|
Of Hamster Wheels and Men
By Charles Sullivan
09/27/07 "ICH
" -- - It is evident that the US or Israel is going
to launch an unprovoked attack on Iran in the near future, just
as it did against Iraq and countless other defenseless nations
within recent memory. As a result, untold numbers of innocent
people will die and huge sums of money will change hands. Both
the U.S. and Israel will consolidate their power in the Middle
East and injustice and death will follow in their wake.
Bush’s co-conspirators in Congress are standing down, leaving
little doubt as to whom they serve. As always, the mainstream
media is preparing the way by serving as an organ of the
Military-industrial complex by beating the drums of war and
perpetuating lies.
Outside of a small number of citizens, few people seem capable
of plumbing the depths of our conundrum. Under the umbrella of
capitalism, business is the business of America, and death,
inequity, and misery are its chief byproducts. Thus the rich are
getting richer and the wealth generated by the producers is
being concentrated into fewer hands than ever before.
War and class warfare are among the offshoots of capitalism.
They are opposite sides of the same coin, like Democrat and
Republican. Significant change will not occur until the people
rise up in revolt and take matters into their own hands—a state
of affairs that is virtually unimaginable. Nothing less than a
fundamental paradigm shift from capitalism to a just an
equitable socio-economic system is required.
It is not difficult to know what kind of response the present
threat demands of us—yet only a handful of thoughtful and
courageous people will act appropriately against them.
I am quite certain that indifference, apathy, belligerent
nationalism, and dumb-foundedness are not appropriate responses
to the cancer that is festering in the Pentagon, the halls of
Congress, and America’s corporate board rooms and political
think tanks.
I am willing to bet that the average American never contemplates
the inequities that capitalism foists upon the world, or the
unwarranted faith we have in the concept of private ownership,
unregulated markets, and trickle down economics. This is a
system that was created to serve the wealthy and to oppress the
majority, and it is fundamentally predatory in nature.
Championed by the likes of Milton Friedman, capitalism and
private ownership is the holy grail of the American economic
system, and they are considered beyond reproach even by those
who barely survive under their ponderous weight. The nemesis of
capital and privilege is an organized and mobilized citizenry.
Throughout America’s short history, alternative political and
economic systems such as communism and socialism, long
associated with organized labor and radical unionism, have
occasionally gained a foothold in the barren political landscape
and, predictably, were thoroughly demonized by the mainstream
media and its corporate funders.
Alternatives to capitalism have been tried but they have always
been undermined by the US, which allows their critics to assert
that these social experiments have been tried and failed. But
left alone to evolve without outside interference, other
socio-economic systems that serve people and the public interest
might well flourish over for profit systems that promote private
enterprise, which explains why so much energy and treasure is
spent to undermine them.
Does anyone really believe that capitalism would be so prevalent
today if it had been so systematically undermined by other
governments as its counterparts? The playing field has never
been level. Yet, despite such intense oppression, alternatives
continue to spring up like undesirable weeds in capitalism’s
well groomed garden. Left untended, the garden quickly reverts
to its natural state, which, clearly, is not capitalism or
public funded privatized wealth accumulation.
Early on, working class Americans have been programmed to rail
against any system that poses a threat to capitalism and its
attendant Plutocratic rule. There was the era of McCarthyism in
the 1950’s, and long before that the constant specter of the red
menace that has always been associated with organized labor and
other social justice movements.
Any ideology that is opposed to capitalism has always been
presented to the people as a threat to democracy itself, which
is an absurd notion. Through propaganda and other distortions of
truth, the interests of the ruling clique are widely perceived
to also be the people’s interest. Nothing could be farther from
the truth. Democracy is the greatest threat to capitalism and
Plutocracy; and, as history attests, it is vigorously repressed
by those in power, often by acts of state sponsored terrorism
and militarism.
Unregulated corporate power and the unbridled exploitation of
land and people are as far from true free markets and democracy
as anything can be.
