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

Sunday, October 25, 2020

Posts that I especially recommend today: Sunday, October 25, 2020

Curtin quickly disposes of the current election scene as a giant distraction, and goes on to examine the most serious issue of all: the fascination of power over people that drives humans to commit all sorts of immoral acts against their fellow humans.  
Edward Curtin is a contemporary of mine and as an academic, much more well-read than I have been able to accomplish. But his experience of growing up in a society than promised much in the way of democracy and equality, but in reality, hid a growing fascist threat in the USA over the past 70 years is the same as mine. The fascist puppeteers of the current capitalist ruling class are hidden behind the curtain of distractions such as the "debate" between puppets. The ruling capitalist class have managed to conceal their dastardly deeds of their increasing power over the citizens of this country and much of the world. Now this power is clearly demonstrated for all to see in their laws which require nearly all citizen of the planet Earth to behave according to the diktats of a corrupt UN health agency, an agency corrupted by their power (in the form of money) to stoke up this fearsome "pandemic" which is an excuse to remove from us all remaining freedoms. They have used the profound fear of death to accomplish this.

As a result, the title suggests how all these phenomena are related: death, money, and the much ballyhooed debate. Curtin's name for his weblog is what he is all about: exposing the puppet show for what it is, or in other words, a major contribution to the exposing of fake scenarios, much like the media stories related to the coronavirus pandemic, the assassinations in the 1960s, the strange events that occurred in "9/11", the anthrax attacks of members of Congress, and the subsequent removal of many civil liberties. The article is deserving of study by those young people who still have questions and doubts about the current ruling class's handling of the coronavirus pandemic. It is far much more about this than the title suggests: the debate between Trump and Biden. It is ultimately about power that a tiny class of humans has over the rest of humanity.

Curtin's main thesis of the article is the implication for humans given their consciousness of death as a termination of individual lives. He examines this theme as a way to understand the fascination with power that has driven the actions of the fascist core of the capitalist ruling class over the past 70+ years since WWII. His inclusion of one link is monumental in this effort, that is, the interview that Lars Schall gave with Canadian Graeme Green in 2015. You simply must read this interview to understand what he is driving at. (In 2015 I also posted the interview from a website that no longer exists.)

I think that his main theme of understanding their drive for power is less important, especially for young people, than an understanding of the overwhelming evidence of the enormous threat of the concentration of power (along with wealth) by the ruling capitalist class, otherwise known as fascism. Old guys like Curtin and I have fought all our lives against this growing fascism and have largely resigned ourselves to this threat. We have mostly given up the fight against it, and now only attempt to explain it. But younger people haven't had this experience, and they should be given the knowledge gained from fighting this threat so that they can carry on the fight against fascism.
This an 18:50m video which features an impassioned speech by Kennedy to arouse the public to the defense of free speech, free assembly, and all the other freedom supposedly guaranteed by the US Constitution. He comes from a liberal viewpoint (in today's conventional sense) with its emphasis on civil liberties spelled-out in the Bill of Rights in the Constitution which I think was only accepted by the early capitalist ruling class to establish their control over the new nation. They have never taken civil rights seriously, and have violated them endless times over the centuries. Kennedy does not understand the basic contradiction of class rule with civil liberties. 
However, I think we can join his fight because the fight for these freedoms is our fight: certainly the fight for civil liberties such as freedom of expression and all the other civil liberties. But, while we are fighting for these freedoms, we can also fight for a social-economic system which inherently features equality in all respects: freedom from want, opportunities to participate in major issues--not only civil issues, but economic issues which are an essential part of our lives. To do this, we must eliminate a class system based on the private ownership and control of our economy.
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