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

Wednesday, September 26, 2018

Articles recommended for Wednesday, September 26, 2018

Is the ruling capitalist class promoting the Democratic Socialists of America party as the new sheepherder, replacing Bernie Sanders, to lead American sheep into one of their political corrals? The author's report suggests so.
The New York Times promotes the DSA because, far from posing a threat to the capitalist system, the DSA is a principal political instrument for the Democratic Party to block and divert a leftward movement of workers and young people. Those looking for genuine socialism, including workers and young people who have joined the DSA, should be advised that such a program will not come out of the pages of the bourgeois press.
This short and to-the-point essay is right on the mark about some fundamental insights: reform doesn't work when a system is basically flawed; we humans have forgotten that we took a wrong turn some 10,000 years ago in tolerating dominant and self-centered sociopaths; as a consequence we can't, or refuse to, see the way out of our psychological box.