Calling for a Revolution in America- It's Not Just Me

I have always written my blog in a nonpartisan rather nonpolitical way, as basically I had disliked both parties.  After being fooled into voting for Bush in 2000 and Obama in 2008, my thinking has shifted from “don’t vote, it only encourages them” to serious social protest, the type seen in recent global events. I’m convinced this rather than voting for the major parties is the primary political act that should be undertaken by all thinking Americans.

Then in the last week came comments from two old timers from two sides of the political spectrum. Both virtually say the same thing: Stop the oligarchs and restore real democracy. The first is 72-year-old Paul Craig Roberts, one of the intellectual leaders of Reaganomics. The second is a progressive professor of African American studies at Princeton, Cornel West, 58, who was formerly a passionate supporter of Presidente Hopium.

Paul Craig Roberts:   “The west prides itself that it is the standard for the world, that it is a democracy. But nowhere do you see democratic outcomes: not in Greece, not in Ireland, not in the UK, not here, the outcomes are always to punish the innocent and reward the guilty. And that’s what the Greeks are in the streets, protesting. We see this all over the west. There is no democracy, there are oligarchies, some of these smaller European countries are not even run by their own governments, they are run by Wall Street… Revolution is the only answer.”

Cornel West from TruthDig:  ”He bitterly describes Obama as ‘a black mascot of Wall Street oligarchs and a black puppet of corporate plutocrats. And now he has become head of the American killing machine and is proud of it.’

‘When you look at a society you look at it through the lens of the least of these, the weak and the vulnerable; you are committed to loving them first, not exclusively, but first, and therefore giving them priority,’ says West, University Professor of African American Studies and Religion at Princeton University. ‘And even at this moment, when the empire is in deep decline, the culture is in deep decay, the political system is broken, where nearly everyone is up for sale, you say all I have is the subversive memory of those who came before, personal integrity, trying to live a decent life, and a willingness to live and die for the love of folk who are catching hell. This means civil disobedience, going to jail, supporting progressive forums of social unrest if they in fact awaken the conscience, whatever conscience is left, of the nation. And that’s where I find myself now.’”

Both politics and government in the U.S. have been hijacked by kleptocrats [Corporations and Kleptocrats given Tax Holiday] , whose goal is to frame the debate around fear — fear that if you don’t do as they say and keep feeding the beast, the dynamite strapped around them will blow up the whole economy. This allows them to effectively to manipulate public opinion, control the U.S. (and other) Governments and loot the public treasury.

The mainstream media is almost totally in the pocket of the kleptocrats, with politics turning more and more into clown spectacles with people like Sarah Palin and Donald Trump hauled out to divert attention away from the real issue of theft and stealing.  The American people are already overly entertained. They don’t need more of this conditioning in social and political reporting.

Fundamentally, a whole group of international kleptocrats and their agents need to be brought down. A broken political system requires carefully targeted civil disobedience, strikes, protest, and disruptions of their events. Ideally, it should be carried out non-violently, along the line of Gandhi.  This means building solidarity around that core principle, taking power from these kleptocrats  and their lobbies. They take the money, we take the streets.

Since many who oppose plutocrats and kleptocrats come from ends of the spectrum that have been wedged by corporatist political propaganda, it is essential to avoid divisive social, religious  and racial issues. Fighting corruption and government capture should be inclusive: progressives, tea partiers, people of all races who believe in democracy and oppose kleptocracy.   Therefore, those people should get those other tracks that divide them out of their minds, and focus on the message and the mission.  This is also global issue that spans all nationalities.