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

Monday, October 23, 2017

The US lurches toward military dictatorship

Click here to access article by Andre Damon from World Socialist Web Site
The militarist diatribe by White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, a retired Marine general, at a White House press briefing last week laid bare an open secret of American politics: behind the façade of democratic rule, the United States increasingly resembles a military dictatorship.
Here is another astute author that interprets Trump's stacking of the government with military generals as a military takeover. Although I argued against a similar interpretation yesterday regarding the post entitled "'Above All' - The Junta Expands Its Claim To Power" by the politically astute Bernhard, again I argue that the Deep State (major financial figures and industrial capitalists along with assorted very loyal people (to capitalism) from academia, military, and media) will rule the US as they have always done mostly directly since the late 19th century. But they may very well choose to back a military-loaded regime headed by Trump (or whoever) that rules increasingly more with an iron-fist so characteristic of fascism. Damon is right when he writes that substantially nothing much will change except the delusional spell that has most Americans believing that they live in some kind of democracy.