How the Occupy Movement Will Succeed - or Won't

Most people want not only food and water and shelter and air, but security – the confidence that these other essentials won’t suddenly be taken away from them by forces beyond their control. Most people don’t want to go back to the kind of life led by the mythical prehistoric caveman, cowering in his cave, hungry and wet and cold, looking out on the raging thunderstorm, fearful that a sabertooth tiger or enemy caveman was going to attack if he drifted off to sleep. In those early times it was natural for humans to band together in groups centered around strong and decisive leaders, assured that these leaders had the power and will to protect them.

That need for a protector is deeply and indelibly rooted in the human psyche; it is why to this day people largely support their leaders, democratically elected or in power by military coup, benevolent or malevolent – because they think that allying themselves with powerful men, even though the methods and goals of these individuals may be horrific, will serve to put a mantle of protection over the people.

It is often a surprise to Western Europeans and North Americans that people in other countries don’t rise up to overthrow their dictators. The main reason is that human beings tend to be defensive of their Weltansicht (the mental “lenses” through which they interpret and construct reality) because it serves as the axiomatic foundation for their entire lives. They know factually that their dictator is evil, that his spies are everywhere and that any of them, any at all, could be in any moment unexpectedly detained and imprisoned or executed without even the pretense of due process. But they refuse to think about this fact because it is simply too frightening, too threatening of the security they crave. So they outdo one another in singing praise to their dictator, hoping that loud voices of support will keep them safe in the dictator’s smile.

This is why it is a miracle, the worldwide “Occupy” movement that began in Tunisia – not just that it has so widely spread, but that it has, on occasion, been so successful in toppling dictators. It is a miracle that, despite this natural tendency to feign support for a feared dictator, the people in many countries fear their dictators’ excesses so much that they are rising up against them.

This is also why many people in many countries, including in North America and Western Europe, oppose the Occupy movement, expressing ridicule, calling them unpatriotic fomenters of chaos. Such persons still believe that the best choice is to cozy up to the dictator (whoever he, or whatever it, may be) rather than arouse his ire and risk losing that precious security. It’s not that they’re stupid or obtuse, as some Occupy supporters have alleged; it’s not that they can't get it, it’s that they don't want to get it. As Daniel J. Boorstin eloquently put it in his brilliantly prophetic 1967 work The Image, they prefer the comfortable, comforting lie to the frightening truth.

Just as people in a totalitarian state loudly proclaim the glories of their leader to protect themselves from his wrath and avail themselves of his strength to protect the country, so even in a democracy many people prefer to believe that the status quo may not be ideal, but it’s better than the chaos potentially unleashed by the Occupy movement. These little lies hold their lives together, and they will do everything they can to prevent purveyors of the truth from pulling down those false idols.

The Occupy movement needs to remember that everybody wants security, including those who question or oppose the Occupy movement. So the movement needs to help those others understand that these powermongers – particularly in North America and Western Europe that means the ultra-rich plutocrats who control the government (including the legislatures, courts, military, and police), the economy, the media – are, down the road, not going to protect them.

That these ultra-rich care not a whit for the common man and woman, except to use them for what pecuniary value can be extracted from them and, once the latter are deemed expendable, there will be no further security for them.

That adhering to these plutocrats inevitably will, in time, leave them bereft of protection, and destroy their well-being.

The Occupy movement needs to state repeatedly that the current privatized system of medical care, designed to make a profit, not to protect health, will leave them without access to decent medical care should they get seriously ill.

That the removal of pollution controls will destroy their environment and leave them, and their offspring, deathly sick.

That privatizing their schools will, like their universities, put the cost of a decent education out of reach of all but the rich, and/or turn schools into mere training centers for lifelong drudge-work.

That state laws allowing employers to fire employees at will, to ignore fair hiring practices, to get around minimum wage requirements inevitably will lead to mass unemployment and destitute poverty among minorities and single mothers, and eventually the white males as well.

That high fees on loans and credit cars from profit-making financial enterprises will destroy their future security.

That they no longer have any reason to trust these plutocrats will protect them and provide them security – that their very security is at stake. That, therefore, their best bet is to go with Occupy.

We have to persuade everyone of the truth of these statements.

But, to do so, we must remember that Occupy opponents want security just as do Occupy supporters. We must not call those opponents enemies, or stupid - we must appeal to their intelligence, so they see that the ultra-rich oligarchs are going to provide the people with security no longer.

The Occupy movement must be on guard. The usual procedure for governments or businesses found out to be corrupt is for those at the top to make some minimum changes – window dressing – so they can quickly “get things back to normal” – with those responsible for the corruption still in charge, and the sheep quiet in their pens. That means blaming a few token middle-management fall-guys, calling them aberrations or loose cannons, kicking them out as a sacrifice to “restore domestic tranquility”, and then pronouncing the system healthy, instituting a few meaningless, ineffective window-dressing reforms which they can promptly ignore – and then get back to the business of making more fortunes at your and my expense.

Some three and a half decades ago, after the Watergate scandal and the Storm King environmental furore, there were real changes. But ever since the “smart boys”, the legally shifty bureaucrats, have been paid good salaries to find tacitly legal circumlocutions around the good financial and environmental and social reforms enacted back then.

To name but one example among many I could cite, the New York state constitution clearly stipulates in Article I Section 10 that there shall be no casinos in the state. Period. It’s one of the strongest-worded such impediments in United States law. But there are several casinos operating in the state, and more are contemplated – why? Because greed in state government was allied with greed in the New York city financial institutions (often virtually the same thing), and so those “smart boys” were set to find legal tricks to get around their own constitution. How, I ask, can a government survive when it shoves aside its own foundation?

I could go on forever... let me just mention two prominent political prisoners, Bradley Manning and Leonard Peltier; the lies by the George W. Bush administration to get us into Iraq and Afghanistan; the criminal acts by the CIA and others in sovereign foreign countries....

We must constantly bear in mind how the ultra-rich plutarchs in this world are not ethical but pragmatic. They will “change sides” as easily as they change their expensive suits if it means more money. They are fighting al Qaeda in Iraq and Afghanistan - but in Libya they sided with the revolutionaries, who were and are largely associated with al Qaeda.

Yes, a dictator was toppled, and perhaps now the people of Libya will now enjoy peace and freedom under a real democracy. But let's not kid ourselves that the Western support for the Libyan uprising (without which it would have failed, squashed by Qadaffi!) was really about toppling a dictator. If it were, then why does the United States cozy up to dictators in China, Russia, and half of Africa? Oh yes, profits. Oil in particular.

I still have some vanishing hope that President Obama will lead - that (to quote African American friends of mine) he will “go black on their sorry white asses, that he will take out a big ole can of whupazz and beat them with it.” As president, he has access to a powerful bully pulpit – HE SHOULD USE IT! As did Franklin Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln in the same office before him, as did Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King and Mahatma Mohandas Gandhi and John Lennon, for that matter. As long as he plays the game, negotiating with their sorry white asses, we the people lose. He's got to start a new game.

Moreover, the Occupy movement and Obama must keep in mind that this is a worldwide problem. If the United States “solves” the current economic crisis in a way that ignores the rest of the world, that is at the expense of the rest of the world, the problem is not solved, and it will just come back eventually – today’s economy is global, not national.

Bhopal and the Gulf of Mexico, the sweatshops of Asia, the maquiladoras of Latin America, my neighbors here in Panama who are lucky to earn $6-$8 a day, my friends in Africa who earn that much in a month – their problems are those of the United States too. “Buying American” and saying “the rest of the world can go to hell” is not the answer. Thinking globally and acting locally is. Otherwise, the problem is just exported out of the United States.

Gautama Buddha taught: “In the sky, there is no distinction of east and west; people create distinctions out of their own minds and then believe them to be true.”

