The Radical Dream

Last night, between being awakened several times by our Irish Wolfhound, Patrick, I dreamt I was speaking to an audience. As an introvert, this is not my favorite way to communicate.  I seemed to be responding to the question, "What is your function as a radical"? Without hesitation, I came directly to the point. My purpose as a radical is to make you as uncomfortable as I can with the status quo. I attempt this through writing, speaking, participating in public protest, and in general being who I am where ever I am. I wear message T-shirts in order to provoke attention, conversation, and to raise the political consciousness of those with whom I am interacting. If you think the world is just the way it should be, then I will take every measure at my disposal to introduce you to my world. You are in need of a revisioning.  I am an anti capitalist. I believe that global capitalism, free of national identity and moral purpose, is destroying our lives. There are not such things as free markets.  The air, the oceans and the land are transformed into commodities to be sold. The public space is being supplanted by the private space. In California one-fourth of our state parks are being locked away from the public.  Private property rights are trumping human rights. And if you are among the ruling elites, you have your own parks.  Why support public lands?  Everything is for sale. A small percentage of ruling elites dominate our ability to have dignified human lives. Our democracy is owned by corporate elites who, in tern, own our representatives. You cannot have a political democracy without also having an economic democracy. I'm speaking of Democratic Socialism.  Capitalism is not an essential feature of democracy.  To be sure, it can exist along side democracy. But in the case of the United States, the economic system of corporate capitalism has supplanted our democracy. One can only look at "The People's Republic of China," a bastion of capitalism ... capitalism on steroids.

The corporate media airbrushes reality in such a totalizing manner that the unreality it portrays is uncritically accepted by the very public it is licensed to serve.  The public are made to serve it.  When people tell me they would rather have a corporation handling their health care insurance as apposed to a government program, using a single-payer system, I can only wonder at the level of brainwashing that has taken place through the corporate controlled media.

Private enterprise is tauted as the panacea. Government activities are disparaged. Social programs are described as vestigial remains of big government that must be supplanted by private enterprise.  At the same time the largest military machine in the brief history of human civilization is not understood as "big government?"  In reality it is the most egregious example of corporate socialism ... militaristic socialism.  And it is destroying our democracy.  Privatization of all public spaces is seen as the answer to all of our problems. Thus, neoliberal economics is forced upon us through the instrumentality of contrived crises compounded by natural disasters that are rendered dimensions more lethal by the intentional lack of government direct action. If capitalism, unbridled, unregulated, is the answer, why are there more than 25 million American workers right now who report that they would prefer full-time work. They can't get it. And, in a twist of the perverted concept of "American individualism," the victims of the corporate state are blamed for their problem. They did not plan. Shame on them! Would you be secure using an airline that could only guarantee that 80% of its passengers would arrive at their destinations? Yet we put up with an economic system that deals with unemployment as a structural given, an artifact of the self-regulating markets and the free enterprise system.  We tolerate a health care insurance system to leaves out 50 millions or more of our people.  It's just seen as part of life.  How can that be?

Here is a radical view.  Our government, our US government needs to employ everyone who wants a full-time job right now.  This should be through enormous public projects using private contractors, and any other public means available.  The national infrastructure is in tatters.  It is in desperate need of repair and expansion.  How many more bridges will have to collapse on people?  We need high speed trains.  We need to begin now the conversion of our carbon energy systems to renewable ones.  How many millions of idle Americans could be using their unique talents to restore our economy and our environment? 

The economic system has failed.  Even Greenspan admitted that he was wrong in believing that the free markets could regulate themselves.  It is time that our government intervenes for us for a change.  It is nothing less than a national defense issue.  Millions of Americans, I would hope, are not going to sit by quietly as their homes are seized, their savings depleted and their souls eviscerated.  The American Revolution needs to continue.  Will we have to hit the streets?  We need the ultimate bail-out of workers and managers and professionals who were not privileged to be among the Wall Street rulers who have recovered enough to be able to give themselves obscene bonuses while teachers and other public workers are being tossed away like unwanted refuse. 
I am a Democratic Socialist.  I believe in the power of government for good.  We need another New Deal or we will be facing the ultimate ordeal.  We must force our elected leaders to serve us and not the private interests of the ruling elites.  We have a Nobel Peace Prize winning President who is now presiding over more wars than any of his predecessors.  Our democracy has been transmogrified into the most lethal military empire in the history of the world.  It is so costly to maintain over 800 bases outside of our borders that we are facing deficits described as crises that can only be alleviated by cutting social services to our people.  Wake up.  It is time say enough!

