marsdragon

So, now that we live in a post Citizens United World, the Corporations want more of the Constitution to apply to them.

The difference between the SERFS of the Middle Ages and the Consumer/Employee/Self-Employed Business Owner/Middle Class/Working Poor of today is that in the Middle Ages, the Serf had FOOD, CLOTHING, and SHELTER almost all the time short of natural causes. Today’s modern “Serf” has no guarantee of any of that. We no longer grow our own food, make our own clothes, or provide our own shelter on our own land. We have no more “Social Contract” with our Lords and Masters. At least the Serfs had that. They had a SOCIAL CONTRACT. The basic incidentals of HUMAN RIGHTS were provided in exchange for a lifetime of work and service.

Today, we are without that. We have to work harder and harder to earn less and less. And those BASIC INCIDENTALS – Food, Shelter, Clothing – are becoming more and more expensive. Not to mention the new basic incidentals of our time: Transportation and Health Care.

TRUE SPIRITUALITY and “Religion” is the one where the Atheist and the Jew, the Buddhist and the Muslim, the Druid and the Protestant, the Catholic and the Mormon, the Wiccan and the Hindu, all of the above and all not mentioned, can work together for the betterment of HUMANITY, THE ENVIRONMENT, and the DELICATE BALANCE OF BOTH.

Maybe THEN we can stop claiming plots of land as “holy” and let go of End-Times Fantasies and instead stand for EQUALITY, FREEDOM, DIGNITY and RESPECT OF ALL LIFE.

The majority of Palestinians (and people of the world) want Israel to return to pre-1967 borders, allow all Palestinian refugees throughout the world return to the West Bank or Gaza Strip, and allow the creation of an Independent State of Palestine.

In other words, GIVE THE PALESTINIANS WHAT THE ISRAELIS THEMSELVES GAINED IN 1948! A Free and Independent nation, with their own right to settle in the land, with their own right to establish their own economy and govern their own affairs. In exchange, there will be peace.

While the PRIVATELY OWNED banks are being bailed out for the sake of “institutional stability,” the hard-working American family and the children they raise are told that the economic malaise is their fault.

9/11 evokes so much division and hate in our society. Whereas it should instead evoke unity, harmony and inspiration for a better tomorrow.

As the decades old war over the “holy land” is once again going through the Kabuki Theater Act of “peace talks,” and as the US Media continues to pound the drums of war with Iran, this might be a good time to look at things from another perspective.

A lot of us here at FDL get frustrated with how ineffective our political leaders have become. Paul Watson, Founder of Sea Shepherd Conservation Society has demonstrated that we don’t need to just rely on our political leaders to create change for the better. As he said, “all social change comes from the passion of individuals.”

Well, it appears the sellout will now transcend generations. Wood? No way. Kagan? You betcha. I have few words right now. This just should not surprise me.

For at least 100 years, the “Establishment” powers that be (primarily Corporatist inclined wealthy elites) have successfully divided the American people into opposing camps, thereby preventing us from ever uniting to overcome and replace this corrupt system.

Libertarians and Progressives share more in common than we sometimes realize. And it has always been important for those with power to ensure that we never realize that.

As a Progressive, I have always argued that Big Business has its hands too deep in the government’s pockets. My Libertarian friends have agreed, only to say “you will never reform that corrupt government; you would be better off without it altogether.”

For years we have debated which of these approaches is better: the Progressive approach – to REFORM government from within, or the Libertarian approach – to forget that fight and just do away with most of the trappings of government altogether.

As we stand upon this field of setback and defeat in the fight for better healthcare delivery and access, we see that our most trusted “progressive” leaders were bought, cowed, coerced, and betrayed the very principles upon which they claimed to fight. Now, those Libertarian friends of mine are shaking their heads and asking me, “Do you STILL think you can trust your elected officials to fix the system from within, to separate Government and Business?”

I think the answer is not either/or. I think that to answer that way is to be trapped within this Hegelian framework upon which we are being played.

The real answer lies in what I call “bending the line” or “redrawing the circle.” In short, we need to do what the reformers of another age had to do. Recover the truth about our reality from those who would posit that the “Earth is Flat” or that the “Sun revolved around the Earth.”

Those with power deliberately reframe the reality in a way that makes the truth “disappear” from the daily lexicon, and positions allies against one another as opponents in a perverse fictional dialectic that serves only one goal – the enshrinement of the established power structure and the enslavement of the rest of us to that power structure.