Get over it, people. We are all one. The malevolent plutocrats, the ultra-rich who control our media and our schools – and therefore our minds – would have us believe that “we” must hate “you”. Americans are taught to hate North African Muslims, and North African Muslims are taught to hate Americans. Palestinians are taught to hate Israelis and Israelis to hate Palestinians.

The evil rulers (including the ultra-rich plutocrats in the United States, who manipulate the government and media) thrive on such division, since as long as we are divided amongst ourselves, everyone hating and fearing everybody else, we will never band together to overthrow those evil rulers – and we will continue to look to them to protect us from those people we’ve been taught to hate.

So we have Christian vs. Jew vs. Muslim, Black vs. White vs. Brown vs. Red vs. Yellow, Liberal vs. Conservative, West vs. East, North vs. South, one generation vs. another, male vs. female, straight vs. gay/lesbian/bi/trans....

And, if we are fatally foolish, we have Occupy vs. anti-Occupy. The Occupy movement will make a mortal error if it keeps speaking harshly to those who oppose it. The real enemy, the ultra-rich plutocrats, are delighted to see us fight amongst ourselves, because that way we'll never be united against them.

There are those who prefer to say that this “Occupy” movement began on Wall Street. It's very nice that they're so supportive of their own country, but I'm aghast when my fellow liberal friends adopt such a position, since it's one step away from the false but prevalent culturocentric notion that “anything good in the world” came from the U.S.A., a notion that we want to avoid not only because it isn't true, but because it is promoted by the hate-spewing "news" media and their ultra-rich masters, because it helps them sell American products and further rape the world economy - and it's only two steps away from ethnocentrism, and three steps from bigotry - the racist dogma that “anything good in the world” has come only from people of white northern European ancestry.

Nothing could be further from the truth, and this “occupy” movement is an example of that. It began, folks, in Tunisia, and it is from Tunisia that it has spread worldwide. When I challenged this notion recently, a friend of mine replied that the Wall Street version isn't against government but against Big Money. That is clearly not the case. I've been observing carefully the signs and statements of participants, and the reflections of informed analysts, and this is clearly directed, too, against a U.S. government that large swathes of the citizenry feel has so pandered to Big Money that it has failed in its responsibility to that ignored 99%.

So - as Tunisia celebrates its first democratic election - I shout hurrah! to that wonderful little country and thank them for showing the world how effective peaceful revolution can be!

This battle against the ultra-rich plutarchs is a worldwide battle with a worldwide solution and we must approach it on a worldwide basis. We must join hands with citizens in every country in solidarity against the real "Evil Empire". Let the plutarchs spray their propaganda that "America is Better", since that sells more Levis and Cokes. But let us be equal and united with our brothers and sisters the world over!

We must emphasize and bear in mind that all attempts to divide us (by race, by faith, by sex, by sexual orientation, by politics) ARE WELCOMED, EVEN INSTIGATED BY THE ULTRA-RICH ENEMY such that we defeat ourselves.

All these divisions are but an illusion. Race? There is only ONE race, the HUMAN RACE. All the rest are artificial, human-made distinctions. Pry deeply enough into your DNA and you realize what an illusion it all is. The farther back I go in my ancestry, the more I realize my ancestry isn’t this or that but a mélange of many. And I am sure that the same is true of you. So forget those foolish artificial distinctions.

We must unite against these ultra-rich potentates! We must unite and take on the Evil One... whether he goes by the name of Mubarak or Pol Pot or Noriega or Koch or Goldman Sachs. We must take him on wherever he lives – nonviolently, peacefully, but as persistently as water. As the ancient Chinese philosopher Lao-tse taught, “Water is the weakest thing in the world, but it can wear away a continent.”

And that, right there, is the strength of the Occupy movement that began in Tunisia - it has the power of water. The evil rulers cannot arrest it away or shoot it away, for when the people arise they keep coming and coming and coming until the evil is gone.

As individuals, all any of us can do is to look to ourselves and make sure we are doing, saying, thinking, and being the right thing.

Being a human being is not doing the expedient thing, the thing that helps you and yours be better off, but doing the right thing. Even at the expense of everything you hold dear.

Therefore, what we must do do is pray, stand up to evil, and support and encourage those around us to do the right thing. And – as did those mythical cavemen in the earliest age – we must band together to stand united against the evil forces.

If every individual (especially those of faith, whatever their particular faith-path) does this, the world will become a far better place.

How to Conduct the Revolution

The most famous image of the Dada movement was of a smoking pipe, above which were the words “Ceci n’est pas une pipe.” (“This is not a pipe.”) This image tells us strongly how to this day we are being carefully programmed to think the way the Powers That Be want us to think. They tell us that their demands to be released from paying taxes and from having to adhere to environmental regulations and employment fairness laws will be good for us. And, sadly, many people have believed them.

The current “Occupy” movement, which began in Egypt and Tunisia, moved on to Europe and Israel, Chile and Gabon, wound up in Wall Street, and now has spread worldwide. I’m overjoyed – people seem at last to be awakening from the lethargic hypnotic spell under which the ultra-rich oligarchs have put them. I, for one, despair at any shreds I still have of hope that the “system” can yet correct itself. It will more likely do some window-dressing, fire a few individuals while the real perpetrators go free, and then get on to business as usual – making money. I hope that revolution, far preferably bloodless, is in the offing.

All my life, as a pastor, I’ve urged forgiveness and forbearance, but the puppets in public office have been so well-programmed by the soulless ultrarich monsters who are our overlords that they take advantage of the forgiveness and forbearance of people like us in order to further their evil. On their slanted anything-but-objective news media they laugh at the “Occupy” movement, calling it diffuse, calling it leaderless, calling it unclear in message. For being peaceful in their demonstrating, these Powers That Be call them fools and dismiss them. But, on the other hand, if the demonstrators fail to “turn the other cheek”, then the latter can be blamed and arrested. Either way, the oligarchs are confident that they will win – that the crowds will eventually get bored and go home, or else lose their cool and get arrested. They believe that, no matter what the occupiers do, they, the ultra-rich, are going to win. Still, we all must hold to the truth, speak firmly but forgivingly to these wolves in sheep’s clothing, and pray.

The ultra-rich own, or control, pretty much everything – the halls of commerce, the news media, the educational institutions, the legislatures, the courts, the medical arena. Including, all too often, our minds and hearts. They have made us believe that obedience to them is “patriotism”, and daring to speak out in opposition is “un-American”. They use “country” as a way to stir our emotions, and xenophobia, fear of foreigners, as a way to manipulate us emotionally. It is all a form of brainwashing, of hypnosis.

This is why, of late, they have been spreading the message that anyone with intelligence, anyone with more than, say, a community college education, anyone who asks questions, anyone who challenges assumptions, is not to be trusted. Dumb is in. Stupid is cachet.

They repeat their advertisements over and over – and I don’t just mean television commercials or “product placement” in movies, but the “messages” about obedience and patriotism and do your job and don’t ask questions – and people just sit there unthinkingly watching them when the vapid entertainment program takes a “break” - such that, in the supermarket, they will hear those “jingles” when they see the brand name on the shelf, and be unable to keep from buying the products – and, in the voting booth, they will hear the vapid “sound bytes” incessantly delivered by tea party candidates. Back in the States, when someone had the television on, I would look away from it when the advertisements came on, and even “mute” them – and yet, to my chagrin, people would get angry at me because they “wanted to see them” - which told me that they were literally hooked on them, that this brainwashing was like a drug that they needed – which is indeed part of the brainwashing process, to love your jailer and torturer.