The Disaster that Keeps on Giving

These prayerful representa­tives, Neugebauer­, Pearce, Spencer and Bachus have just recently voted for massive cuts in disaster response. Now they are praying for their constituen­ts. Why am I not gasping for air in a state of anaphylact­ic shock? Plus Ca Change, Plus Ca Reste La Meme Chose.

This is the Way We Support Our Troops

This is how we support our troops. First we justify an economic system in which millions of our citizens are unable to participate. This encourages­, in essence, a "poverty draft." Then we engage in wars for which we do not raise revenue. We are told instead by George Bush following the destruction of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, "Go shopping." Since the wars are not being funded, the solution is to slash domestic spending. Finally we foreclose on our troops when they are fighting in our illegal wars. And ... when they get home we cut programs even more that would have enabled them to have jobs and reintegrate­e into our community. Oops! Looks like the magnets holding the "Support our Troops" emblems are losing their grip.

The Mad Hatter's Tea Party

I had a dream last night. I was at work and it was my last day. I was either being retired or being fired. This is a recurring theme. At any rate I had an appointment with a psychotherapist whom I imagined was going to help me move into a new phase or career.

My partner, John, drove me to this large squid shaped building with parking lots surrounding it. The multistory structure had windows above us that had signs indicating "psychotherapy." The place seemed to be in Chico, California. I had an appointment with my opthamologist too for an exam and a fresh supply of disposable contacts. I somehow missed that appointment as my focus was on meeting with my new psychotherapist.

We parked temporarily in a space just outside a automobile service center that was in the lower level the shopping center. There were people moving about in seemingly random patterns. My job was to get into the building and up to the therapist's office. John told me to ask someone where the office was. I was reluctant, it seems, but I found a front entrance with marble walls and what seemed to be a locater board of some sort. As I bounced around through the massive throng I was aware of how comfortable I had become over the years with large anonymous crowds.

I could not find the elevator. A person I asked a gave me some abstruse instructions in which he continued to confuse "left" and "right." I decided to use my own intuitive skills to locate the elevator to the floors above. I finally found stairs. The floor upon which I found myself contained many merchants and different bright colored signs. But there was no sign of the therapist. I had an idea what he looked like as I had spotted him through a window from the place where we parked the car. There was a sign on large plate glass windows that said something like "Therapist" or something similar.

Someone finally pointed me to some strange stripped curtains behind which I suppose the confidentiality of clients was supposed to be preserved. I saw the windows with pink plastic like shower curtains haphazardly hung in them. There was a door with a very colorful fabric draped down it. I entered and immediately found myself interrupting the therapist and a male client. They were not surprised. I backed off to a waiting room that appeared with chairs scatted in no discernible pattern.

When I finally had my turn with the therapist, he could not find a space for us to confer. He kept bobbing about into a cafeteria like environment where he alighted and I somehow knew that I was to join him. I was shaking and he put his hand on my knee. I suspect that was to gauge my emotional condition. I propped my leg against a table top to steady the shaking and to give the impression that I was calm. I kept waiting for him to begin some form of session with me. But he was obviously intimidated by me. At one point I thought he was going to begin by discussing the fee with me as he had done with the client that I had stumbled in on just a little bit before. The $190 was rather steep but I decided that I would pay it and keep coming back to do all of my business in Chico.
The crowd of people morphed into college students from CSU Chico.

My therapist could not look me in the eye. I began feeling quite equal if not superior to him in term of presence. He got up at one point and went to another cafeteria bench. I assumed that I should follow. At this point I was taking over. He would not look at me. Suddenly he went to the floor on his back and an acquaintance of his seemed to deliver some form of physical therapy - maybe artificial respiration. I wanted to talk about myself and the things I wanted to do. Somehow I thought the therapist could help me become a psychology intern.

Finally I told him I would come back. He seemed to acknowledge that this was fine. I'm not certain he ever wanted to see me again. He was so shy around me. He told me I was not what he had expected. Rather, he thought I was a nineteen-year-old Greek woman when I had made the appointment with him.

We parted and my task was to get out of the huge mall to the parking lot. All of a sudden John was there with me and we were having a snack in the center some where. I started watching a little person using a wheel chair He turned on some laud music player device. It was very disturbing. John reached up and shut it off. The little person was offended and his father or guardian was irate. I was embarrassed. The little person looked at me because he intuited that I had understanding and compassion. Actually it was probably the manifestation of my "savior complex" that gets me into scrapes in non-dream life. We tried to buy the two of the offended ones some food. But they kept retreating from our advances toward them. Finally they escaped.

