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

Saturday, October 20, 2012

The lame rules for presidential debates: a perfect microcosm of US democracy

Click here to access article by Glenn Greenwald from The Guardian.

The author describes the history of the so-called presidential debates and recently leaked documents to reveal how carefully managed these performances are to insure that nothing truly revealing or embarrassing happens. The methods used illustrate those used to manage the larger fabricated version of "democracy", a political production stage-managed by operatives employed by the One Percent.
To understand the US political process, one can just look to how these sham debates are organized and how they function. This is the same process that repeats itself endlessly in virtually every other political realm.