Through the judicious use of lies and propaganda the corporate
media, aided by the educational system, has successfully steered
the collective American psyche away from the very ideologies
that might potentially be our greatest benefactors. The
underlying causes of societal injustice, including the
inequitable distribution of wealth and power, are thus kept
safely out of the public conscience, beyond the pale of moral
and intellectual discourse. Unregulated corporate power and free
markets are hailed in the mainstream media as humankind’s
greatest achievements. They are marketed to the very people it
exploits as liberating, democratic institutions.
The founding fathers recognized that an aroused and organized
citizenry was the primary threat to the ruling elite. Organized
labor, in particular, has always been perceived as a threat to
the established orthodoxy. A democratic workplace would
inevitably lead to a democratic society, and thus deny the
strength of the ruling Plutocracy.
It is remarkable that for more than 230 years the Plutocracy has
not only successfully kept the majority of the people supporting
economic and social policy that is detrimental to the people,
they have also kept them from thinking about alternatives that
could provide relief from the social and economic injustice
wrought by capitalism—among them, universal health care and
socialized higher education. The government is always waging a
cold war against the working class people, whatever their
country of origin.
As a result, we have evolved into a nation of imperialists
addicted to war and other forms of violence, which accrues
tremendous wealth and power to the rich, while simultaneously
undermining the people’s collective welfare, and the wellbeing
of the planet.
Attached to their ipods, cell phones, their computers,
television sets, and right wing media, the American people are
detached from reality. So long as they are free to consume and
waste, and sufficient entertainment is provided, the people will
not rise up in revolt.
Because of this separation from reality, Americans do not
empathize with people outside of their own immediate families,
beyond a small sphere of friends and acquaintances. We have no
sense of community, and little visceral connection to the wild
earth that sustains all life. We are reductionists who do not
appreciate the organic whole. Thus we cannot connect the dots
and think in rational terms of cause and effect. We have
commodified the earth and her people in order to exploit them
for profit.
Too many Americans exist with a false sense of entitlement and
privilege that is not nearly as prevalent in other parts of the
world, where the effects of capitalism are better understood.
Confident in our right to consume, while ignoring the misery our
consumption and waste is causing others, we do not perceive the
connection between capitalism, war, socio-economic class, cheap
labor, and planetary destruction.
Dr. Martin Luther King said: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to
justice everywhere.” The Wobblies understood: “An injury to one
is an injury to all.” But we do not easily think beyond the self
and rarely see ourselves as a part of a vibrant global
community—a part of nature. We even erect psychological barriers
that prevent us from questioning the established orthodoxy, as
we witnessed in the aftermath of 9-11. We do as we are told,
rather than doing what is right and just. Americans fear the
government and tremble before authority.
It is this spiritual isolation and emptiness that allows us to
comprise so little of the earth’s population, and to consume so
much of her precious biological and ecological wealth—the
planetary life support systems that sustain all life.
The American worker, despite all evidence to the contrary, and
notwithstanding the lessons of history, continues to subscribe
to the ideology of the capitalist model and its empty promises
dressed in the seductive garments of the ‘American Dream’. That
dream is now, more than ever, as millions of Americans are
coming to realize, more myth than reality.
Capitalism has forced a nation-sized plantation upon the working
class people of this country, and a world-sized gulag upon
people everywhere. Workers keep only a tiny percent of the
wealth they create for their employers, just enough to keep them
playing the game—a game only a select few will ever win. Someone
else always reaps the benefits of our labor.
American workers are like hamsters imprisoned in a cage,
spinning our hamster wheels with furious speed, working harder,
producing more, more, more—ever more; until our hearts explode
or our bodies wear out under mountains of debt.
Hardly a handful of people realize what an elaborate hoax has
been erected around us, what a sham this moribund system of
waste and exploitation really is.
So we go from one plantation to another, drifting like
tumbleweeds from one job to another but always imprisoned by the
same exploitive, dehumanizing capitalist system.
At some level, I believe that the majority of the people intuit
that something is terribly wrong. Thus they subscribe to the
idea of reform and resort to electoral politics—a system that is
wholly owned and operated by special interest money and
corporate lobbyists. Their faith in the vote is misplaced and
their energy is misdirected, which thus helps to maintain the
established order, and prevents us from doing anything
meaningful and direct. It assures consistency through the
centuries: Imperial wars and occupations, a widening gap between
the rich and poor; falling wages, union busting, and
unfathomable environmental destruction on a global scale.