Back at the food tables, it was 2:00 in the afternoon. Things seemed to be closing. Suddenly every one had on hospital bands. The college students morphed into middle-aged adults. It occurred to me that this was similar to the situation I was familiar with in the locked door wards where I once worked as a graduate student. It downed on me when I awakened and reviewed this dream sequence that I feel like I am actually living in a psycho ward. This is the culture in which I find myself, where mental health is the exception rather than the rule. Fortunately I have keys and can therefore depart at any time I wish for a sanity break. This is the world in which I live. I thought of the weird political theater that is taking place among the politicians who are popping up like hand puppets from below the stage opening in preparation for the 2012 presidential fiasco. Look for the hospital bands and opt out of this farce. It is time to find a new game; one in which the elections actually make a difference. That would be democracy.

There is more than just one Elephant in the living room

No one is really talking about the elephant in the living room: that is unbridled, unregulated capitalism. When the Soviet Empire collapsed, the only recognized alternative to capitalism vanished. In a way the very presence of an alternative system served to soften capitalism. That reality is no longer the case. Where are you going to go?

Now, as Margaret Thatcher said, TINA … “There is no alternative.” And her immediate response was the elimination of 7,000,000 government jobs. And our economic system of unrestrained capitalism is being unleashed full throttle. That means “privatization” of everything from education, to water. The common wealth is shrinking and being eaten up by private wealth. When you realize that anti-government protesters in Tahrir Square, Cairo, Egypt sent pizzas to the protesters in Madison, Wisconsin, you have to know that they get it. Now we have to get it. And the two parties are essentially one party with two right wings. Obama raised $600,000,000 to capture the White House. He will need $1,000,000,000 to repeat the effort in 2012. Where does that money come from? It comes from the ruling elites to whom Obama is currently beholden and will continue to depend upon. We’ve got to do things that will push him to the left. In the meantime, the contradictions build. At some point they will reach a revolutionary tension. Then we can have “change.”

President Aristide Returns after Being Deposed?

Deposed? Try twice removed by the CIA. Aristide's last departure was on board a US C-130 that flew him to the Central African Republic. Just before this most recent kidnapping in that took place in 2004, he had made the unfortunate mistake of attempting to raise the minimum wage for workers in Haiti. This provocative action caused "the rebellion." Moreover, he also provoked the French by demanding reparations for the billions that Haiti was required to pay to the French for the loss of their property, that is to say, their slaves. Needless to say, that did it. Off to Africa. The ruling elites would not allow their profits to go to the people who were actually producing the wealth. The US was there to restore the profits to the ruling elites- thus restoring democracy at the same time? Our government still does not want him back even though the Haitian government has allowed Aristide to return. But ... what do the Haitians know? President Obama is unhappy with President Aristide returning to his own country. I guess this is Haitian democracy US style.

The Family at Christmas

Christmas is one of those times when far-flung families are reunited for the ritual of gift exchange, feasting and for catching up with each other's individual journeys. This Christmas was no exception with my own family. Mom and Dad are long gone. Those of us who remain are numbered among sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, grandchildren and great grandchildren. And so the circle widens as the center dissolves.

Families are conglomerations of disparate branches that would not ordinarily associate with each other without the ritual expectations of family Christmas gatherings. I found a renewed understanding of this on Christmas Eve. We began to gather with hugs and warm greetings. Layer after layer of family that sprang from the same center congregated around the tree and buffet. Then the differences began to appear as if they were strata along the fault lines of the San Andreas. Social strata were exposed in the same way that geologic layers are ripped open for inspection following the rifts of seismic shifting.

What was exposed at our family gathering was an upper strata, self-appointed and identified as such by its continual interactions and isolated reinforcement within its own social channel. This form of social and cultural isolation ensures a closed social consciousness. The self-chosen members of the upper crust in our family circle are immersed within their own isolated "class" culture. They are essentially blinded by the delusion that they are essentially different. This is a class that looks down upon the less desirable, less achieving levels of social strata with languid acceptance. Our presence is tolerated for the duration of the holiday ritual. All the while the socially privileged ones are thankful, no doubt, that the festive proximities to the lesser ones will be mercifully brief. Thus a return to one's own cultural milieu is the reward for having endured the loathsome ritual of toleration.

In our culture where one percent of the wealthy control as much wealth as the ninety percent of citizens below them, it is helpful for me to be reminded that the upper crust of our family is not included in that upper one percent of the ruling elites. Rather they are merely splashed upon occasionally by the ruling elites who find them useful as a buffer between themselves and the rest of us. Such splashings are tantamount to a baptism of acceptance. However, what comes after the baptismal drops evaporate? What happens when the upper strata's usefulness to the ruling elites dissolves ... as it surely will? All strata below the ruling elites is subject to compression and deformation. The resulting formation will be a new stage of capitalism ... neofeudalism. Can you dig it.