We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Friday, April 9, 2010

The Accomodationists: Memo to Liberals on the White House Death Warrants

by Chris Floyd from his blog, Empire Burlesque. 
Let us hear no more excuses for Barack Obama. Let us hear no more defenses, no more special pleading, no more extenuations. Let us have no more reciting of the "pressures" he is under, of the "many obstacles" that balk him in his quest to do us good, of the "bad advisors" who are swaying him to unworthy acts against his will. Let us be done at last with all these wretched lies, these complicitous self-deceptions that are facilitating atrocity and tyranny on a monstrous scale.
 Certainly it is time for all the good liberals, and past time for the American people, to awaken from their rosy dreams about the charming Obama. He probably was a reasonably decent person, but like many others, sold his soul to the governing class. The transition from Bush to Obama has been seamless--and why not? Obama is, like most US Presidents, an employee or, in the case of the Bushes, FDR, etc, members of the governing class. 

Citizens must awaken to the reality that a class of people, whose power is based on their claim to the ownership of all the significant components of the economy, rule the country and much of the world. This class is addicted to profits and it doesn't matter how they get them: through wars, theft, deception, destroying the environment, impoverishing people, etc. The capitalist system is the engine that is driving us off the cliffs of catastrophic climate change and exhaustion of energy and other resources.