World
(tags:
politics )
- 54 days
ago
- truthawaits.com
Lanova Messiah is a hero of the peace movement here in Exxonia. Lanova's mother was tortured and killed by the corrupt dictator who is currently our country's President..so it was with great joy that we learned that Lanova is running for Parliament
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Thursday May 15, 2008, 3:19 pm
Thanks belongs to mark S on this wonderful, thought provoking work for he is the writer here... I am hoping it inspires some dialog, friends
You are very kind, Sarah. We should also mention JohnMichael, who publishes my writing no matter how "thought provoking" (a euphemism for controversial) it may be.
Repeating the same mistakes over and over may not be controversial, but it isn't likely to bring about change. If nothing else, maybe we should try making some new and different mistakes once in a while, just to see what happens. Better still, sometimes we can learn from other people's mistakes and not have to reinvent the wheel. Effective political systems reject the bureaucratic model for a more democratic one where the people really have a voice. That seems like an avenue worth exploring to me.
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Thursday May 15, 2008, 3:54 pm
I agree Mark and if I may I would like to open the whole can of beans concerning our elections and the useless votes... I still have an answer you gave to an individual who was upset over the revelation of the corruption. I think it is the best condensed lesson in American politics I have ever heard or read
"Fell for the old bait-and-switch, did you, Marcy? Are you a young or a new voter? In every primary there are shills, people whose job it is to rope in voters who have become disillusioned and disgusted with their party. The shills represent the OLD party values, and usually they are the ONLY ones in their party representing those values. This election season the shills were Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul. They've been in Congress long enough to know how the con game works. The military-industrial complex bankrolls and gives good media coverage to the pro-military candidates, and the shills drop out after they lose the primary so as not to split their party's vote.
If they were sincere, and not just shills, they'd have left their political parties long ago, simply because they do not agree with their parties' positions and platforms, and then they'd have been free to run as independents. But they are party animals, party loyalists, and they would never split the vote of a pro-war candidate just because they claim to oppose the war.
Do some googling about confidence games and shills, Marcy. The people running the con game are thugs, but the shills are always nice, charming, intelligent, sincere people who seem more trustworthy than God. They couldn't do their job as shills if they weren't. Nobody likes the thugs, but everybody loves the shills, and the shills would never do anything to hurt the thugs or to hurt the thugs' chances, because they're on the same team and the only ones they want to hurt are you and me.
I know it is hard to grasp. I'm 68 years old and I only figured it out in the past few years. You have to watch it happen over and over and over and over again before you start to get it. But you will.
"
That is true, as far as it goes, Sarah, although it is probably a good idea to eliminate a person's name when posting to a different topic, however there are more elements to the game than just the thugs and the shills.
In this fable, Lanova Messiah is neither a shill nor a thug, but a truly dedicated, sincere, and courageous heroine. After her mother's death, Lanova dedicated herself to continuing the fight for democracy in her mother's memory. Lanova had spent many years protesting and getting arrested, and had the admiration of most Exxonians, but had not succeeded in bringing about change.
So Lanova finally decided to try working within the system, as many have done before. That is another paradox of bureaucracy. You cannot change it from outside, but if you seek power within it, it corrupts and hobbles you.
I can name many sincere and heroic people who tried to work within the system. Some because corrupted, some did not, but none accomplished anything. No matter how much you want to do something that a bureaucracy is established for the purpose of preventing, the only possible way that you can gain the necessary power within the bureaucracy to do what you want to do, is by agreeing not to do it.
I was really hesitant to tackle the subject of bureaucracy, as it is something that only a Franz Kafka could do justice to, but I hope I was able to explain something of how bureaucracies work (or don't work).
When a system is corrupt, putting people who are not corrupt into that system does not change the system. They either become corrupted or they resist corruption, but either way they cannot accomplish what they set out to do.
Here's another example. Suppose that I am a peace activist. I sign petitions, go to rallies and protests, and lobby my representatives. But the war continues. So I stage sit-ins at my legislators' offices, I go unfurl peace banners in the gallery of Congress. I get arrested many times, but the war still continues.
So I decide that the problem is that I'm just an ordinary citizen, and that if I want peace, I have to run for office. So I do, and I get elected, go to Congress, and find that I'm still not allowed to speak -- and that if I speak out of order I can be cited for contempt and arrested just like any ordinary citizen.
So I try to get onto a committee so that I can hold hearings, but that takes many years in Congress for me to gain that much seniority. When I finally get to be the person with the most seniority on an appropriate committee, I still don't head the committee, as the appointments are in the hands of the party leadership, and I still don't have subpoena power. And the only place I can even hold my hearings is in a basement broom closet, because they won't let me use a hearing room.
