Demoralized by design
Go and view this, or if you’re lazy, its transcribed below:
Well, if you go back, it all began with democracy. Before we had the vote, all the power was in the hands of rich people. If you had money, you could get healthcare, education, look after yourself when you were old. And what democracy did was give was to give the poor the vote, and it moved power from the marketplace to the police station, from the wallet to the ballot.
If you can find money to kill people, you can find money to help people.
… choice depends on the freedom to choose, and if you are shackled with debt you don’t have the freedom to choose.
People in debt become hopeless and hopeless people don’t vote. They always say that that everyone should vote but I think that if the poor in Britain or the United States turned out and voted for people that represented their interests there would be a real democratic revolution.
See, I think there are two ways in which people are controlled. First of all frighten people and secondly, demoralize them.
An educated, healthy and confident nation is harder to govern. And I think there’s an element in the thinking of some people: ‘We don’t want people to be educated, healthy and confident, because they would get out of control.’
The top 1% of the world’s population own 80% of the world’s wealth. It’s incredible that people put up with it! But they’re poor, they’re demoralized, they’re frightened, and therefore they think perhaps the safest thing to do is take orders and hope for the best.</em>
This was spoken by former Parliament member Tony Benn, in Michael Moore’s “Sicko”. I came across it today in a blog post here. Seems folks in the liberal community are starting to awaken to exactly what they did last November. And they aren’t happy.
And they have plenty to be unhappy about. Now, if you were a GOP voter, you’ve gotten used to being lied to for years. Every four years some nicely tanned white man is presented to you, and he’s going to mouth things about shrinking the size of government- and then double it. He’s going to cry fervently to you about saving the unborn, and then lift nary a finger toward the issue until re-election time, where he’ll account how you’re under attack from those evil secular democrats, who want to rip babies out of strollers and stomp ‘em to death if they haven’t aborted them all. And you’re not supposed to notice that your party controls the White House, Congress and the courts, and yet, somehow nothing gets done. So you’re used to that. But you vote for them anyway, because either a woman or a girlie man who needs a big strong daddy to “protect” you, or you’re just happy that your candidate seems to dislike strong women, black men, or any god but your god, just like you do. Its ass-kickin’ by proxy, and it fits you like your tight white underpants, and you like it like that. All snug.
But the liberals, the last time they had an electable candidate everybody was making money in a .com, and we didn’t really give a rip what the president did, as long you didn’t have to go to another country and kill somebody, and you kept rakin’ in the web development fees. But now, when the chips are truly down, when every civilized person on earth realizes that your country is an out of control monster, unable or unwilling to police itself, in strides what appears to be a man on a white horse, set to save us. And goody gumdrops, he’s black, too! After eight years of watching what you love about America- and you truly do love America, because you care enough to criticize it- after watching all that get flushed away by pigs who brutalize, rob and blind their own people, and then treat the rest of the world worse, you are desperate for hope. A change.
So, how’s that workin’ out for ya?
We’re still in Iraq, with no real plans to leave. We’re escalating the war in Afghanistan- the same war that bankrupted Russia. We’re going to continue military tribunals in lieu of real justice, continue to imprison innocent people without charge indefinitely. Violence is escalating in Iraq- did the surge have a time limit?
Every failed business plan that has tanked our economy- the banks, the car makers, the insurers, all of them, after raping and pillaging us once, are now doing it again with the gleeful assistance of a man whose presidency wouldn’t have possible without the money these very interests gave him. Obama made great hay about how his internet-based funding, all the little people coming out and donating a few bucks on a website like never before, all that is what elected him. No. Goldman Sachs elected him. Obama just needed you to stand in crowds for photo ops. That plays better than on knee pads in a corporate board room, taking orders. Television, you know.
This is not to say Obama hasn’t done some good things. He certainly treats science more respectfully than did his predecessor, and he pays less attention to the shouters of faith. All good, as the kids say.
But its not enough, its not what people voted for. After the eight years of the Cheney/Bush horrorshow, this nation stood at a moment that we haven’t had since Watergate, a moment in which we say as a people say “NO”. No you will not kill the innocent because they live above oil. No you will not torture and then lie about it. No you will not lock people in cells because they are Muslim. Or Mexican. Barack Obama took this rage, this anger, this fear, hired a cool artist to make a poster, and then promptly said ‘eh, fuck ‘em’ the moment Aretha Franklin stopped singing in that funky hat. He took our hope and change, and stepped into the suit Dick Cheney left in that man-sized safe in his office. By the end of his first term, if he makes it that far, Obama will have crushed the liberal movement, if such exists, and will have stomped on the passion people such as my son have for him and the promise of America. And that is a terrible, terrible thing.
Except it might be all that saves us, if it doesn’t end up killing us. Obama’s simple existence, the fact that this not born in ‘merica black boy is sitting in his shirtsleeves in the oval office has killed the Republican party. Almost effortlessly. Obama showed to enough people that continuing to cast your fate with greasy religious hucksters only leaves you broke and shot at. Granted, the GOP are their own worst enemy- to wit, why hasn’t someone taken Cheney hunting instead of to a TV studio- but until an alternative was presented nobody really thought we had a way out from that way of living.
But its starting to grow on people that we were yet again sold a bill of goods, and at the end of the day we actually have no government at all- but instead this out of control Leviathan that functions separate from, and at odds with the very people that comprise it. Government exists only because of two things. One is the guns. They have big guns, and can make us shut up. But it also relies on faith, in that belief that yes, the state has a role to play in our lives, and can affect positive change when mandated to do so by its citizens. And by the end of the next four years, only the most deluded will cling to that fallacy, much as the stubborn and stupid 20% base of the GOP still believe that they have an actual role to play in this charade, and that there are people who rule them who feel just like they do in their recliner watching Fox.
So at that point, the words of Tony Benn will resonate even louder than they do today. Perhaps at that point enough people in this country will start to act in their own interests, guided by their own intelligence, and not take the easy way, the media-mandated way, and instead actually vote for a real candidate. Or will we be so poor, so hopeless, that we become as Benn puts it “demoralized” into inaction?
So, what is it going to be? Are you going to continue to vote for “change” that is only a change in pigmentation- or are you going to actually find someone who has your interests in mind? Or are you going to give up and never vote again? How about this: Read a book. Buy a gun. Educate your neighbor. And in doing so, change your world- and soon enough we’ll have no more need for a Cheney.
Or an Obama.
