When I saw Barack Obama speak in Birmingham several months ago and listened to his agenda of 'Change,' I was slightly bemused by his comment about how difficult it was going to be wrestle control from the status-quo. I was bemused by the idea that words could encapsulate the enormity of the difficulty. As the battle has raged on since, I am no longer bemused but have found a more solemn place in my spirit and am profoundly impressed at Barack Obama's fortitude in the face of such heinous behavior. The real story ...the one that we'll have a difficult time getting from any of the MSM outlets, is the fact that Sen. Obama has exposed The Clintons as the champions of "The Fear," and it is through this fear that the status quo has maintained its power all of this time. In order to survive as a species ...and numerous other species depend on us getting this right... we are going to have to "subvert the dominant paradigm." Anything less represents a devastating environmental, economic and social destruction, or as someone once told me: "Total System Failure."
What this means is that we are going to have to change to a process that embraces constant change, not merely change one status-quo for another. Change is the one constant in the field of life, and it isn't that we've got to bring about change since it is constantly happening anyway. Rather we have to learn to adapt to its Way, something that most people will not want to do, and yet the stakes are too high not to. In these times stasis is the same as extinction, yet we cannot be afraid of this fact. We have to adapt and move with it, rather than hunker down or dig in.
I was reading "Chickaboomer's blog yesterday and she was making light of some of Rush Limbaugh's antics, namely his "Operation Chaos" ploy to encourage Republican voters to cross-over wherever possible during this primary season and vote for Hillary Clinton; as well as his song, "I'm Dreaming of Riots in Denver." She found it all nothing but parody, "No more, no less." Yet, there is nothing funny or cute or redeeming about it. There is nothing in this sort of delinquent behavior that bodes well for any of us or serves the interest of uniting the "United States." Though technically this sort of behavior cannot properly be defined as an act of sedition, it is none-the-less a sibling of sedition and treason. This behavior represents the willful poisoning of the processes in place that serve domestic tranquility and rather than finding it to be parody, it should be called what it is: propaganda "no more, no less." It also shows clearly why these people are not qualified to lead this country and why their current leadership is, at its very root, based on the premises of disaster and division. It is a plain illustration of the type of malice behind the agenda and the sort of destruction that is the foundation of their so-called moral values that they are so eager to yoke all of the American people to. Rush Limbaugh is the same man who dismisses the destruction of the environment, rails against the poor, the homeless, argues for a prison industry, argues for war, craves more 'profits' ...Moral values indeed! Yet this guy gets to go on the air daily, while those who are actually concerned about each other are increasingly marginalized.
The other story that we are not getting is the fact that in encouraging his listeners to go support Hillary Clinton, he has shown us who is kindred spirit in this race really is. This association should not be allowed to go unchallenged. Even though he will be at Sen. Clinton's throat should she win the nomination, they are of the same ilk, which is to say that they both are agents of the institutional spirit that finds its home in power and the self-serving of short-termed, private interests. This is 'the family' that doesn't care about our families. By its own nature, it simply can't. As Hillary Clinton has said, her campaign is "all about me." People vested in that structure simply cannot afford to believe that the American people are capable of sustaining a dialogue or coming to a consensus about working on the issues that effect us all. Such a dialogue is the last thing that they want to happen and they are willing to meddle in our processes to keep it. They are willing to lie, cheat, steal and perhaps even kill to maintain their fix for power. As a friend of mine once said, "Junk is no good, baby."
"The average voter is a moron. He believes what he reads in newspapers, feeds his imagination and lulls his repressions on the cinema, and hopes to break away from his slavery by football pools, cross-word prizes, or spotting the winner of the 3.30. He is ignorant as no illiterate peasant is ignorant: he has no power of independent thought. He is the prey of panic. But he has the vote.
The men in power can only govern by stampeding him into wars, playing on his fears and prejudices until he acquiesces in repressive legislation against his obvious interests, playing on his vanity until he is totally blind to his own misery and serfdom. The alternative method is undisguised dragooning. In brief, we govern by a mixture of lying and bullying.
This desperate resort to archaic weapons is the heritage of hypocrisy. The theories of Divine Right, aristocratic superiority, the moral order of Nature, are all today exploded bluffs. Even those of us who believe in supernatural sanctions for our privileges to browbeat and rob the people no longer delude ourselves with the thought that our victims share our superstitions.
Even dictators understand this. Mussolini has tried to induce the ghost of Ancient Rome to strut the stage in the image of Julius Caesar; Hitler has invented a farrago of nonsense about Nordics and Aryans; nobody even pretends to believe either, except through the "will-to-believe." And the pretence is visibly breaking down everywhere. They cannot even be galvanized with spasms of pseudo-activity, as still occasionally happens with the dead toads of superstition.
There is only one hope of uniting the people under intelligent leadership; because there is only one thing in which everyone really believes. That is, believes in such a way that he automatically bases every action of his daily life on its principles. (This is true of practically all men, whatever their race, caste, or creed.) This universally accepted basis of conduct is Science.
Science has attained this position because it makes no assertion that it is not prepared to demonstrate to all comers. (This part is so well understood that all the "false prophets"—Spiritualism, Christian Science, ethnological cranks, Great Pyramid puzzle-mongers, and the rest of the humbugs—all pretend to appeal to evidence, not to authority, as did the Kings and the Churches.) The problem of Government is therefore to find a scientific formula with an ethical implication. This formula must be rigidly applicable to all sane men soever without reference to the individual qualities of any one of them."
The 'prey of panic,' and what has changed in 71 years? ...and Hillary Clinton shares the same agenda as the Rush Limbaugh's of the world. Those of this ilk find willing confederates in the mainstream media, which seems more interested in smears and tears rather than being a conduit for a real dialogue between the candidates for this nation's highest office and the American people ...and all of this going on while the economic system is collapsing at an alarming rate, food riots are breaking out all over the planet, the environment is suffering corporate poisoning daily on a vast, global scale unequalled in the history of this planet, and our government has disconnected itself from the will of the people and its constitutional foundation; tending more toward being an instrument of blind tyranny that no longer pretends to even care about any so-called consensus or mandate by the people it's sole purpose is to serve. ---Yet some people would rather dwell on the importance of wearing flag pins. That is why those people can never speak for or represent me.