So I go to my party leadership and say that I have always been loyal to the party, I have more seniority than anyone else in the system, and I want to be the chair of my committee. They say sure, but only on the condition that I don't try to end the war.
So the only way that I can get the power to do what I want to do, is to agree not to do it. Otherwise, I will have to forfeit my committee chairmanship, my subpoena power, and my right to hold hearings in hearing rooms instead of in the basement. Can you say John Conyers?
He isn't a sell-out like Pelosi. He's still trying to do what needs to be done, impeachment and ending the wars. But if he bucks Pelosi and the party leadership, he loses the power he spent a lifetime trying to get. The only way he is allowed to have that power, is if he doesn't use it. The moment he tries to use it, he'll be sent back to the basement.
So he issues subpoenas and the White House ignores them. But he doesn't do what he is forbidden to do by the party leadership, that is, to try to put impeachment back on the table, because then we would no longer have anyone in Congress with as much seniority as he has to fight for us. I think there may be one other Member of Congress with more seniority than Conyers has.
So what is a freshman legislator going to accomplish? Or a dozen of them?
Our Constitution was written to keep power in the hands of the wealthy elites and to establish a bureaucracy with three branches, all of which were designed to keep power out of the hands of the people.
Thursday May 15, 2008, 5:46 pm
Thank you, Mark, it is a particularly thought provoking piece. I hope our situations are not too hopeless. Hopefully, Lanova will make some strides and provide a little bit of check and balance along the way. The process of politics seems far too complicated and dismal for those who want to make substantial change, though.
Thursday May 15, 2008, 6:05 pm
Lanova Messiah for Parliament! Viva Lanova! Long live the democratic Republic of Exxonia!
You Go Girl!!!
Never Surrender!!!
Peace is the Word!
Wikipedia defines "Political Machine" as "an unofficial system of a political organization based on patronage, the spoils system, "behind-the-scenes" control, and longstanding political ties within the structure of a representative democracy. Machines sometimes have a boss, and always have a long-term corps of dedicated workers who depend on the patronage generated by government contracts and jobs. Machine politics has existed in many United States cities, especially between about 1875 and 1950, but continuing in some cases down to the present day."
The definition is good until the last sentence. The fact is the "Political Machine" is at it most powerful today at the Federal level. Control is so complete, that if an honest person campaigns above the state level he/she is only going to be elected if the Machine so decides. That decision will be based these factors.
1. Whether the candidate has enough popularity that it will allay fears that the Machine actually controls the elections.
2.Whether the candidate has potential to be useful or
whether the candidate needs to be brought in for control.
Our U.S. Congress is the epitome of that control. A well meaning honest candidate, once elected, can be a member of Congress for multiple terms and yet never accomplish anything of the agenda for which they were elected.
By allowing them to be elected, the Machine has effectively disabled them. It may even get to a point where the citizenry feels that they have been betrayed and that well meaning honest candidate has become the do-nothing Congressperson that didn't keep his/her word.
Mark's writing, done as a fable, is very accurate. It is written in "plainspeak" and in a way with which we can all understand the folly of believing that if we just go out and vote, the right person will get elected and change all the problems we have today. The right person isn't going to change the Machine and voting isn't going to change the Machine.
Karen, I think you're right, that the prospects for working within the system are dismal at best. But the prospects for changing the system and getting a different system that IS democratic, that DOES ensure the ultimate power to the people, and that WILL make a better world look pretty good.
In a hierarchical system like our government, power comes from the top down. In a democratic system, something we've never experienced, power comes from the bottom up. So the more we act locally, the better our chances get.
Hierarchies are rigid. They are not open to change. Because they cannot flex, when there is too much strain, they break. Our government is very near the breaking point. It is fiscally and militarily overextended, it has very little credibility, and it cannot adapt, not even when it is necessary for it to adapt in order to survive.
The Supreme Court was wrong -- a corporation is not a person. And Luis the XIV of France was wrong too -- the state is not a person. A merger of government and business like U.S. politics is an inhuman and inhumane thing called fascism that always kills millions of people. The more we identify with those people, the more we become authentic and responsible human beings, the more we withdraw our support from corrupt predatory capitalism, the sooner it will crumble.
At this point it might only take the proverbial straw to break this camel's back (apologies to camels). It might topple over in the slightest breeze. Our ignorance and fear are the only things holding it up. As we learn to trust ourselves and to work within our community, we can build a truly human, humane, and sustainable system, a system that operates from the bottom up, not from the top down.
People are doing it. We, as people, can do what government cannot do, because we are flexible and we can hold each other accountable. At this point in time our prospects look a whole lot brighter, at least to me, than our government's. If we continue to support it, to petition it for redress of grievances (most of which it caused), to participate in it, and to revere a white supremacist, patriarchal and predatory capitalist system as if it were something sacred and worthy of reverence and respect, rather than the tyrannical genocidal and corrupt institution it is, it may last a little longer, but probably not much.
