Every year the legislature gets together to re-up the National Defense Authorization Act. Every year, under the auspices of this legislation, the Constitution that is supposed to protect the "inalienable human rights" bestowed upon us by our very nature as human beings, is being systematically destroyed. The entire system of government in the United States is working to undermine the basic freedoms we as citizenry ought to be able to take for granted.
Beyond any idealism, the systematic evisceration of the Constitution is not something that can be attributed to just one administration. Bush and Obama are no different in this respect. There is little reason to believe that during this election cycle, Obama will revert back to his campaign "promises." Rather, the current president should be known as the propagandist of the century, for his rhetoric during his election initially has been completely ignored. Government is no longer working to protect the citizenry; Government is a body of lawyers and lobbied special interests working to only protect those who have large sums of money invested in the policy making machine. Government is neither for the people, nor the State. Government is out for itself. People in power will fight to stay in power at all costs.
During wartime, these laws effectively give the President, as Commander and Chief, the power to do literally as he pleases, domestically and otherwise. It just so happens that we are engaged in an endless undeclared war on terrorism. Come to think of it, when is the last time our government actually followed the Constitution and declared war? There has never been any congressional discussion or debate as to whether or not the president, on the whims of his own decision making, has grounds to send the military to war. And yet, here we are. We are living in an age of unauthorized, unprecedented government seizure of power over the entire country; it could be argued as well that that very same power extends to everywhere the United States has presence. The idea that the world is now an authorized battleground is no longer fantastical.
Those of us that are glued to our television screens absorbing the mass propaganda of the now moot mainstream media will not see the full picture. The media is programmed to emit limited information on limited subject matter. Journalism no longer operates under the principles upon which it was founded. Freedom of the Press was extended under the Bill of Rights to ensure a constantly opened window into the fortress that is now the Government. Such amendments are now being systematically ignored. With sports and entertainment news consuming the headlines, and pundits swaying and misinforming the public on issues that matter, there is also very little reason to believe that the public will ever have a chance to become truly informed. As a result, the public will continue to vote for major leaders of the major political parties, further exacerbating the corruption now inherent in the system.
If these issues remain ignored, it will no longer be the fault of the Government, but of the masses, for they will unknowingly participate in the destruction, or the failure, of the State they are pretending to vote in the best interest of.
Friday, December 16, 2011
Thursday, December 8, 2011
Indubitable Crises
These are interesting times. It is quite simple to capture the state of things in a few paragraphs. The difficulty arises when these few paragraphs are read and evaluated by the news-media influenced public mind. Encouraging people to think of the issues themselves untainted by the propaganda machine is the most difficult thing to do for reform-minded activists. Common thinking is swayed significantly by the media, which directs its focus toward issues at the whim of the power elite. Financial institutions and multinational corporations, as Noam Chomsky highlights, are clearly at the forefront of government influence toward policy making. Chomsky points out in a recent article "American Decline: Causes and Consequences," that the public is seriously divided, not only within its own ranks, but also separated significantly from policy makers. The problem then is clearly one of misinformation, or propaganda. If the electorate is to ever have an effect on the outcome of policy, the system must be unhinged from the throes of the financial industry "masters of humankind" as Chomsky puts it.
Why is it acceptable that Obama hired on his economic team the very same individuals who manufactured the current crisis? Goldman Sachs and its economic policy is no policy at all... it encourages high risk high reward transactions at the cost of the "rabble's" livelihood. The recent bailouts of the "too big to fail" banks benefited those banks, who have further incentive to do as they please. Their security blanket is the government itself. Why should they yield? And why should a legislature that is largely bought and sold by those institutions pass reforms that would hurt the masters' bottom lines? Despite the evil of the state of the economy and government, it is entirely rational from their point of view to sustain business as usual.
Analogous is the global warming crisis. The economic crisis is a long term issue--reforms made today will not be overwhelmingly noticed today, but ought to protect future generations from having to pay their forefathers' debt. Similarly, the climate crisis is something that must be dealt with today, not because we will necessarily feel the effects today (even though the fluctuating weather patterns across the globe seem to be a surprise to everyone), but because our children will have grandchildren of their own who very likely will pay with their lives in a century or less.
