Who are we to speak of true democracy and freedom? Let alone imposing our will on other people’s, on other nations?<\/p>\n
The track record and conditions here in the US cast a shadow on this blatant self-righteousness. After all, the US in its brief 250 year history has endured a civil war, civil unrest from the early labor movement of the late 1800s, to the suffrage movement of the early 1900s, to the civil rights movement of the 1960’s, the LA Riots in the wake of the Rodney King beating, to Occupy Wall Street, the June Riots in reaction to police brutality against Blacks culminating with George Floyd, and October 6th in the 21st century.<\/p>\n
Moreover, in a 2-Party system, what choices do we have every election cycle? An ultimatum in fact! And two sides of the same coin.<\/p>\n
Only now are we seeing the move towards a new Democratic Party, one that is Socialist Democrat, the natural antithesis to the far-right platform of the new Republican Party under MAGA. But the political system is still rigged for profit in a lobbyist-based, SUPERPAC scheme, with the proverbial “revolving door” for politicians, bureaucrats, lobbyists, and media pundits whose careers thrive at the expense of real democracy, which is to say government of the common people, for the common people. Even the new Democratic Party advocates an economic model that is monopoly capitalism at its core, and a political system and process that excludes the common citizen if they are critical of it.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, “freedom” continues to be codified language, to mean in fact “economic freedom” which is the proverbial appeal of capitalism, which projects the illusion of endless opportunity and choice, when in fact in the current phase of Transnational Monopoly Capitalism contracts such opportunity for the vast majority of its citizens. People are made into contracted servants for a wage, toiling a lifetime to add value which they will never realize, except a meager salary, some better than others, when compared to the masters they serve. They get crumbs, the patrons get fat on the whole pie. The ability to save is elusive. The call to consumerism, insidious and pervasive with modern day marketing strategy and technologies. The cost of interest and fees alone associated with debt, debilitating–most will die in debt. Meanwhile, what was established as a middle class is being squeezed, while wealth inequality expands. Entrepreneurs either make it into the 1%, or else die trying, their livelihoods increasingly endangered by the day. Is this freedom?<\/p>\n
And what of the surveillance state in post-9\/11 America? How are we free when our every conversation, electronic correspondence, movements, biometrics and facial profiles and voices, purchases and transactions, social media posts and scrolls, internet browsing history and the very cameras and microphones in our phones and computers are fair game for surveillance, to be stored in cloud based software programs and hard drives capable of housing literally all this information, for every citizen, over the past decade, and moving forward? And when AI technology can organize, manipulate, quantify and aggregate that data in unprecedented ways, to the detriment of democracy? In this way, total control by big government is consolidated.<\/p>\n
So, are we truly free? Are we really the ultimate pinnacle of democracy? Are we the rightful guardians of the globe, global police with a warrant of impunity? \u00a0History and conditions affirm in the negative.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Truth2Power!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Who are we to speak of true democracy and freedom? Let alone imposing our will on other people’s, on other nations? The track record and conditions here in the US cast a shadow on this blatant self-righteousness. After all, the US in its brief 250 year history has endured a civil war, civil unrest from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-505","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/testlinktwo.live\/projects\/Truth2Power\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/505","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/testlinktwo.live\/projects\/Truth2Power\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/testlinktwo.live\/projects\/Truth2Power\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testlinktwo.live\/projects\/Truth2Power\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testlinktwo.live\/projects\/Truth2Power\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=505"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/testlinktwo.live\/projects\/Truth2Power\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/505\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":518,"href":"https:\/\/testlinktwo.live\/projects\/Truth2Power\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/505\/revisions\/518"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/testlinktwo.live\/projects\/Truth2Power\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testlinktwo.live\/projects\/Truth2Power\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testlinktwo.live\/projects\/Truth2Power\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}