And the movies and television programs themselves are vapid, mindless bits of twaddle, with incredibly stupid “humor” that is clearly intended to dull our brains so we won’t question what these oligarchs are doing to us, and action movies (to say nothing of video games) that train the young people to answer the call when the bell of jingoistic patriotism is struck, so they can be killed in whatever senseless war is being waged this time.

Just before I left the United States forever, I was working five jobs, not including trying to sell signed copies of my books for a little extra cash, and yet I was still struggling to put food on the table, keep up with the bills, and pay the mortgage. It was literally killing me, it was literally killing my health. My house was “underwater”, worth less on the market than I still owed on it. The mortgage holder refused to let me refinance. I tried putting a young single mother in it, taking not a penny from her, but I could not keep up with the mortgage. Eventually she couldn’t afford even the little I asked of her and moved out, and I had no choice but to abandon the house; it has since been partially destroyed in a hurricane, and it was robbed of what worldly goods I still had in it, including precious family heirlooms.

All my life I’ve said we should, as Jesus said, give away all that we have and follow him. Before I left the States, I gave away my car to a poor black woman who lives in an inner city. I gave my entire collection of more than 100,000 books away. I cannot afford to return to the States to see my children who are dearer to me than anything, or my parents, who are in the final chapter of their lives. And I am living here in rural Panama in poverty, on a scant few hundred dollars a month, with only a suitcaseful of things I can call my own, doing my best to help poor indigenous people in this little village. That’s my choice, to do what Jesus said. I wish others would do similar.

Nor is it just government that is a “pipe”, despite what our overlords tell us. Every institution seeks above all to perpetuate its own existence, to expand its client (parishioner) base, to gain more money and power. Including, yes, religious organizations. It isn’t just the secular institutions, Wall Street, etc., that have stuck their hands in our pockets. We need to tell Rome, Salt Lake City, Jerusalem, Makkah, and all of them, the same thing – no more will they take our monetary and effort gifts until and unless they de-institutionalize in favor of really helping the needy. I’ve seen the riches of the Vatican with my own eyes, to name just one of many examples, and wonder how these people can call themselves servants of G-d when they control such wealth and power while millions are dying of chronic malnutrition, polluted drinking water, diarrhea, dysentery, AIDS, and, above all, war.

Sure these institutions are old and venerable, but the Word of the Lord is older, and, while they do not stand forever, “the Word of the Lord stands forever”, and that Word is to go, give away all that you have, and come, follow Him. Yes, the Pope holds an “ancient lineage”, yes, he represents a venerable institution. There are other venerable religious institutions even more ancient than the Pope’s. But more ancient than the Pope’s institution is the Word of the Lord. Jesus clearly said, “Go, give away all that you have [that's ALL that you have, not just what you can easily spare], and come, follow me.” Given a choice between venerating ancient lineages and following the Word of the Lord, I will choose the latter.

What can we do? A woman recently asked me for a website where she can make a difference. How trained we are by the oligarchs, to think the answer is somewhere on the internet. I don't see how any link can help. Rather, it’s an inward decision to bow to no human being or human institution, but only to G-d, to Allah, to Wakantanka, whatever term you use. It’s an inward decision to give these humans and institutions no power over you. It’s an inward decision to treat all humanity (and other species) with respect, giving to others freely, but yet speaking out and acting when others fail to treat people (and other species) with respect.

Here’s the answer: Buy from local farms. Buy direct from poor people in the Third World through various intermediary nonprofit organizations and coops. Buy generic, not brand name. Save your money at local independent banks. Frequent local independent shops, not big chain stores. Read books (bought at independent bookstores). Walk or use your bicycle. Pay cash as much as you can, or at least keep your credit card balance low; better yet, destroy it. Don’t invest in big business and take your money out of big banks.

Keep in mind the multiplier effect, which states that money that stays in a community increases in value, even if it doesn't increase in the number of dollars: the butcher buys from the baker, who buys from the candlestick maker, etc., in a web of relationships in which no new cash is ever introduced, but yet everyone gains plenty of value. However, when a Wal-Mart (or whatever) comes to that town, the amount of value in the town decreases – it’s sucked off to the ultra-rich slobs in Fayetteville, Arkansas, or wherever the slobs are who earn multiple millions a year. And worse, when one of these mega-companies goes belly-up, millions lose their jobs, their pensions, their health plans, and everything – but those slobs still have their mansions and their millions.

And, above all, don't let them control your mind. The oligarchs fuel our hatred for each other – liberals versus conservatives, whites versus blacks, citizens versus foreigners, Easterners and Middle-Americans and Westerners and Southerners each versus the other three, Yankee fans versus Red Sox fans – and, as long as we remain divided, they win. Right now, those in charge of us are stoking the hatred of “Occupiers” for “Tea Partiers” and vice-versa – because it serves their purposes well to keep us divided amongst ourselves.

I count among my dear friends many individuals whose politics and ethical views are diametrically opposed to mine. We have had many wonderful friendly arguments, not trying to bludgeon each other into agreement, but just exploring the profound depths of important issues. And, you know something? These people are wonderful people. They are truly good, truly moral, and want nothing but the best for this world. We simply differ on exactly what that "best" is and how to achieve it. I love them and trust them completely.

The people who disagree with you on these issues aren't the real enemy; if you think that, you're mistaken; that's what you've been trained by the real enemy to think.

Divided we fall, united we prevail. We should not be fighting amongst ourselves. We should be joined together against the real enemy, which isn’t pro-choicers or pro-lifers, pro-gunners, or gun-controllers, but the ultra-rich oligarchs who control all the institutions from the schools to the news media to the legislatures. Only in unity against the real enemy, the ultrarich oligarchs who, through their multinational corporation-persons, can we win back control of this world and our destiny before they succeed in destroying it.

The French Revolution was sparked by the intelligentsia, but the mob, long crushed under the royal heel, came tearing through the floodgates the intelligentsia opened, and a bloodbath of anarchy was the result. France (and I have lived there) is still suffering the pain of that anarchy.

The United States Revolution remained in the hands of the intelligentsia, with the result that the governmental institution enshrines the monied interests to this day (witness the insane Supreme Court decision that corporations are persons under the law).

I pray for a third way – a peaceful revolution that is neither controlled by the oligarchs to their advantage nor drowned in a sea of angry madness. So far, happily, these “Occupy” efforts are peaceful and surprisingly effective, despite the oligarchs-ordered media mockery.

May Creator guide us and protect us as we lead this revolution and create a New Heaven and a New Earth, free from bigotry and greed, in which all love their neighbors as themselves.

The Efficiency of Evil

Living as an expatriate, first in France and now in Panama, gives me a better perspective on current events in the United States. It’s hard to see a city clearly when you’re standing on a streetcorner in the midst of traffic and hurrying pedestrians. But, looking down from the mountaintop, and remembering the details from that streetcorner, you can see far more clearly the overall condition and future of that city.

Furthermore, I have the ability to contrast how things are in the United States to Panama. Sometimes I’m not sure which is better – incompetent poops who barely manage to hold their country together or evil monsters who are all too coldly efficient in raping the world for their personal aggrandizement. Yes, it’s amazing Panama keeps stumbling and bumbling forward without falling flat on its face; just yesterday, merely in crossing the border into Costa Rica and back, I experienced several examples of blithering boneheadedness that could easily have been averted if officials had stopped to think for just a few moments, instead of just shuffling things along or insisting out of macho bravado on their rectitude when they’re clearly mistaken.

Still, the more I think about it, the more I’ll take the incompetent poops.

