Chris Hedges' latest.
Chris Hedges
truthdig, 23 January 2012
EXTRACT:
Turn off your televisions. Ignore the Newt-Mitt-Rick-Barack reality show. It is as relevant to your life as the gossip on “Jersey Shore.” The real debate, the debate raised by the Occupy movement about inequality, corporate malfeasance, the destruction of the ecosystem, and the security and surveillance state, is the only debate that matters. You won’t hear it on the corporate-owned airwaves and cable networks, including MSNBC, which has become to the Democratic Party what Fox News is to the lunatic fringe of the Republican Party. You won’t hear it on NPR or PBS. You won’t read about it in our major newspapers. The issues that matter are being debated, however, on “Democracy Now!,” Link TV, The Real News, Occupy websites and Revolution Truth. They are being raised by journalists such as Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi. You can find genuine ideas in corners of the Internet or in books by political philosophers such as Sheldon Wolin. But you have to go looking for them.
Voting will not alter the corporate systems of power. Voting is an act of political theater. Voting in the United States is as futile and sterile as in the elections I covered as a reporter in dictatorships like Syria, Iran and Iraq. There were always opposition candidates offered up by these dictatorships. Give the people the illusion of choice. Throw up the pretense of debate. Let the power elite hold public celebrations to exalt the triumph of popular will. We can vote for Romney or Obama, but Goldman Sachs and ExxonMobil and Bank of America and the defense contractors always win. There is little difference between our electoral charade and the ones endured by the Syrians and Iranians. Do we really believe that Obama has, or ever had, any intention to change the culture in Washington?
Phi Beta Iota: Brother Hedges is missing the big picture. He's right on the fundamentals–where the real debate is–but he is missing the very real possibilities represented by We the People Reform Coalition. Neither the Green Party (accredited) nor the Justice Party (not accredited) have the strategic understanding necessary to flip the system. That can only be found at We the People Reform Coalition, and its two-step plan for leveraging our collective power to demand the Electoral Reform Act of 2012 in time to allow a third wave – a coalition cabinet, not just a solitary individual president – to be elected, effectively trashing the two-party tyranny in a non-violent legitimizing revolution. The economy is being “juiced”, unemployment is actually 22.4%, we anticipate a humongous socio-economic crash in the USA in 2013-2014, and speculate that this will lead to a violent revolution that begins with burning to the ground the mansions of those who comprise the 1%, most of them rapidly going into exile.
See Also:
Pre-Conditions of Revolution in the USA Today
