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 29, 2016

Pres. Candidate Dr. Jill Stein & Abby Martin – Symptoms of a Sick Society

Click here to access this introduction and a 23:57m video interview conducted by Abby Martin with Jill Stein, a Green Party candidate for president, posted on Media Roots.

Jill Stein explains some of the ways the ruling capitalist class has to prevent any threats to their interests by preventing progressive candidates within the Democratic Party or a third party candidate from being elected. She also explains some of the reasons how the New Deal legislation was passed in the 1930s, and how it was co-opted and tamed into something that was acceptable to the ruling class. 

Given her career as a physician, her most interesting comments were about how the expensive health care system is not helping the increasing pathology rates of most Americans. Here are some quotes that I gathered from her talk before time ran out.
We are not only literally sick in the sense of high rates of pathology and longevity, but sick in the sense of social injustive and extreme inequality. In addition humans are under threat of extinction due to climate destabilization.
[Her cure is a] green New Deal which cures the economy, cures the climate, and cures the wars for oil.
Our health care system has increasingly become coopted, profiteered, and costs have skyrocketed and peoples' health has not improved.