In recent days alone, we’ve seen several horror shows in the United States:

1) The Wall Street occupation (also bravely manifesting itself in several cities). The news media tried ignoring it until it got too big to ignore, at which time they started criticizing it as a “circus”; they hope in this way to denigrate it such that it will fizzle out. The New York Police Department has been breaking all sorts of laws by dragging peaceful participants by their hair, tear-gassing them, beating them with billy clubs, arresting them as much as seven hundred at a time, and yet the movement is still growing. Wall Street, built and maintained by our tax dollars (certainly not the tax-shirking rich folks!), has been blocked off by police paid with our taxes, who are only letting through people with big Wall Street firm identifications. In other cities, citizens are being denied their right to withdraw their money from their banks. Clearly, the orders have come down from the country’s ultra-rich masters that this movement is to be broken up at all costs, including the cost of trashing the Bill of Rights. It is just as clear to the protesters that this is their only chance; the movement caught those ultra-rich oligarchs flatfooted with surprise, but you can be sure that that will not happen again. And you can be sure that, sooner or later, the tanks will roll down the streets as they did in Prague and Beijing and Berlin, forcing these people to flee for their lives.

2) The State of Georgia executed a clearly innocent man, Troy Davis. Officials blithely ignored worldwide appeals for mercy, and marches demanding his release. The United States Supreme Court failed in its responsibilities in refusing to stop or even delay the – not execution, but murder of Troy Davis. Barack Obama failed in his responsibility to issue a pardon or other presidential decree releasing Troy Davis. Clearly this was to satisfy their ultra-rich masters and continue to frighten the masses into obedience. My friend Whiskey Jack, a homespun philosopher and former merchant marine whose wisdom I cherish, insists that government officials who put an innocent man to death should be tried for murder; I agree, and add that, if that were the law, you’d see those very same politicians falling over each other in their stampede to abolish the death penalty.

3) I’ve heard talk from these same these political lapdogs about building a gigantic wall between the United States and Canada, similar to the one constructed on the Mexico border. Clearly this is about a) lining the pockets of the ultra-rich when taxpayers (who are increasingly the poor and middle classes, as the political lapdogs lift all tax burdens from the shoulders of the ultra-rich) are forced to pay the private contractors; b) “proving”to the citizens who have been brainwashed by the likes of Faux News and Retch Limburger that “something is being done” about all those dang dark people sneaking into the country; and c) this wall proposal might serve to distract the citizenry from things like that pesky little problem down on Wall Street. I cannot help but compare these walls to the Great Wall of China and Hadrian's Wall, both of which were built at colossal expense in terms of both finance and labor, and which both utterly failed to keep the “barbarians” out; and the Berlin Wall, designed to keep the citizenry in. The Mexico Wall has clearly failed; drugs and refugées continue to pour into the United States, wall or no wall, prompted respectively by opportunity to feed on the wealth and drug-desire north of the border and by desperation. But I suspect that there may be something of the Berlin Wall in these Canada and Mexico walls – soon U.S. citizens will not be allowed to go abroad (unless they’re ultra-rich, of course), but kept instead chained to their grindstones in the "dark Satanic mills" envisioned by William Blake.

4) It was revealed that President Obama authorized the killing of a United States citizen, Anwar al-Awlaki, on the pretext that he was more than a polemicist for alleged terrorists, but operationally involved. The known evidence for the latter, at this writing, is at best extremely flimsy – but that pales into insignificance in view of this setting aside of the United States Constitution and its Bill of Rights, the central documents to the entire rule of law in the country, by the president ordering the killing of one of his fellow citizens without due process – without a trial. Awlaki had been previously given the label “Specially Designated Global Terrorist” by the U.S. Treasury Departments Office of Foreign Asset Control, with the result that it was illegal for any legal person or entity (including the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU, which tried) to represent that individual, unless a rarely-if-ever special permission is granted – even though by the Constitution, U.S. citizens have a right to legal representation, and are innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.
Moreover, Reuters has since revealed the existence of a “secret panel” of U.S. officials who decide which vaunted enemies will be killed, citizens and non-citizens alike, and have the power to go ahead and order such killing, though the president apparently has the right to eliminate anyone on that list; again, there is no presumption of innocence or right of appeal. Why, then, Obama chose to allow this entirely unconstitutional murder of a U.S. citizen is, logically, way beyond me. If Awlaki did something illegal – fine; detain him and prove it in court. If he did not, leave him alone. But, if his constitutional rights are set aside, then the same can be done to anyone, including you and me.

I am extremely disappointed in President Obama. He has shamefully failed in his opportunity to lead the country into a new age of peace and prosperity for all people. He has catered far too often to his political opponents, the lapdogs of the ultra-rich. Two friends of mine, Buffy and Bonita, both African-American women, said to me, respectively, independently of each other: “Obama needs to go Black on their asses!” “He needs to go seriously Ghetto on these folk and open up a gigantic can of whup-azz.” Obama strikes me as a good man, an intellectually brilliant man, but one whose extreme care and lengthy consideration of alternatives eventually enervate him I still have hope that he will awaken to this imperative, but my hope is slowly sinking into despair. He needs to remember the ethical standards on which he sought this office. He needs to show emotion, to get angry, to lecture these people, and not to keep backing down. He needs to bring unity, not further division, to his fellow citizens.

Meanwhile, the ultra-rich oligarchs in control of this plutocracy – with no longer any pretense of true democracy – are absolutely thrilled to see us poor and middle-class folks divided asunder. They’re overjoyed to witness the political and cultural wars of “right”versus “left”, pro-choice versus pro-life, “family values” versus gay/lesbian rights, etc. This is why we see them sitting on their penthouse balconies high above Wall Street, sipping champagne and watching the “circus” being put on by the plebs down there on the street below. This is why we see their sign in the high window of the Chicago Board of Trade that says, “We are the 1%.” The ultra- rich intend to manipulate citizens into continuing to exhibit antipathetic rhetoric and behavior each toward the other, because, as long as the citizens fight each other, they will never unite – and thus will never build sufficient strength to “throw down the mighty from their seats” (as it is put in the Magnificat).

Given that choice between the efficient evil in the one country and the frustrating incompetence in the other, I’ll gladly take the latter. Here in Panama, at least, there’s still hope.

The End of the World Will Not Be Televised

Inspired by the several revolutions in recent months in North Africa, citizen occupations are presently continuing, and building, in the American financial capital, Wall Street, in New York City, as well as other cities in support of that one. Hundreds of people are taking part, including some unions, and at least two well known figures, Susan Sarandon and Michael Moore. Police have been using excessive force, including at least one incident of tear-gassing people whose behavior was perfectly peaceful. Meanwhile, rich slobs sit on their penthouse balconies overlooking Wall Street sipping champagne and mocking those in that mundane world below them who foolishly protest the means by which these slobs became rich.

It is interesting to me is that this event has gotten hardly any mention on the mainstream news media in the United States. Even outlets like the usually reliable National Public Radio have refused to cover it - in the case of NPR, no doubt scared of the growing number of members of Congress (which provides its funding) who are marionettes dancing on financial strings jerked by the ultra-rich. If one wants to know what is going on, one must pull in various alternative news sources through the internet, or turn to the foreign press.

It doesn’t take much to figure out why this would be – the mainstream news media are owned by the very ultra-wealthy whom these demonstrators are protesting against. And the ultra-wealthy don’t want this kind of protest to spread, and the voices calling for a change in the current policy of relieving the ultra-rich of any tax burden and any impediment, economic or environmental, on their quest to accrue even more wealth.

And it is clear what the alleged reasoning behind this crackdown is: The widely held view is that "it's not real, it's not significant, unless it's on television". Reality (that, if you don't remember, is the context of events that cannot be accessed by electronic media) be damned, what matters is hype. These people believe reality can be controlled, that facts can be manipulated into twisted distortions that serve their end-game. These people believe that, if this demonstration is ignored by the electronic media, it is doomed through insignificance to eventual failure.