There are no political solutions available to us. There are no
knights in shinning armor coming to the rescue. In a system
awash in money the vote has no meaning. It is a mistake to think
that the tools provided by capitalism can do anything other than
perpetuate the system that is already in place, as history
clearly demonstrates. Whether George Bush, Ron Paul, or Hillary
Clinton occupies the White House, the result will be the same.
Politicians are the property of special interest money. Few of
them serve the people.
We must stop believing that reform of this corrupt system is
even possible. Misplaced faith in corrupt politicians keeps us
from fomenting the seeds of revolution, which are our only
salvation and our destiny if we are to survive as a people. If
only we could conjure up the fighting spirit that these times
require.
People can only affect change by accepting personal
responsibility and through direct action. We, ourselves, must
become the agents for radical, revolutionary transformation.
Rather than putting our trust in George Bush and Hillary Clinton
or the sycophants in Congress, we must believe in ourselves and
directly assert the power we have. We the people, when organized
and mobilized, are the most powerful revolutionary force on
earth. All we need is solidarity, but solidarity can be as
elusive as a wisp of smoke, especially when so much capital is
expended to keep us isolated and disorganized, and
propagandized.
Both voting and sporadic protests, while they may temporarily
make us feel useful, do not have much long term effect. Let us
not simply say no to war with our vote, but with our bodies and
our treasure. If we wish to see social justice enacted, we must
not merely vote for it, we must, ourselves, become the agents of
justice. We must oppose injustice not only on philosophical and
ethical grounds, but in the theater of action, with our bodies.
Democracy and justice are too important to entrust to
politicians who serve money, rather than people and the public
welfare. We must do more than give lip service to the mere
symbols of justice while doing nothing to actually obtain
justice, or even worse—undermining it by voting more Plutocrats
into office. Each of us must act to bring justice to bear. It is
wrong to quietly tolerate what is being done to our country.
Our collective tolerance for injustice and mediocrity makes us
complicit in them. We do not hold the criminals and the real
terrorists accountable and we continue to support the system
that ushered them into power by participating in it and
pretending that it is legitimate.
Action applied directly at the point of injustice is the only
force that can bring about permanent and just change. But
action, unlike rhetoric, requires courage and conviction. It
means putting the fear of god into the hearts of the government,
as ordinary people do in Europe and Latin America, putting our
bodies on the line for what we believe in. When the state is an
enemy of the people, all just men and women must become enemies
of the state.
Change begins and ends with the individual. What we think and
what we do matters only if we act on our beliefs and are even
willing to die for them, if necessary. Peace can only follow
justice; it never precedes it.
By putting faith in those who serve the almighty dollar, rather
than directly upholding the principles of democracy ourselves,
we diminish our own power—we cede it to the corrupt and
diabolical whose primary purpose is to rape and exploit us. Let
us leave the safe haven of our hamster wheels and occupy the
streets until justice reigns for everyone. There is no other
way.
Charles Sullivan is a nature photographer, free-lance writer,
and activist residing in the Ridge and Valley Providence of
geopolitical West Virginia. He welcomes your comments at
csullivan@phreego.com
Click
on "comments" below to
read or post comments
Comment
Guidelines
Be succinct, constructive and
relevant to the story.
We
encourage engaging, diverse and
meaningful commentary. Do not
include personal information such
as names, addresses, phone
numbers and emails. Comments
falling outside our guidelines
– those including personal
attacks and profanity – are
not permitted.
See our complete
Comment
Policy and
use
this link to notify us if you
have concerns about a comment.
We’ll promptly review and
remove any inappropriate
postings.
Send Page To a Friend
In accordance
with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material
is distributed without profit to those who have
expressed a prior interest in receiving the
included information for research and educational
purposes. Information Clearing House has no
affiliation whatsoever with the originator of
this article nor is Information ClearingHouse
endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)
|
