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

Thursday, July 29, 2021

Posts that I especially recommend for Thursday, July 29, 2021

Hey, the CDC had to be consistent, even when the results were cray cray [def.], and therefore did not exempt children.

Well, how did vaccination rates respond? Far from incentivizing people to get the jab, everyone took off their masks and dared authorities to ask for their papers. This is because after a year and months of egregious restrictions on freedom, people were fed up and looking for some means by which they could pretend to go back to normal. Vaccination rates stayed stuck for the reason that everyone who wanted a vaccine already got it, while the rest possess natural immunity, are wary of the medicine, or were more than willing to accept the risks of exposure.
The answer to the question posed by the title is "none of the above". "The Squad and DSA" are both controlled by the capitalist ruling class.
 
There is much to learn for ordinary Americans from Stewart's personal experience with the machinery of political parties. But I have doubts that they will learn from his experience (and millions of others before him) in time to prevent the extinction of nearly all species on Earth including humans. To work through party machinery as a route to promote any kind of change that will result in lessening the power of the ruling class is totally futile because the capitalist ruling class has set up their government to function that way.

You see, the ruling class ever since its founding in the USA has consistently protected its real power of ownership of the economy, but ruling behind the facade of political party politics, not class politics. (The attempts of people to set up socialist governments have always been ferociously and consistently resisted by the capitalist nations.) This facade has given the ruling class a fake social legitimacy, but it is only a facade to fool ordinary Americans. Meanwhile, our masters used real economic power through their ownership of the economy to acquire the overwhelming real power and wealth that we see today.

Fortunately, Stewart has appeared to learned after decades of experience what real power is made of, but for his fellow Americans it appears too late for them to learn such a lesson now that the ruling class has consolidated and concentrated real power in their hands. The capitalist ruling class has used its overwhelming power to set up police and surveillance agencies to contain any opposition that might arise. They have control (via their ownership) of media corporations to create their self-serving "realities", and they don't hesitate to use censorship of views that are inconsistent with their rule. They have control of jobs and careers like never before through their concentration of ownership in an ever diminishing ruling class. And finally, they have extended their rule over a de-facto transnational empire--the US/Anglo/Zionist Empire.

But theirs is a pyrrhic victory because soon their destruction of habitat on our planet Earth, either through their economic activities or a global nuclear war, will end with the extinction of humans and most other species. The destruction of habitat is well advanced--we are seeing signs of this today through the destabilization of the climate. And when our ruling class is convinced that they are losing the war of global control, they might be tempted to launch a desperate last stand through a nuclear war.
Today, it’s not Germany-Japan but the specter of a Russia-China-Germany entente that terrorizes the Hegemon as the Eurasian trio capable of sending American global domination to the dustbin of History.
 
(Note: It is gradually getting harder for me to decipher Escobar's creative writing style. The above quotation is not representative of this, but much of the rest of the article is.) My reaction: He see the directors of the de-facto US/Anglo/Zionist Empire as selecting actions that will inevitably "dig their own grave". In this case, the grave is the Empire. Beginning in 1940, or thereabouts, they launched their empire project. Since then, the billionaire directors of the Empire had enjoyed so much power and wealth that they have become addicted to both. Only the people of the Empire can stop them, and I don't see that happening in this era of 24/7 surveillance, unaccountable secret agencies, and media corporations controlling what people think.
With barely a whisper of protest from either the media or the American people, Barack Obama and Joe Biden supported and empowered a group of far-right, Nazi-idolizing, Hitler-worshipping, anti-Semitic militias to fight against Russian-backed separatists in Eastern Ukraine.
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