Vote in 2012 against The Fool's Game

In his essay “There are Realistic Alternatives,” Gene Sharp, the renowned scholar/thinker on the use of nonviolence, outlines the “elements of strategic planning” necessary for effective nonviolent struggle.

The elements are worth reviewing in the context of the “Occupy” movement. Unless those in the movement are purposely hiding their planning, I’m seeing very little evidence of it.

What we get are shards, fragments and chucks of vital issues, but there is no evidence of systematic strategic planning.

Rather than go into the requirements as Sharp lays them out, I urge you to download the pamphlet from the Albert Einstein Institute web site. The essay and several others by Sharp are available free on-line.

Here is just one example of a fundamental missing element in the “Occupy” movement: “Develop a grand strategy for the overall conflict. Identify the objective of the struggle in clear, specific terms.”

Unless I’m missing something, we are still waiting to learn the “objective of the struggle in clear, specific terms.”

So here’s one attempt to define an objective and describe a strategy to achieve it:

We, fellow citizens, are playing a fool’s game called “Democracy American Style.” It is literally rigged for and by the rich and has produced a plutocracy/kleptocracy.

Here’s just one way it works: our system can’t represent or understand the will of the people because the major means of communication is paid for and controlled by wealthy vested corporate interests. The U.S. Constitution legalizes media domination and distortion by a wealthy elite.

Democracy requires an informed, thoughtful public making rational — not emotional — decisions. Our capitalist, controlled system of communication is not providing that information or that opportunity for full discussion and reflection.

I also believe that the size of our government makes it so diffuse, impenetrable and powerful that it cannot be responsive to the people it governs. We should be a nation of small regional or local governments. At most the “national” government should be an alliance of these small, responsive, local governments. The United States cannot be both “a major power” and a major force for good. The two have been proven to be incompatible.

The over-arching objective of the nonviolent movement should be to put an end to this Fool’s Game and to create a truly representative, fair, responsive and compassionate system of governance based on local representation and involvement.

At the end of his essay, Sharp lists 198 methods of nonviolent action. The sheer number boggles the mind. The diversity is likewise staggering, everything from strikes (he lists 21 varieties) to various kinds of boycotts, to rent refusal, to mock funerals, to marches and pilgrimages, to prayer and worship. The list goes on and on.

But one, number 124, intrigued me in light of the above objective. It reads, “Boycott Elections.”

What if we boycotted the elections of 2012? What if we “voted” by submitting blank ballots. The tally of unmarked ballots submitted would wildly exceed the number of votes cast for candidates. The tally of blank ballots would constitute the vote against “The Fool’s Game.”

What would the consequences be? Exactly what we’d get if we did cast ballots for candidates — more of the same. A continuation of the Fool’s Game.

But by voting against the system, we would have proclaimed that we, the majority, are no longer party to it — that, in fact, the resulting government does not represent the people or their “will.” These “minority unelected” representatives are hence illegitimate.

The only way to restore legitimacy is to establish a new constitution creating a truly representative government (or governments) that can address this society’s needs. A true “government of, for and by the People.”

Beyond checks and balances

The nation’s founders wanted a government of checks and balances. What we have now are checks with no balances. Deadlock.

The next to go, thanks to a small group of folks with a whole lot of money (and hence power), are the checks.

The super-rich are on a course to take over the country.

But what kind of unchecked country do they want? What kind of life do they want for themselves? And what will it mean for the rest of us?

Do they really want to live in private, guard-dog patrolled fortress-mansions? Do they aspire to endless jaunts on private golf links? Is the goal a yacht in every harbor? Is it fleets of lofty helicopters, Lear jets and armor-plated limousines? Is it endless pool-side hours with vats of sunscreen and margaritas at the ready?

Is it the assurance of luxury for their equally vain and selfish progeny?

And do they really want lives filled with paranoia about retribution from angry masses who have been evicted from their homes, left without jobs and deprived of health care and security?

Do they want a planet beset by drought and famine — a cinder in space, a barren globe awash in toxic, rising oceans?

Do they want a country of spreading ignorance caused by a crumbling school system? Do they seek endless wars abroad and blood in our streets?

Are the rich and powerful really willing to spread disease, suffering, ignorance and anarchy to feed their own private profligacy?

It would seem.

Nor are we blameless. We have bought into a value system of consumption and mass deception that now has produced a “checks and balances” government of, for and by the rich.

Soon, we will be forced to act beyond the bounds of checks and balances. I have no idea what the tipping-point actions will be (mass demonstrations? boycotts? riots? strikes? out-and-out insurrection?), but I do believe this tired, values-challenged, rigged game must end.

While we work on getting rid of it, we must plan for its replacement. It’s easy to imagine. It is committed to long-held universal values: peace, a sustainable planet, equality, education and knowledge, health, adequate food and shelter, honesty, and trust....

Such values should not be subjected to “checks and balances”; they must be established and defended as sovereign rights.

Herbert hits the mark — again

For the second Saturday in a row, Bob Herbert of the New York Times, has hit the mark. This time the reader has to get to the bottom of his column to find the target, but there it is for all to see.

Among the many heartening things about the workers fighting back in Wisconsin, Ohio and elsewhere is the spotlight that is being thrown on the contemptuous attitude of the corporate elite and their handmaidens in government toward ordinary working Americans: police officers and firefighters, teachers, truck drivers, janitors, health care aides, and so on. These are the people who do the daily grunt work of America. How dare we treat them with contempt.