These are crises of ideas. Policy follows ideas. And the ideas being generated from the current popular media and legislature are overwhelmingly "business-as-usual" in tone. Business as usual is not sustainable by any stretch of the imagination.
Far from conspiracy theory, all it takes is a day of research to connect the dots for oneself uninfluenced by the pundits on the major broadcasting networks. They do not live by journalistic principles. How could they? They are told by those in power what to report. And it isn't their fault. They trust those in power, even if one particular network is more cynical than another. The internal constraints built into the system prevent free thinking from breaking out into the public mindset. Even the tea-party grassroots movement was co-opted by the Republican Party. Accordingly, it will not be a shock to discover the occupy movements to be co-opted by the moderate-conservative Democratic Party.
Societies are complex, dynamic systems, driven and confused by what I have called the "Agency/Morality Circularity." Simply put, to be outlined in more detail, self-interested agency influences, manifests and deterministically generates moral structures (governments, social norms), which subsequently influences self-interest. Eventually, the paradigm is caught in a stagnant loop, where one side of the polarity is controlled by the other side of the polarity. The dichotomous nature of such a circularity gives rise to the very complexity apparent in the system at large. There are now layers upon layers representative of such static circular paradigms. Corporations are also driven by self-interest, despite being heavily motivated by their "lesser" working constituents. However, the upper echelon's self interest is what influences policy making on the government level. Moral agency is thus co-opted by self-interest in the guise of moral agency. Consider the recent legislation granting Corporations the ability to, as private citizens can, fund campaigns. One not need to ponder that fact for more than a moment to realize the connection.
Why is it acceptable that Obama hired on his economic team the very same individuals who manufactured the current crisis? Goldman Sachs and its economic policy is no policy at all... it encourages high risk high reward transactions at the cost of the "rabble's" livelihood. The recent bailouts of the "too big to fail" banks benefited those banks, who have further incentive to do as they please. Their security blanket is the government itself. Why should they yield? And why should a legislature that is largely bought and sold by those institutions pass reforms that would hurt the masters' bottom lines? Despite the evil of the state of the economy and government, it is entirely rational from their point of view to sustain business as usual.
Analogous is the global warming crisis. The economic crisis is a long term issue--reforms made today will not be overwhelmingly noticed today, but ought to protect future generations from having to pay their forefathers' debt. Similarly, the climate crisis is something that must be dealt with today, not because we will necessarily feel the effects today (even though the fluctuating weather patterns across the globe seem to be a surprise to everyone), but because our children will have grandchildren of their own who very likely will pay with their lives in a century or less.
These are crises of ideas. Policy follows ideas. And the ideas being generated from the current popular media and legislature are overwhelmingly "business-as-usual" in tone. Business as usual is not sustainable by any stretch of the imagination.
Far from conspiracy theory, all it takes is a day of research to connect the dots for oneself uninfluenced by the pundits on the major broadcasting networks. They do not live by journalistic principles. How could they? They are told by those in power what to report. And it isn't their fault. They trust those in power, even if one particular network is more cynical than another. The internal constraints built into the system prevent free thinking from breaking out into the public mindset. Even the tea-party grassroots movement was co-opted by the Republican Party. Accordingly, it will not be a shock to discover the occupy movements to be co-opted by the moderate-conservative Democratic Party.
Societies are complex, dynamic systems, driven and confused by what I have called the "Agency/Morality Circularity." Simply put, to be outlined in more detail, self-interested agency influences, manifests and deterministically generates moral structures (governments, social norms), which subsequently influences self-interest. Eventually, the paradigm is caught in a stagnant loop, where one side of the polarity is controlled by the other side of the polarity. The dichotomous nature of such a circularity gives rise to the very complexity apparent in the system at large. There are now layers upon layers representative of such static circular paradigms. Corporations are also driven by self-interest, despite being heavily motivated by their "lesser" working constituents. However, the upper echelon's self interest is what influences policy making on the government level. Moral agency is thus co-opted by self-interest in the guise of moral agency. Consider the recent legislation granting Corporations the ability to, as private citizens can, fund campaigns. One not need to ponder that fact for more than a moment to realize the connection.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)