If we renounce it, shun it, turn our backs on it, and simply refuse to give it our consent, if we say, "These wars of aggression, these crimes against humanity, this torture, this shredding of the Constitution, is not ours and we neither recognize it nor want anything to do with it," it will disintegrate.
We have a choice. We can continue to collaborate, or we can resist. We are privileged and fortunate. Our resistance does not have to be violence and could not be countered with violence. Nobody can send Blackwater or the National Guard to force us to go shopping or force us to vote. There is no penalty for disobeying Bush. He didn't and couldn't order us to go shopping, all he could do was ask, urge, and encourage us to shop. The two political parties that have supported his war crimes and are protecting him from impeachment cannot force us to vote, all they can do is ask, urge, and encourage us to vote.
The choice and the power really is ours. If we buy it, we own it. If we vote for it, it is ours. The day that every peace activist and every peace-loving person in the U.S. stops asking Congress to end the war and simply stops voting, stops delegating power to representatives who can then wage and fund wars without our consent, the wars will end.
Thursday May 15, 2008, 11:23 pm
Brilliant article Mark and TY Sarah for posting it. I have to say that I do like both Kucinich and Paul and I think they'd be dynamite running on an indie ticket with Nader. Just because that would make people see a different kind of possibility. But it won't happen. We give our power away because we believe in the conjuring trick of 'the powerful' and 'the elite' just like we give away the value of our work, our thought and our creations through our belief in a fraudulent fiat currency and its 'complicated' root in credit economics. We do not believe in our own power. We see the bright lights and succumb to the hypnosis. does anyone remember what happened in the Philippines when the army went over to the people in the bloodless revolution? We could do that. We really could.
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Thursday May 15, 2008, 11:27 pm
Thank you again Mark, Marian, John Michael... and those participating. my apologies for the quote error, Mark. I agree with all you said Mark... as long as we participate in the game the game thrives to the benefit of the house of the elite. As long as we continue to give our power to the players, the players continue "business as usual" for them. Taking responsibility, true freedom, is not the easy road... but it is the only road to justice and equality for all .
Friday May 16, 2008, 5:19 am
"One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. The bamboozle has captured us. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back." - Carl Sagan
Friday May 16, 2008, 7:08 am
Noted and thanks Mark ,Sarah and Marion.
I really think that most people understand just how corrupt our government is and the corporations that run this world ,not just this country .I think most of them also understand how corrupt the voting system is also .
The problem as I see it is that everyone wants some hope ! They don't want to see themselves in a hopeless situation .To just say don't vote or your part of the problem I don't think is enough ,,you have to give people hope with a real solution to that problem and until you can do that people will cling to what little hope they have in a system that doesn't work for them.
Sara S. I like what you said because it does provide some glimmer of hope that there is a way out of this mess we find ourselves in with all this corruption around us and a government that doesn't work for us.
Friday May 16, 2008, 7:19 am
I for one won't go out and spend my money on things I don't need so in that way I am not supporting the big corporations that run this world .To me that is the most important thing to do because big corporations can't exist without our support .
If I could be totally self sustaining ,,meaning I had land in which I could grow and raise my own food that would be ideal but unfortunately on my small SS check that isn't possible for me but I have considered moving to my son's land where this might be possible .
To me this will be the only thing that could possibly stop a war is by not supporting the big corporations that support wars .
I see materialism as the bigger problem that keeps us inslaved !
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Friday May 16, 2008, 7:37 am
I agree Linda... in that none of us want to lose our comfort level, whatever that may be... and it is a huge part of the problem... individual responsibility is not an easy road, and the lifetimes of indoctrination toward dependency and separation ( each of us is alone and too different to trust each other) have made the light of hope very dim.
Friday May 16, 2008, 8:30 am
I guess America could use more incorruptible taken figures in all of our State House's. I'm going to run for Leominster's State Rep. seat, as soon as I move back there, from this small town I live in. In fact... in a way I am already running for the times I do spend in Leo's-Town, I see a lot of old friends, who know I am up to something. (if only the other 9 in the Family knew I am not in Life for the money...)
Friday May 16, 2008, 12:33 pm
I looked up in the Google map to find the country of Exxonia and it came up with "Did you mean: Exxon"... Hmm... Started reading the story and finally realized it is a paraody... I think I need a cuppa coffee to wake up...
Lovely article and it does say a lot... Thank you Mark for the "story" and to Sarah for posting this story from JohnMicahels' web site into C2 news and to Marian for proofing. Did I get everyone...
The comments by all above me gave me some ideas as what other people think and are highly valued.
