
First they came for the students. This week, 12 vanloads of police arrived at Sussex University, in collaboration with management, to evict students who had been occupying a room on campus for eight weeks. They had been taking a stand against privatisation of services at their university, creating a militant "pop-up union" and attracting support from all over the country: they had to be got rid of. Photographs from the day show police in antiseptic yellow uniforms swarming in as if to disinfect a wound in the body politic where the rage was bleeding through.
....
Right now, as millions of people stare down the barrel of job losses, benefits sanctions, destitution and desperation and the rich are given tax cuts, I hear a lot of people asking why there isn't more resistance going on. Well, here's why. There was resistance, and it was brutally and systematically put down. The students, the street-organising anti-cuts campaigners, the Occupy movement. When people speak about the Occupy camps and anti-austerity protests of 2010-12, it is with a tone of regret, as if somehow those grassroots movements just fizzled out because those involved didn't know what they were doing. On the contrary: they were cleared out, arrested and beaten back by police, just like the students at Sussex.
....
Sadly, many of the liberal-minded folk now wondering aloud where all the anger on the streets has gone were the same people who condemned the students and anti-cuts protesters for being just a bit too noisy, too rowdy, too "violent". As soon as the frustrated kids of Britain and their allies started smashing up bus stops and lighting bonfires outside Tory HQ, that was too much: throw the selfish brats in prison, teach them to mind their manners. First they came for the students. Now they've come for the rest of us, who will speak out?
Any government trying to push through austerity against the will of a large proportion of the population is going to have to rely on force to deal with dissent. That's exactly what this government, which had the support of just one in seven of the population even before it started tearing up the welfare state, has done. New movements to resist austerity must expect to meet the same wall of state violence as soon as they become effective, because that's how the Tories operate. It's how they've always operated. And shame on us, even in these cowardly times, if we don't support those with the courage to take a stand.
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