Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Victoria Collier on December 16, 2011 at 12:01pm

I would submit that the Empire is no more likely to allow us to count our own votes than they are likely to allow us to opt out of their system and create a direct-democracy in our autonomous communities.

The only way we're going to do ANYTHING is by a massively mobilized movement of people who understand the true nature of what we're up against.

Because Barack Obama woke up the "left" to the reality that the Democrats play in the same rigged game, taking the corporate dollars and doing the bidding of the elite, we now have a power vacuum.

Occupy rose up in that vacuum.

We have no leadership and everyone knows it.

We have evils so great that the "lesser" is still an abomination. The worse evil is unthinkable.

I watched the Republican debates last night, and I"m still recovering.

We've been asleep for a long, long time, and we've woken up in a cell chained to a wall. What are we going to do about it now?

They're putting the pieces in place to crack down on us in 2012 if they have to. That's what the NDAA is about. All they have to do is plant ONE bomb. Just one. And the entire Occupy movement is now a dangerous threat to national security, and anyone who gathers may be detained indefinitely.

That's a possibility we have to prepare for.

So I think this conversation we're all having is really important because we can't fight effectively until we know what we're fighting for. What kind of system do we want?

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Permalink Reply by Victoria Collier on December 16, 2011 at 12:05pm

Still -- I don't want people to get overwhelmed by the state we're in and the complexity of our mess. The truth is, all our actions together could turn the tide away from Empire even if we're not completely clear. Anything and everything we do now for the cause is a help and a blessing. We're still just waking people up. We need to keep waking people up. We need to do our bit and pull our heads out of our asses and turn off the TV and start talking to our neighbors. That's the first step.

We need to FIRST learn how to talk to each other non-violently, as this thread alone has beautifully illustrated.

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Permalink Reply by David Eggleton on December 16, 2011 at 12:18pm

"But how can you do that if your freedoms are an illusion?"

It's only the freedoms we're taught and sold that are illusions.  Each person can choose responsibility and, having secured it for h__self, can choose to extend into interdependence.  Under the circumstances, both are adventures.

As long as we must buy what they sell (&/or pay off debts), we are in the pen, like the sheep.  As we occupy production (satisfy real needs together and take care of each other), we grow in freedom.  Don't forget--in the late 1700s, when this nation's adventure began, most were producers.

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Permalink Reply by Victoria Collier on December 16, 2011 at 11:52am

I keep wanting to do this little skit about election fraud (Monty Python style) where all these sheep are in a pen. And every morning they're getting eaten by wolves. Dead sheep each morning. And the sheep are all gathered around talking about the goddamned wolves -- how evil they are, how wrong it is, what a terrible society they have where this can be allowed . . . etc.

And there's this one sheep who notices something. The gate is open.

In fact, the gate has been designed so the wolves can just LIFT THE LATCH with their noses.

The little sheep is standing there saying, "Hey, guys . . . the gate is open."

And all the other sheep stop talking and look over and see it and say, "Hm. So it is. Well, isn't that ridiculous. SOmeone should fix that gate."

And they go right back to talk about the goddamned wolves . . . 

Our system is broken, corrupted, unsafe, and the voting machines are built so they can be rigged undetectably. And we just . . . keep . . . talking . . . 

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Permalink Reply by Gisele Theriault on December 16, 2011 at 12:53pm

That is hilarious because it supports Mad Mark's position. Mark is saying that you are trying to fix the gate, support the current system, stay fenced in. The Occupy movement is the gate open just a sliver but if we push we can open the gate completely and run out. The wolves might get some of us but the rest will escape.

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Permalink Reply by Mark E. Smith on December 16, 2011 at 3:25pm

Well said, Gisele. Many people think that the fenced-in pasture is what keeps us safe and free. In reality we're being raised for slaughter and the greater danger may be staying inside the fence. Yes, the wolves do exist, but as Ben Franklin said, "Those who sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither." 

The US government manipulates us easily. They remind us of a threat to our security, which might or might not be real, like Iraq (nowadays Iran) having WMDs. Then they go out and create new enemies for us by killing a million innocent people and destroying a country that wasn't a threat in the first place. When people finally figure out that there were no WMDs, the government, whose bosses, the wealthy 1%, have profited from trillions of dollars in defense contracts, says, at best, "Oops, my bad." Usually it doesn't even say that much and it maintains as many of those defense contracts it can, while starting three or four new wars elsewhere on similar pretexts. Like, 'Hey, we sent a handful armed troops to invade a village halfway around the world that was no threat to us, and the people there shot them. Our country is in danger and we must stand up and defend ourselves by sending thousands of more troops over there.' And people buy it. Nobody questions why our troops were over there in the first place, or mentions that the people there had a perfect right to shoot armed invaders.

Later, when we find millions of us hungry and homeless because trilliions are being spent on wars, some of those trillions get spent on "Homeland Security," to shut us up, because we aren't allowed to have a say in how our government spends our money. We're told that if we don't like the government's decisions, we should focus on the next election and try to elect better people to make our decisions for us, because if such decisions were left up to us there would be chaos.

But it isn't just the elections that are rigged, the whole system is rigged, so even those good people won't really have a voice in decisions. The NDAA is just the usual National Defense Authorization bill, that allows the government to keep throwing trillions of dollars into wars, with a small provision added to allow the government to punish us for even daring to think about saying anything to stop it. Since most people in Congress know that as long as they vote for war, the value of their investment portfolios will continue to double and triple every year (sure, they don't know what stocks they own, or if they happen to just coincidentally be defense stocks--their financial managers handle all that stuff for them), most will continue to vote for war.