And it is clear to me that the police have been told to help bring about that eventual failure more quickly, to break up this demonstration by any means necessary. Clearly these techniques of dragging people by their hair, of insulting them, of tear-gassing them, are meant to incite violence on the part of the peaceful protesters. Once someone loses her or his cool, the police can arrest and detain that individual.

I am reminded vividly of what the prophet John Lennon said:

“When it gets down to having to use violence, then you are playing the system’s game. The establishment will irritate you – pull your beard, flick your face – to make you fight. Because once they’ve got you violent, then they know how to handle you. The only thing they don't know how to handle is nonviolence and humor.”

What Lennon said exactly coheres with the pacifist philosophies of Lao-tse, Thoreau, Gandhi, and King.

What is sad about Lennon's point, in this context, is that the very moment some number of these peaceful protesters do lose their cool - when the police "pull their beard, flick their face", or, in actuality, as the police are doing right now, pull them off by their hair and tear gas them - THAT WILL IMMEDIATELY BE HEADLINE NEWS.

I support this kind of peaceful citizen protest; indeed, I think there are times when it becomes our civic duty. When government forgets its prime responsibility to be of the people, for the people, and by the people – when government becomes against the people – it is the civic duty of the people to protest, to speak out, and to resist.

The right-wing ultra-wealthy control the news media, and have for years so successfully that a vast proportion of Americans have been duped into believing that the rich shouldn't pay taxes, that homosexuals and dark-skinned foreigners are out to get us, that our essential civil rights and health insurance and social services should be eliminated, that nonsensical neverending wars should be fought and our young people killed in them. I see efforts like this one on Wall Street as part of a last-ditch effort to awaken citizens to the serious danger this right-wing movement poses.

I say to these protesters what I tell myself: My hope and prayer is constantly that if just one person is awakened by my efforts, then my efforts, my life, were not in vain. For one person can go on and awaken one more, and that person one more, and so on. And, yes, the cynics are right; perhaps in the long run it won't make any difference, that the lunatics will destroy this world anyway. But, as Ezekiel was told by Creator, even if they don’t listen, you still have to blow the trumpet to awaken and motivate them. And I say, as did Martin Luther, if I knew for a fact that the world was going to be destroyed tomorrow, I'd plant a tree today.

The lunacy is setting in on all fronts. It isn’t enough that Republicans are crowding the field in their efforts to bring shame upon themselves; President Obama, a Democrat, has horrified me by ordering the killing of a United States citizen. Anwar al-Awlaki had become a key figure in al-Qaeda and a very influential communicator in both English and Arabic. I do not doubt that his efforts are detrimental to the well-being of American citizens, even though he was never connected in any material way to any terrorist attacks on anybody.

However, the United States Constitution, which President Obama swore to uphold, requires him to maintain procedures of due process.

When Awlaki’s father sought a court order to bar Obama from authorizing the murder of his son, the United States Department of Justice argued that such decisions were “state secrets” and therefore beyond the scrutiny of the courts. Awlaki has not been tied to any material support for terrorist attacks. As a result, he was killed for his ideas, for his words, rather than his actions. Which means his Constitutional right to the freedom of speech, no matter how widely repugnant his words may or may not be, was summarily ignored.

But, more importantly, the United States Constitution, which Mr. Obama swore to uphold, requires individuals accused of crimes to be guaranteed the right to due process – they are considered innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. If Awlaki was guilty of a crime – and that remains even to be alleged, let alone proven – he was not found guilty in fair trial. And yet he was killed. At most, he may have been guilty of – not treason, but of sedition: action, writing, speech, etc., directed unlawfully against state authority, the government, or the Constitution, or calculated to elicit contempt for these, or to incite others to hostility, ill will or disaffection against these. Sedition does not amount to treason, and therefore it is not a capital offense. It is not punishable by death.

Which brings us back to the peaceful protesters on Wall Street. They are protesting, among other things, government, for its sanctioning of, its legalizing of, the elimination of taxes for the ultra-rich, the elimination of civil rights, the elimination of social services. Are they, then, guilty of sedition? By the vaunted “logic” by which the killing of Awlaki was authorized, could police or military be sent in to kill them, too? It has happened before – and several times, from the Whiskey Rebellion to the unionist marches in the Great Depression to the forcible putdown of peaceful civil rights and anti-Vietnam marches, most egregiously the killings at Kent State.

A government against the people sees its own citizens as enemies. If all it takes to justify killing citizens is an executive decree of guilt (rather than a decision of guilt in a court of law), then we are now living in a police state, in which any of us, at any time, including me for writing these words could be justifiably murdered by our own government.

The same day I heard about the murder of Awlaki, I had an agent of the government accuse me, on the telephone, of lying to him. I am supposed to receive a refund of overpaid taxes. I have called several times to ask the tax officials to send my money to me here, where I live in Panama. They continue to mail it to a defunct address in the United States, and apparently ignore the sticker put on by the United States Postal Service, when the check is mailed back to them, which provides my present address.

Despite all this, the agent on the telephone accused me of lying when I assured him that I have repeatedly called to provide my current address. I was forced to explain to him in very clear language that my taxes help pay his salary, that he is an employee of the citizens, including me, and that he has no right to adopt an accusatorial tone and state, without fact or proof, that I lied to him. I cannot help but wonder, now, if my statements to him could justify an executive order to kill me.

It seems to me that the world is drowning in a sea of rhetoric. Nobody seems to care about truth any more, just about shouting louder than everybody else - hence they get more and more outrageous in their wild statements simply to gain more attention; as a result, they wander ever farther from the truth.

The truth is: If citizens can be legally killed because “they look or sound like a terrorist”, there will be bloodshed in the streets at the hands of police and military. We must hold to the rule of law.

If that is the way things are, then may G-d have mercy on our souls.

The Trashing of the World

The other day, talking about how the ultra-wealthy have the rest of us ever more and more in their absolute control, I quoted the Yiddish proverb, “If rich people could hire others to die for them, the poor could make a wonderful living.”

My friend Glenda replied, “They already do. This is their recruitment of rural kids from the poor regions of the United States, who cannot afford to attend universities, who cannot find jobs, so they are going to war in place of the rich kids who are attending universities or are put by their rich daddies into the family business. However, the poor don’t make a wonderful living, they actually make less than minimum wage if you add it all up with the hours they put in.”

Glenda is right. I am more and more convinced that there is a cabal of ultra-wealthy individuals. Their names are not particularly well-known. They work from the shadows, through their proxies and puppets and puppydogs. They are reinstituting a worldwide slave society, in which all but they have to work constantly for pitiful wages to cover the ever-rising cost of living. Onto these slaves, chained by bills and taxes to their workbenches, the ultra-wealthy have put so much burden that people are crushed thereunder. More than that, wars are engineered as ways to make money (munitions industries, prison industries, construction industries, and so on), as well as to kill off excess populations, and keep people living in fear.

North Americans and Western Europeans are kept in a miasma of fear and anxiety by the overwhelming flood of information coming at them. They are made to feel guilty unless they watch the news and catch up on Facebook. But there is too much information to digest, and it leaves us confused and disorganized, and yet always craving more, and feeling guilty if we fail to review all of the information. Moreover, the information is largely propaganda, and carefully calibrated so people think and behave exactly as this cabal of ultra-rich want.

As I write this essay, there is a peaceful occupation of Wall Street, the financial center of the United States and, effectively, the world. While there was plenty of coverage of similar events in North Africa, this is getting hardly even a brief mention on the mainstream news media - which are owned by the ultra-wealthy who stand to lose a bit of their fortunes if this occupation reaches any meaningful outcome. I have just learned that journalists with the only news outlet providing video feeds - a small alternative outfit that broadcasts through the internet - have just been arrested. Hm. I wonder why.