It would be a mistake to think that this fight is solely about the right of public employees to collectively bargain. As important as that issue is, it’s just one skirmish in what’s shaping up as a long, bitter campaign to keep ordinary workers, whether union members or not, from being completely overwhelmed by the forces of unrestrained greed in this society (My emphasis. RS).

The predators at the top, billionaires and millionaires, are pitting ordinary workers against one another. So we’re left with the bizarre situation of unionized workers with a pension being resented by nonunion workers without one. The swells are in the background, having a good laugh.

As George Lakoff has observed, politics is all about "framing" the issue. As long as this is about Republican politicians versus Democratic unions, the real culprits remain invisible. Herbert is rightly using a much bigger frame and hoping that the political action fills it.

It may be wishful thinking.

When will the protest move from the state capitols and follow the money trail back to Wall Street, the offices of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the gated mansions of the super-rich?

When they are identified as the source of the problem.

What makes Herbert's columns so refreshing is that in very few places in the mainstream media do you see the issue framed as a symptom of a plutocracy. The reason should be clear: the media are owned by the plutocrats. When, and if, protesters direct their action against the real cause, rest assured the media will described those in the streets as "radicals waging class warfare."

Funny that all those protesters in the Middle East aren't also labeled "radicals waging class warfare." Instead they are "pro-Democracy forces." That's because they are over THERE and we are HERE, where the corporate boards are interlocked and the hefty media paychecks (from corporate advertisers and underwriters) get written and cashed.

Herbert nails it: America's sham democracy

I don't know whether the New York Times' Bob Herbert is channeling me or I'm channeling him. Maybe a few thousand of us are channeling each other. It's about time.

Will events in Cairo trigger our own "Hundredth Monkey"?

Herbert begins today's column, "As the throngs celebrated in Cairo, I couldn’t help wondering about what is happening to democracy here in the United States. I think it’s on the ropes. We’re in serious danger of becoming a democracy in name only."

Actually, it's worse that that, as he points out. We ARE a democracy in name only.

He concludes, as I have, that we need our very own bottom-up leadership from the streets.

We need a Tahrir square. Where will it be? And when?

WikiLeaks: Does exposed truth set us free?

At the extremes, the question raised by the WikiLeaks phenomenon is whether we are better off in a secretive world or an open one?

To me the question resonates with the founding principle that we have a government “of, by and for the people.”

The more secretive the government, the less it is true to the democratic principle.

Count me among the skeptics who argue that the principle has been violated so many times that it no longer guides us. Ours is a democracy in name alone. The WikiLeaks debate is part of the same crisis in democracy.

We don't need WikiLeaks to tell us that ours is a government by, of and for the wealthy. In short, it is a plutocracy. Look no farther than today’s headlines in which tax cuts for the super rich are on the verge of being — extended against all reason.

Add to that the now-legal, secret corporate donations to political campaigns. The money pays for the creation and dissemination of emotive visual images that defy reasoning and civil and civic discourse.

Yet I still hear in the WikiLeak's debate the distant cry from the Sixties: Power to the People! I see WikiLeaks as nurturing that power and being of that spirit.

Is that good?

Or is openness, versus secretiveness, simply the lesser of two evils.

How often in the course of casual conversation or in conducting business do we wrap information in the shroud of “just between the two of us....”? That’s a secret about to be shared. But why? Is it to weigh perceptions? To warn? To win favor? To create a bond of obligation?

Why can’t we be open and share speculatively? What if? What would your response be if....?

And what, exactly, is a secret? If you have an private thought that you feel isn’t worth sharing, or isn’t ready to share, or appropriate to share, or harmful to share, is it a secret or simply a thought? Must we divulge everything we are thinking? Are shared thoughts confined to a small group secrets?

Do we have different standards for personal “secrets” and societal, political, diplomatic, military and governmental ones?

How do we live with this practical paradox: for a society to remain open it must rely on secrets. Sounds like the ends justifying a contradictory means.

And that question leads to others: Will a truth that is widely known really set us free? Could it, in fact, enslave or destroy us? Must the truth be widely known for it to free us?

So we are left with a quandary.

Still I’d rather have the quandary of awareness than to be lost a thicket of secrets and ignorance.

Government of the rich, by the rich and for the rich

That we live in a plutocracy is rarely acknowledged in the press, but a front page story in Monday’s New York Times came close to saying it.

Its headline read:

“Short of Money, G.O.P is Enlisting Rich Candidates.”

Rich candidates — and the parties don’t have to be short on cash to enlist them — are only one aspect of the plutocracy. Another is candidates so reliant on wealthy campaign backers and deep-pocket bankrollers that the politicians become hired help.

Or, once elected, the same candidates become members of Congress beholden to wealthy lobbyists and their rich corporate or individual clients who threaten to withhold or redirect campaign funding if lawmakers vote the “wrong” way.

It’s all despicable, but if I had to choose among these forms, I’d go with the rich, self-financed candidates. At least the source of the money is above board and seemingly without strings attached. It’s more likely, but hardly assured, that rich candidates will answer only to themselves.

Whatever form plutocracy takes, expect the rich to get richer and nearly everyone else to get poorer. Which is exactly what we are seeing.