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

Thursday, September 13, 2012

In U.S. Politics, Economic Class Speaks Loudest

Click here to access article by Carey L. Biron from Inter Press Service. 

For those of you who have been wide awake during the past several decades, this article probably should be entitled "Capitalist Democracy 101" or "Capitalist Democracy for Dummies". You probably would find it boring. However, it is my observation that many Americans have been asleep or so well indoctrinated that they haven't been able to recognize political fakery perpetrated by operatives of the One Percent. Likewise, these well-indoctrinated Harvard researchers seem surprised by their research findings. Because their research was not designed to ask very many penetrating questions, the findings only describe some superficial aspects of capitalist "democracy" in the US.
New research drawn from the past half-century offers one of the clearest pictures yet of the correlation between political involvement and socioeconomics in the United States, while underscoring the significant implications of recent legal and legislative changes for marginalised groups.
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