Shortly before I wrote this essay, I watched in horror the video of a crowd cheering a Republican candidate for the United States presidency when he bragged about executing more than two hundred (mostly minority) people in his state of Texas. And the video of a crowd calling for the death of a man in hospital who had no health insurance. And the video of another crowd screaming imprecations at a man in the United States military, serving in the front line of one of these nonsensical wars, who happens to be gay.

Most people in North America and Western Europe don’t know that nearly one million people have been killed in Afghanistan and Iraq since the United States invasions, according to the lowest credible estimates. Americans are trained to be chronically incapable of thinking about anybody but themselves. They rarely realize that the Afghanistan/Iraq wars have no credible raison-d’être – there is no relationship between these countries and the September 11 attacks. They have no clue that, on the pretext of those attacks, the United States government has caused the death of thousands of people for every one individual who died in those attacks. These wars are entirely about oil and power, and ego on the part of the Bush/Cheney/Rove collective.

Most Americans are chronically unable to see how the arrogation and bigotry of their government, and its insistence that it has the unilateral might-makes-right to invade other countries and dictate to them how to run their own affairs made such an attack almost inevitable. The September 11 attacks were utterly abhorrent to any pacifist like me. But far more abhorrent, to me, are all the many, and worse, ways in which the ultra-wealthy, through the United States government-military-corporate establishment, have profiteered on their egregious exploiting of bloodshed in the world. Millions of innocent people have died in wars engineered by the United States. Millions more suffer thanks to United States corporatocracy (e.g., Bhopal, the Gulf of Mexico, the Exxon Valdez).

Americans are chronically blind to how their country, which was once upon a time loved and respected, is now broadly hated in the world. The United States has squandered and trashed the good will of the world by betraying its vaunted dedication to good. It now is clearly out to exploit the entire world, through commerce and war. And what is bound soon to happen as a result the United States can only blame itself for.

Descartes famously said, Cogito ergo sum. “I think, therefore I exist.” It is one of the greatest misfortunes of this age that very few people are capable of truly thinking any more, and one wonders if, then, they truly exist. Oh, yes, they think they think, but it is what they have been trained and programmed to think by the mills the public schools have been turned into, by the propaganda news media, by the politicians and the clergy. “Education”, in schools and the media (both news and entertainment) and houses of worship, is no longer about opening minds to the ability to think creatively and critically and to make decisions thoughtfully and to communicate eloquently, but to prepare them for their lifelong enslavement to the system of producing more riches for the rich.

Indeed, speaking as a retired clergyperson, I blame religion (all religions) as a social institution. Just like countries, just like the medical or insurance or legal or what-have-you social institutions, the short-sighted dimwits who “run” the religious social institutions, wear the sheep's clothing of vaunted spirituality to hide their lupine nature (the analogy is borrowed from Jesus of Nazareth) as they rape the people.

But religion is, as an institution, simply another pool of power, on the part of the ultra-wealthy, to control and harvest the people of the world. It is the Roman Empire, which never died; it simply became the Roman Catholic Church and its similar organizational hierarchies.

Spirituality is not religion. Spirituality, the sui generis yearning of the soul for the infinite, is decidedly not a social institution. Jesus, Mohammed, Lao-tse, Gautama Buddha, Black Elk, etc., on whom all be peace, were not religious leaders, not presidents of some social institution. They were spiritual people. As such, they were antinomian. As such, they condemned the social institutions – they condemned the “pharisees”, the establishment, as hypocrites (as, said Jesus, “whited sepulchres all white without and full of corruption within”).

We need more people like them. We need more John Lennons, Sojourner Truths, Martin Luther Kings, Mahatma Mohandas Gandhis, Dalai Lamas. We need more prophets, provocateurs, revolutionaries, poets, visionaries – people who have a vision of humanity as it should be, and have the courage like those I’ve named to stand in front of the military tanks in Tiananmen Square, to stand up to the well-entrenched powers, to outrage the people, to challenge common assumptions, to inspire and lead the way to a new world.

It is indeed always a battle of sorts between the visionaries and those who would convert the Sacred into the merely mundane. For every Jesus, every visionary, there is an organizer, a corporatocracist, a Paul, a Constantine, to set up the bureaucracy and turn the wild sacred power of spirituality into the mundane and malleable religion. Mircea Eliade and Emile Durckheim both pointed out this sad fact. coming from different scholarly directions.

But does that mean we should give up? As a spiritualist and an artist, I vehemently reject that notion. If through my writings I inspire only one person or maybe a few, and they go on to inspire others – then my life has not been an entire waste.

Death by a Thousand Cuts

Capitalism is a shell game: by its very nature it leads to winners and losers. In a bounded economy (one with a finite number of people who are variously the workers, the investors, the merchants, and the consumers), some gain wealth only because others lose their wealth to them. When the economic pool has no external source of additional value, then profit on the part of some inevitably results in loss on the part of others.

More than merely a shell game, capitalism is a pyramid scheme, a "Ponzi" scheme: the first to do well in the game continue to well, and everyone else basically hands their money over to these first-ins.

How so? Once some gain wealth, they inevitably gain power, and can ever more easily manipulate the system in order to gain yet more wealth and power. The only possible corrective against this is through government regulation, setting barriers such that the rich cannot run away with the game. Yet the rich seek to break through those barriers - and often succeed. Those who profit gain ever-increasing control over the economic system, and therefore can manipulate the governmental system such that it serves mainly to protect their quest for more wealth, and thus they can change the rules to maximize their own further profit and control.

The only reason the Western economies have succeeded as long as they have is that they have for centuries exploited the Third World. They have enjoyed a seemingly unbounded economic system. These relatively wealthy Western economies took advantage of cheap labor (imported slaves and indentured servants, desperate immigrants into the capitalist country, and the citizens of poor countries overseas) and a seemingly infinite supply of raw materials and abundant consumer bases both within their own country and abroad.

Today, to some degree, they continue to secure an inflow of value into their economic system – they have lately relied increasingly on off-shore employment (cheap labor in Third World countries), and factory production where environmental standards are lax to nonexistent, or simply less stringently enforced after a few well-placed bribes. And some countries, desperate for foreign cash, allow this to happen, blinding themselves to the reality that, in the long run, that these wealthy foreign companies provide jobs and some local investment, but what little value they put into the Third World country is considerably offset by the value, the wealth, they take out of the country. These are, after all, profit-making companies, and they’re not going to invest in a foreign country unless they plan to get more value than they put in.

However, it is an illusion to believe that this system, in which developed economies take value from relatively undeveloped economies, is unbounded. It is only unbounded from the point of view of a single developed economy that is exploiting other, undeveloped, economies in the world. It is in fact bounded, because at any given time the potential value to be derived from the world economy is itself bounded, simply on a larger scale, and needing more time to be exhausted. A certain developed economy may conceive of itself as unbounded, but it is not; sooner or later, even if other less developed economies don’t take action to prevent this draining away of what resources they have, the value in the world that is yet to be absorbed by developed economies will eventually begin to run out.

Put another way, developed and undeveloped economies are part of a single world economy; just as wealthy individuals in a developed economy gain increasing control of the system such that they can accrue even more wealth, so too wealthy countries in the world economy gain increasing control of the system such that they likewise can accrue even more wealth.

Through international governmental and trade organizations, the wealthy developed countries in the world have long set the rules for international trade to their own advantage, just as the wealthy individuals do within their own countries.

To name one example, the wealthy countries do little of significance to counter the scourges of war, disease, and steeply rising populations that the poorer countries struggle with. It is to the advantage of the wealthy to allow – indeed, to subtly encourage, these scourges. Greater populations of unemployed, hungry people means, in the future, greater possibility of cheap labor. And greater instability in poorer countries caused by disease and war, and the like, goes a long way from preventing them from ever developing strong smart governments that could effectively counter this draining away of wealth through their economically porous borders.

