We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Wednesday, January 27, 2016

An Oligarchy Has Broken Our Democracy. It Must Be Dislodged

Click here to access article by Mike Lofgren from The Guardian.

This post is a glaring exception to my policy of only posting the most credible articles from the web. This post could be labeled "incredible" because it serves several real deep state purposes of the ruling capitalist class rather than the people: a middle class perspective on their deteriorating class position, trivializing the concept of "deep state" while misidentifying the ruling class, and endorsing Bernie Sanders as a presidential candidate. But one should always expect this type of political slant from the Empire's leading liberal publication. Let me offer my thoughts on each of these political distortions.

The middle class particularly in the US has always had a privileged position, but particularly since their dramatic expansion after WWII. You see, the middle class (professionals, managers, and highly skilled scientists and technicians) up until now have been indispensable to the owners (capitalists) of our post-WWII accelerated economy. In the past mainstream media have celebrated this phenomenon in excess by often encouraging everyone to believe that we were all of the middle class (in polls most people self-identified with the middle class). 

However, especially since the onset of the Great Recession in 2008, the decline of this class has been very noticeable. Innovations in technology (created by workers), the movement of many middle class positions to offshore facilities to take advantage of lower income middle class workers, and the recruitment of many foreign middle class workers to the US have all combined to weaken existing middle class status, opportunities, and lifestyles. Middle class workers find it much more difficult to finance higher education for their children and graduates of higher education are finding job opportunities much scarcer that previous generations. 

As a result of the déclassé phenomenon many of these thoroughly indoctrinated middle class people are suddenly waking up to their tenuous position in society. They are even adopting the radical language of the left to denounce the "oligarchy" and the "deep state" for their decline, and screaming about threats to democracy. The "oligarchs" or capitalists have always existed since the founding of our nation by people like land speculator George Washington, the banker and capitalist schemer Alexander Hamilton, and the merchant and financier Robert Morris. This capitalist class have always ruled our country with "democratic" features gradually added when they developed other means to contain dissent. 

So it is no surprise that the author concludes this essay by endorsing the candidacy of Bernie Sanders the socialist who really isn't a socialist. Sanders has demonstrated that he loves Israel and wars in the Middle East. The closet Zionist is merely serving the Democratic party by offering seductive tidbits like universal health care and radical-sounding critiques to lure disaffected voters back to the Democratic party to vote Hillary Clinton who has already been selected by our masters to be our next president. See this, this, this, and this

It's like the hopey-changey politics of Obama all over again. We would all be invited by our deep state masters to show the world how "democratic" and egalitarian the US is by voting a woman into the highest office of our nation.