Thursday, December 20, 2012

Democracy versus Capitalism



   Another school shooting. Another American Mass Murder, graded on the amount of indifference and carnage, weighed in upon the scales of fame, and now, the POTUS says that this is unacceptable and we must change. Change what? Gun laws? Mental health programs? The fabric of American community? How deep must the change go for such atrocities to end?
  When democracy finally realizes that capitalism has no values, with the exception of the more, and that our capitalist culture is what denigrates our personal relationships, and the fabric of community, maybe that would be a start of some real change. These days it seems as if all the functions of capitalism, of management itself,  have turned on American society. The financial crisis of 2008. Shipping manufacturing jobs overseas. Capitalism seems to value labor only as a commodity and fails to realize that consumers and employees are essentially human beings, much more than functions and commodities. Americans are citizens, and it's democracy that allows every corporation the right  to exist. Democracy has the ability to pull the plug on any capitalist venture, but our representative government has been bought wholesale by capitalism, ruled by their narrow interests, all covertly administered by corporate lobbyists. Even banning assault weapons is a law we passed that was washed under the bridge.
   Change? Our society is based on competition, individual relationships of mutual usage, all based on greed, on wealth, on fame, and such a social compact has it's very foundation resting upon such violence. No wall streeter went to jail. George Bush is a war criminal and nothing at all happened to him. We started this country on the genocide of the Native Americans and the enslavement of other races. We're the only country to drop atomic weapons on another people. We have a deep history of violence. We're even killing other peoples children with drones, but these days Corporate America not only feeds on the other nations of the world, but on it's own people. Violence seems to be 'the flowering' of who we are. To change that demands more than outlawing assault weapons, requiring background checks, and upping the scope of community health services. Such change requires a change in the way we see ourselves, a change in the way we live.
   You have to find this out for yourself, for there are no political or religious answers. All the people of the world are more than employees, more than consumers, more than accumulated wealth, more than fame, even more than citizens. What are we? We all have but a short time upon this earth to ask these questions, made even shorter by corporate environmental degradation and poisoning: what we call Global Warming. What is the answer?
  

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