Democracy was Won by the Few for the Many
Politics / US Politics Jan 28, 2014 - 12:13 PM GMTBy: Michael_T_Bucci
A reply given me by an Obama loyalist - a neighbor - several weeks ago could have been a replay of a reply given me in 2008 and 2012 when I warned Progressives and Democrats that Mr. Obama was not the person he pretended to be, nor the president they projected him to be. "He's disappointing, but he's still better than the opposition," quipped the loyalist.
It was December 27 when I told him a federal judge just declared NSA phone surveillance legal. I forgot he was a "loyalist", one who would continue to defend his president who upholds the legality of dragnet surveillance of all Americans. He left me a Christmas gift, he said, but after hearing me criticize President Obama, he confided he might have made a big mistake by giving me copies of The Nation. He was confused and conflated me with "Rightists" (the "opposition"). I confessed I was the farthest "Leftist" individual he'd ever find in his fishbowl of a town of 2,000. I didn't get a chance to explain that in today's political spectrum, Ronald Reagan wouldn't stand a chance in the GOP, nor Kennedy with Cliinton-Obama Democrats!
An irrational cheerleader, like any biased news journal or source, begins by vilifying and demonizing a sitting president for wars, torture and crimes against humanity, then goes on to sanction those very same wars, torture and crimes against humanity when conducted by their choice of president. (A politically incorrect word for such a cheerleader is "hypocrite".) If Mr. Obama is someday succeeded by a Mr. or a Mrs. Rightist, the same phenomena will repeat.
It is an historic fact that former president George W. Bush was pilloried for tortures, wars, fracturing international partnerships and defying international laws. However, this historic fact continued and remains under President Obama, augmented and supplemented by him expanding wars; overseeing the dismantling of Constitutional guarantees (1st, 4th and 5th Amendments); merciless drone and assassination programs; DoD cyber totalitarianism; and the accelerated siphoning of national wealth into the coffers of the top 1% income bracket, et. al. The Obama loyalist's mechanical reply - in lieu of a reasoned rebuttal - eerily echoes the one coined by conservatives in 1969 in defense of Vietnam and Richard Nixon: In those days they said: "My country, right or wrong". Today, after parochially genuflecting, Obama loyalists incant: "My Obama, right or wrong."
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But the "people" know something is happening. They just don't know what it is or why it is.
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This is an age of materialism, mesmerism and militarism. The crescendo in stock market performance is being reached and at hand; civil strife in countries beset by imposed neoliberal austerity programs (e.g. by IMF, troika) will see a rise of military regimes and right-wing vigilantes, as in Egypt or Kiev presently, to thwart popular resistance movements and/or civil wars. Powerful propaganda influences, harnessing new communication technologies, will expand and can only diminish privacy, free thought, critical thinking and, plainly, every human faculty that democracy requires in order to function. But, "America has no functioning democracy at this point in time," said President Jimmy Carter in July, who also defended Edward Snowden and opposed Mr. Obama's NSA.
- In truth, America entered "post-Democracy" several years ago.
- In truth, NSA - together with its "partners" in the "corporate Stasi" - has built the scaffolding of a totalitarian state.
- In truth, young people who have compulsively "wired" themselves to the Network and made themselves "dependent", have already jeopardized their birthrights of freedom and liberty at a time when their energy and fresh vision are most needed.
- In truth, the most revolutionary act against the digital totalitarian state is to deny it access. (PULL THE PLUG).
- In truth, Mr. Obama isn't a socialist; he's a statist. Yes, Mr. Obama, the Congress and the Courts uphold the freedom of government, bankers, corporations and the military over peoples. Yes, all three branches have, as they say, "sold out"!
- In truth, if another "F" word was to be permitted in polite conversation and open political discourse, it would be the same "F" word Benito Mussolini coined to define Italy during WWII: "a merger of state and corporate power". But Americans have censored that "F" word because "It can't happen here."
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Cradles
The picture of crowds tightly huddled in Tahrir Square in Cairo flashed across the internet this week and could easily be confused with pictures taken just three years ago when Egyptians helped evict Hosni Mubarak from office ("Arab Spring") inviting free elections and the start of a new era. However, on January 25 - the third anniversary of the Egyptian uprising - Egyptians on Tahrir Square assembled to defend interim president Adly Mansour instead, and were backers of Army leader Abdel Fatah al-Sisi's security state that came to power in July after ousting Egypt's first democratically elected president, Mohamed Morsi, an Islamist who was fighting against multiple corruption and abuse charges. The demonstrators demanded a military state to combat political "chaos" and "terrorism"; no cries for democracy were heard. Democracy in Egypt lasted one year. Forty-nine people were counted as killed in nationwide protests across Cairo and elsewhere in Egypt on the anniversary weekend. Days later, the generals brazenly cleared Army leader al-Sisi to stand in presidential elections.
From throngs of believers and loyalists at Grant Park in November 2008, to throngs of anti-believers at Tahrir Square in 2014, to other past and future squares where crowds of believers - sometimes mobs - assemble for action against sitting governments - occur events, often engineered, that cry out for change, for profound change; and whose results are better or worse, and sometimes nothing at all. As Egypt, the cradle of civilization, deposed its first democratically elected president after only one year in office, Americans, living in the cradle of democracy 238 years after the Declaration of Independence was adopted, still fail to realize how their precious and "mature" democracy - the model upon which global civilization was to, is to, and will continue to evolve - is crying. Few know how deeply must occur profound change to prevent its death. Indeed, democracy throughout the world is under attack by forces often from within.
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We are living through historic times because we are facing the severest threat to the U.S. Constitution in our lifetime, or any past lifetime, enabled by a weakened population that remains either ignorant or dismissive of the facts; that remains either willingly complicit or willingly cooperative; that remains either drugged by materialism and consumerism; or that remains deadened by pathetic and hopeless apathy. The optimist estimates that a mere one-third of the population is conversant with any facet of the crisis, irrespective of their particular political bias. This is surmountable, however; the author of "The Crisis" in 1776, Thomas Paine, knew his audience well, and it was no different than the audience alive today.
George Washington would remind us that as he sat through the horrid winter of death-defying ice and snow as commander at Valley Forge; when at a stage of the Revolutionary war when the cause all looked hopeless; when his bravery was little noticed by the "comfortable people" for whose freedom he was fighting; when one-third of the colonists supported the Revolution, one-third were loyalists to the British, and one-third were ignorant, indifferent or otherwise neutral, General Washington surmounted and triumphed (with the help of an angel, I must add). The historic times we are facing contain these tripartite divisions as well.
Democracy was won by the few for the many. Washington survived and the nation was born.
In due time, we will survive and the nation will be reborn. But the struggle promises to be no less difficult.
By Michael T Bucci
Contact: mbucci@michaelbucci.com
(c) 2013 Michael T Bucci. All Rights reserved.
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Michael T Bucci is a retired public relations executive from New Jersey presently residing in New England. His essays have appeared at The Market Oracle (UK). He is the author of nine books on practical spirituality including White Book: Cerithous.
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