There's no danger if we elect a few good people, as the 1% have an unbreakable majority in government and the few good people can protest all they want--they're even encouraged to as it makes voters feel that somebody is trying to represent them. But if there was any possibility of them getting a majority, the voting machines, the media, the corrupt elections officials, the political party superdelegates, Congress, and the Supreme Court would intervene in any of the myriad of ways that the Constitution allows them to ignore or override the popular vote, and ensure that the 1% continue to control a majority.

In order to ensure that the rich 1% would always run the country, the rich 1% who wrote the Constitution included many safeguards to ensure that the people would never have the final say. We've seen some of them, and many people dismiss them as just a one-shot deal that would never happen again, but there are probably many more that haven't even been used yet. For example, since the Constitution made itself the Supreme Law of the Land, and gave the Supreme Court the sole power to decide what that law is or isn't, the Supreme Court could decide that the Joint Chiefs of Staff can take over the Presidency, with the President acting merely as their spokesperson (which is actually the case today, as the Joint Chiefs limit the President's access to information), and there is no appeal from a Supreme Court decisiion.

Really. The Supreme Court has the supreme power under the Constitution to rule that kangaroos are people and people are kangaroos, and there are only two things we could do about it, either have an armed revolution, which would likely fail, or move to Australia and start hopping around like kangaroos.

Oh wait! We could vote in rigged elections for a new President who might, when somebody resigns or dies, appoint somebody better to the Supreme Court. Yeah, that's a possibility. It would take a lot of work and it probably won't happen within our lifetimes, but, it's doing something constructive that won't lead to chaos. 

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Permalink Reply by Victoria Collier on December 16, 2011 at 6:30pm

Well, in my story, we're only trying to close the gate (the voting machines) with a real latch.

Mark wants us to tear the gate down and head for open pasture.

Only problem is . . . we're sheep, and there are wolves out there! What to do . . . 

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Permalink Reply by Mark E. Smith on December 16, 2011 at 8:22pm

Don't worry, the farmer fixed the gate with a sturdy latch (Supreme Court override of popular vote) to keep the wolves out. 

Wait....why is the farmer herding some of us through that funnel into a truck? Where does the truck go? He only took some of us this morning--does that mean the rest of us are okay for now, or will he come back for another truckload in the afternoon? Some folks say he's been selling us to a slaughterhouse and that's why the fence is there, not just to keep the wolves from stealing his product. That's not possible--our farmer wouldn't do things like that to us. He feeds us, he gives us water--he even pats some of us on the head once in a while and smiles at us. Anyone can see that he likes us and cares about our welfare. 

I heard a story once about a farmer who decided that only pure white sheep were good sheep and started killing all the black sheep and the sheep that had even a tiny spot of black or gray. Some sheep escaped, but most said that the farmer wasn't really doing that, it was a lie, and that their farmer wouldn't do such things. So they stayed. There are memorials to them and some of the slaughterhouses in which millions of them were killed have been preserved as museums. I wonder if that really happened. I wonder if it is happening again. But I'm just a sheep and I can't jump the fence and I don't know where I'd go if I did. 

Oh no! Now the farmer is back and he's loading another group of sheep into his truck. But not me yet. I'm still safe and secure. No wolf can get past the farmer's big latch. Of course we can't open it either, but that's okay--it's for our own security. I see some lovely grass over there I can munch on. Silly of me to get all upset about rumors and stories that probably aren't even true.

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Permalink Reply by Victoria Collier on December 16, 2011 at 8:29pm

Hey, you think too much for a sheep. I think I'll report you to the farmer . . . 

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Permalink Reply by Mark E. Smith on December 16, 2011 at 8:36pm

I wonder why anyone would think that the Supreme Court override in 2000 was a one-time thing. They found that the popular vote doesn't have to be counted, so they can find lots of reasons for not counting it in the future.

I don't remember them apologizing, promising never to do it again, or even bringing us flowers and candy. In fact they spent the rent money on an expensive gift for their floozy mistresses, some shiny bauble called a "Citizens United." Why don't they ever give us things like that?

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Permalink Reply by Victoria Collier on December 16, 2011 at 8:45pm

I don't think the same scenario would ever play out again where they would need to do that. The 2000 election was a crime family coup. Gore was the chosen boy or VNS never would have called it for him. Bush and co popped out of the bushes with uzis and said, "oh, no you don't!" And they knew they had the political machine in Florida and the sleaze bag Scalia in line. 

That isn't going to happen again, I reckon.

And if it did, I THINK that there would be a little more trouble this time amongst the rabble, which of course we know they're prepared to deal with.

Mostly though, they just wait it out. Rope a Dope. We can't keep it up forever.

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Permalink Reply by Mark E. Smith on December 16, 2011 at 10:04pm

Are you sure Gore was the chosen boy, Victoria? Or was something supposed to happen to him so that Lieberman would take over?

Much as I hate to think it, Bush might have saved us from an even worse fate. 

Lieberman would not only have started the Bush wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, he'd also have started the Obama wars in Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan, and Libya, and then he'd have invaded Iran, Syria, and Egypt. Lieberman was an ultra-orthodox Jewish Zionist and a Democrat who voted Republican. How'd he even get on the ticket?

The exact same scenario isn't likely to play out again, but now that the Supreme Court has established that the popular vote doesn't have to be counted, there are an infinite number of scenarios they can use to accomplish that end. 

Maybe you can explain to me, Victoria, how voters decide which war criminal is the lesser evil. If I knew how they make that decision, maybe I'd understand why they vote for war criminals.

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