To name one other example, countries like Monsanto aggressively market genetically altered crops to poor farmers in poor countries. Since the seeds, on an introductory basis, cost less than the “regular”seeds, many farmers buy and use them in their fields. But, unlike “regular” crops, which can be used to replant in future years, these genetically altered seeds must be bought every year you want to plant the crops – and here’s the catch – once a farmer has used these altered seeds, the regular seeds will no longer germinate in that field.

It’s getting harder for these ultra-wealthy and their companies. Cheap labor is ever harder to come by as poorer countries try to raise their minimum wage standards. Meanwhile, raw materials are getting increasingly scarce, competitors in other up-and-coming economies are cutting into what once were sure consumer bases, and pollution and regulation imposed by the “left”, even in poorer countries, is seen as further destroying the ability of the rich to get richer.

And more and more of these Third World countries are in fact “wising up”, taking bold steps to slow down the drain of wealth from their economies.

These countries already face considerable pressures because of their inability to compete with the developed economies. They are typically saddled with colossal foreign debts that they will never be able to repay, and on which the interest is forever multiplying like maggots. They don’t have the efficient factories, the investment pool, the know-how, the transportation systems, or the control of the world economic system to ever get on their economic feet: they are largely “on the outside looking in”.

Added on top of this, these countries struggle to feed and put to work their huge and steeply rising, and increasingly restive populations. And many of them are also caught in the web of endless wars, petty in nature but bloody in results, either in their geographical regions, fighting over crumbs with their similarly struggling neighbor countries, or trying to put down independence-minded resistance groups within. As a result, much of what wealth they have is wasted on huge military machines, and much of their potential work force is wasted on military training that will not later convert to peaceful employment, should the wars miraculously cease.

Still, some poorer countries are bravely trying to take steps against this drain of wealth – for instance by nationalizing foreign industries, by setting up economic impediments (such as import and export duties) to slow down this drain of wealth, and the like. Some are even taking the wise step of enacting strong environmental laws to prevent that form of exploitation that (Bhopal, for example) only further destroys what little they have.

These countries have no choice but to do this, beset as they are by exponentially growing national debts and rising costs for the goods and services their citizens are demanding (thanks to the way Western commercialism has so successfully marketed itself worldwide).

In response to these countering efforts on the part of weak economies, the major capitalist countries are increasingly turning to exploiting their own populations – to dumping tax burdens on all but those in control, the ultra-wealthy, to demanding more and more work (product, which converts into value for the ultra-wealthy), and to selling the finished product back to the powerless at high markups. Rather than relying entirely on exploitation overseas, these ultra-wealthy are seeking to create a Third World from their own poorer and middle classes, which they can then exploit.

The tea party lunatics in the U.S. Republican Party, and their equivalents in other capitalist countries, are therefore not the cause of this new trend, but merely a symptom. They are not the core of the problem. They have been duped by the ultra-wealthy, who control the system (and thus the media, education, and government), into believing that this exploitation of one’s own citizens will eventually benefit them, foolishly believing themselves to be the friends (not the exploited tools) of the ultra-wealthy.

The capitalist system, in short, is in its death throes, and the ultra-wealthy realize this, and they are trying (through their proxies, their puppets in government and media), to stave off its eventual utter collapse long enough to drag home a few more fortunes.

I believe that the ultra-wealthy have determined that somebody – if not they, then somebody else – is going to make a move for world dominance, and rape it of whatever value can be squeezed out of it now, and the future be damned. The ultra-wealthy may or may not literally believe the various conservative pseudo-Christian dogmas that say the εσχατον (the end of the world at the hands of G-d) is coming soon, but they DO believe that at least in some secular sense it is coming soon. Therefore, it might as well be they who takes advantage, rather than somebody else. Hence, they don't give a flying forkful of flapjack for “The Future”; they’re going to take what they can now, and then hole themselves up in their bombproof bunkers and ride out the conflagration that’s about to engulf the world because of their actions.

The ultra-wealthy have decided that public education is to serve not to enlighten, not to inspire, not to instill the beauties of culture, but merely to train. It is to serve only to prepare fodder for the mills of servitude to the extremely wealthy, and the military required to control the rest of the world. It is against the best interests of the ultra-wealthy to have the unwealthy educated sufficiently to question the moronic and inconsistent platitudes of their media marionettes and legislative lapdogs; it is more in their interest to keep the public blandly stupid so they vote as they are told.

They create a miasma of fear – most unwealthy Americans live in fear of losing their jobs (most states now allow employers to fire at will), fear of increasing costs, fear of terrorists, fear of, well, just about everything. Minorities – especially Muslims, gays and lesbians, and their supporters – are especially to be feared. Fear debilitates: it keeps people from thinking rationally through these issues, and from organizing to protest what the ultra-wealthy are doing to them.

The ultra-wealthy have set up an efficient organization – efficiency is what they’re all about. It is impressive to me how all of the political right talks and acts the same. They say the sound bytes, they behave in the same manner. It’s more, far more, than this or that individual politician. It’s the sum-is-greater-than-the-parts pervasive force of all of them. Clearly, there is a directive coming from above – from, no doubt, the super-rich whose financial abundance puts these inexperienced morons into power by buying elections (through gerrymandering, fake polling, TV ads, etc.). And these nouveau politicians, knowing that’s what put them into office, do as they are told, and speak hate rhetoric against gays and lesbians, Muslims, and left-handed liberal pinkos like me.

And, over time, the very plentitude of such hate talk, from radio and television commentators to lawmakers on the state and federal level, makes it acceptable. The first time you step over a body in the streets of New York City, you're shocked. But, after the twentieth time, you hardly think about whether this body is alive but drunk or on drugs, or dead; you just step over it and hurry on your way. It is becoming acceptable, centrist, to talk hate.

All of this is exactly the effective technique described by Adolf Hitler in his book Mein Kampf.

In this way “typical Middle Americans” are trained to believe that we “have to be tough on crime”, and that we have to “send a message” to the “criminal element” that crime will not be tolerated. They believe (wrongly, of course, as history and sociological studies repeatedly demonstrate) that prison and capital punishment are effective deterrents against crime; even though the United States has the highest percentage of its population in prison and has the highest rate of execution of any developed country in the world, with minorities, especially African Americans, at percentages far higher than in the general population, crime has not abated. In prison, young people simply learn from older, experienced prisoners how to be better criminals. When they get out, because of their criminal record they can’t get a job, so inevitably they go back into crime.

“Typical Middle Americans” are taught to believe that politicians who are “soft on crime”, probably “bleeding heart liberals”. just want to hand their hard-earned money to criminals, to “molly coddle” them in the form of government “handouts”. They are taught to believe that people who survive on public assistance are on drugs – despite the irrationality of this, since the demographics clearly show most drug-users are financially comfortable suburbanites.

Recently a live audience cheered and clapped when Texas Governor Rick Perry bragged about seeing some two hundred people executed in his state. When Congressman Ron Paul talked about someone in hospital without medical insurance, the audience shouted out that “they should let him die”.

As the Bible puts it, “All we like sheep” have been led astray by false shepherds. It’s a Pavlovian technique: the media have trained these people to applaud what these politicians say: when the plants in the audience (and you know media-savvy types like Perry have plenty of plants in the crowd) start the applause, everyone around them applauds too, even if they missed what was said, or didn’t fully comprehend it - like a wave rippling out from stones tossed in the water.

The ultra-wealthy, through their puppets, are determined to eliminate Medicare and Social Security and “privatize” them, so a profit can go into their pockets. Once Medicare is gone, a private system will cherry-pick the profitable clients, and the rest will be rejected.

Now the ultra-wealthy want to eliminate FEMA, the federal agency that responds to natural disasters, by refusing to fund it. In its place they intend to establish a profit-making private disaster-response company, headed up by former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, son and brother of former presidents. This, along with profit-making privatization, in prisons, education, and hospitals, will enable the ultra-wealthy to collect a few more fortunes out of the system before it collapses.

“Death from a thousand cuts” - cut the cost of government, cut it until it is profitable for the ultra-wealthy who manipulate it in order to increase their wealth. Dump the burden of taxes onto the shoulders of the poor and middle classes. Set up casinos, which are really a form of regressive taxation, appealing as they do to the poor, the minority, the elderly on fixed incomes. Fund education through property taxes, so the suburbs where the wealthy live have good schools, and the poor inner cities and outlying rural districts, suffer with shabby education.

Economies are going to die. And there will be revolutions.

But don’t worry about the ultra-wealthy; they will be safe in their bomb-proof underground mansions while the rest of us up here fry in World War III.

As the Bible said: “The love of money is the root of all evil.”

Do Not Allow The Poor to Vote!

According to a politically conservative columnist and author named Matthew Vadum, allowing the poor to vote is like "handing out burglary tools to criminals."

He goes on: "It is profoundly antisocial and un-American to empower the nonproductive segments of the population to destroy the country — which is precisely why Barack Obama zealously supports registering welfare recipients to vote. ... Encouraging those who burden society to participate in elections isn’t about helping the poor. It’s about helping the poor to help themselves to others’ money."

Of course, the conservatives are already doing their best to disenfranchise the poor - whom they believe, often correctly, to be predominantly Democratic or Democratic-leaning. Now that directly racist disenfranchisement is ostensibly illegal, they're doing it in other ways.

Registration processes are deliberately made complex so people without higher education, or a strong command of the English language, find it difficult to register successfully. There are fewer voting booths in poor urban districts, and they are generally older and more subject to breakdowns (real, intended, or imagined), creating long lines that discourage would-be voters. More often it is in precincts such as these that recounts are demanded, processes in which Republicans have gotten good at challenging every Democratic vote such that it is thrown out and, lo and behold, the Democratic candidate eventually is deemed to have lost.

Of course, the very sanctity of voting - that supposedly the people decided, that supposedly the outcome was unknown until the people had spoken - is long gone. It's such a science now that they know how you're going to vote even before you pull the curtain - no, not you specifically as an individual, but there are experts who can predict with appalling accuracy the results of every voting bloc: by district, by racial makeup, by educational level achieved, by religion, they have you pegged.

More than that, there are experts who manipulate - who pull certain strings in order to produce the election results that those who pay for their services require.

Thus it doesn't matter whether the poor, whether Democrats, vote or not: the Powers have set up mechanisms that engineer the desired outcomes to elections, notwithstanding what might have happened had the process of voting remained what it was intended to be. This is because the trained lapdogs of the ultra-rich in the Congress and state legislatures, put there by means of fooling the poor into voting for them, have destroyed any meaningfulness to the voting process.

The mechanism of this destruction includes gerrymandering, lobbying, no-bid contracting, PACs, corporations as persons, fit-the-desired-results pollstering, media blitzing, and of course owning the news outlets that tell people how to vote under the pretense of objective journalism.

Most appalling, these people use the emotional appeal of out-of-context religious phraseology and a flag-waving patriotic fervor to gain the support of millions of woefully uninformed citizens (thanks to financially undersupported schools that have been turned into menial-work-preparation mills and empty political platitudes in the guise of news but packaged as entertainment) - even as these people rip away from these people their civil rights, their jobs, their health, their clean environment, and dump heavy regressive taxes on their shoulders.

I'm reminded how, decades ago, I saw the manuscript for a fellow pastor's sermon. At one point in the margin his wife had noted, "Your argument's weak here. Be sure to raise your voice in emphasis." This, to me, is a metaphor for what these lunatics are doing - they have not weak arguments; rather, they have none at all. So they raise their voices into a din of outrage against those who try calmly to explain the complicated, boring facts.

Remember:

Those who do not set the bulwarks of their positions on the foundation of fact and raise them up on the girders of logic, but rather on the emotional appeal of flag and scripture, don't want you to realize that their rhetoric entirely lacks both fact and logic.

This Matthew Vadum fails to comprehend an essential feature to the whole idea of every citizen, rich or poor, white or minority, Christian or Jewish or Muslim, liberal or conservative, being able to vote. If every citizen is able to vote, it is much more difficult for a self-governed country to be taken over by an oligarchy.

We have seen in history what it's like when only whites can vote - blacks are kept as slaves. We have seen in history what it's like when only men can vote - women cannot inherit or hold meaningful jobs or get a decent education.

If only Christians get to vote, for instance, other faiths will soon be tightly regulated, or heavily taxed, or even outlawed. If only Republicans get to vote, there will be no "loyal opposition" to their maddening excesses. (The Democrats are no band of saints; they too have their idiots and their monsters. But they're all we've got in opposition to these tea party Republican lunatics!) And if only people who do not receive public assistance get to vote, then laws will soon be put in place denying those on public assistance (including the poor and the elderly) their essential civil rights.

It is only because those on public assistance (and those who agree to the necessity of providing it) still can vote that the poor and the minorities still have a few rights. It is only because they can still vote that the United States hasn't yet quite fully become an oligarchy of the wealthy. The country is already dangerously close to that, with lawmakers in state and federal legislative bodies doing everything they can to eliminate taxes on the wealthy, to create corporations as legal persons, to take away all public assistance (including health, housing, food, and other essentials), to eliminate environmental and safety standards, and safeguards against monopolies, and reduce all but the ultra-wealthy to slaves, working several jobs and still struggling to pay their taxes and their exorbitantly priced necessities.

And, if those on public assistance are denied the vote - even though the United States Constitution enshrines the vote for all citizens - then I warn you: You Are Next. Are you of a faith other than conservative Christian, or (shudder) of no faith at all? Is your racial heritage something other than Northern European? Do you have more than a high school education? Once they start that snowball rolling down the hill, there will soon be an avalanche of widespread disenfranchisement.

I'm a left-handed left-leaning scholar-writer, ordained in a liberal Protestant denomination and someone who practices (shudder) other faiths as well (Buddhism, Islam, Judaism, and Native American spirituality) who lives abroad because he can't afford life in the United States and is angry about that reality. I expect them not only to take away my vote, but to take away my pension and my Social Security that I paid for by working for forty-five years. You should be concerned that you, too, will lose certain essentials.

Vadum also fails to understand that voting isn't a "right" anyway.

It's a responsibility.

A right is something that is permanently yours. You can't lose it. A responsibility is something that, if you don't use it, you lose it. If you don't vote - and vote for people who will protect your rights and your responsibilities - both of them - you will lose at least your responsibilities, and very likely some day your rights, too.

Allow me to explain:

Every citizen has as her or his responsibility participation in self-government. If one fails that responsibility, one tacitly is allowing others - whoever those "others" may be, including the ultra-rich and the ultra-conservatives who toady up to them - to govern them instead. If a citizen doesn't vote, then a citizen has no right - this is where rights fit in - to exercise free speech to criticize the government.

That, at least, is what I used to say. But now that elections are so carefully managed that their outcomes are designed by the super-wealthy, the opportunity to exercise that responsibility has been taken away from us. I'm no longer sure whether it is worth the effort to vote, when the outcome is already been bought and paid for.

Vadum is only verbalizing what is increasingly a reality: that the United States is no longer a self-governed country, but an oligarchy of the super-rich.