"All power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely."- John Dalberg-Acton, British historian, 1887
In 2008, there were no other man who was able to capture our hearts and minds so readily than Senator Barack Obama. The power of his words, and the power of his voice created a blueprint in our minds of the inevitable path that we would be on.
Barack was, and still is, an idealist. He is one of us, yet he has never been the least bit ordinary. His extraordinary circumstances made him into the visionary leader he is today. But there is a danger when we deify politicians into Gods. When we worship politicians, we let leave their power unchecked, and when we leave their power unchecked, that power inevitably corrupts.
We live in an era of Democracy, but we don't truly live in a Democracy. We live in the illusion of a Democracy. We live in an era of Neo-Corportivism. In 1802, Thomas Jefferson wrote that there was a necessity of "a Separation between Church and State," which would later become part of our Constitution. The Church then had influential lobbying powers; they are our contemporary equivalent (not to religious institutions, ironically) but to University institutions and Corporate lobbyists on Capitol Hill.
"The Church" today represents a compendium of our financial institutions, our health insurance companies, our oil industries, the ones who pay off our Senators and our Representatives and our "civil servants" on Capitol Hill who make decisions about legislation by buying the candidate that we vote for. We do not live in a true Democracy, not the one envisioned by our Founding Fathers, and not even the representative Democracy envisioned by Plato; but today, our Democracy is represented by lobbyists on Capitol Hill, and our Democracy is rapidly becoming a Totalitarian State.
The lobbyists on Capitol Hill assume people are stupid; that people buy into this Coke vs. Pepsi debate; that the two candidates they have chosen for us will be about the Rich vs. the Poor. The Rich vs. the Poor was the Marxist ideology to create change, the Capitalist Rich Pig vs. The Poor Factory worker that lead to communism and the eradication of the Civil Rights of the individual altogether; it was also integral to Nazi-Germany's propaganda to place blame on rich Jews for struggling working class Germans before WWII.
Our lobbyists on Capitol Hill know how to utilise this argument, because it has been done before. When the argument is Rich vs. Poor, people become riled up. They take sides. They start to demonize the other side. They start not to see things objectively anymore. The issue of class is a sensitive one, and most people will blindly follow a leader that portrays the class they are in.
However, in politics, it is never about the Rich vs. the Poor. It is always about competing corporate interests. It used to be The Church had control of the monetary power in England before we decided to separate from the Church, and England to form the United States of America.
The Tea Party had been integral to that movement and they were hated then. They were a group of crazy, radical people who refused to pay their taxes and released teas sent from England into the sea. America decided to adopt coffee instead decades later.
King's College, kicked out a student who was a member of that Tea Party, Alexander Hamilton, who would become our first Secretary of State. After America won our Independence against England, King's College changed its name to Columbia University (President Obama's alma mater) and eventually, they erected a statue of him in front of a building named after him: Hamilton Hall. However, Alexander Hamilton never graduated from Columbia. He was only there during the change, when he had been expelled for being part of the Tea Party and an open critic of the British Parliament.
The Tea Party, the contemporary version, is still hated today. They represent something radical, those crazy people who believe government power and taxation should be limited. But should we dismiss them so easily just because popular media tells us so? After all, our Founding Fathers were too, part of that original Tea Party, and all the ideals we have today in the Constitution is due to their support and influence.
Had America lost the War, all of our Founding members who signed the Declaration of Independence would've been hung, and killed by members of the British parliament, but that didn't happen. Our Founding Fathers were against the majority tyranny in America, who were pro-British government and taxation, but they still prevailed.
Let's skip to our present timeline, not 1776, but to 2012.
We have, for the first time in history, two extraordinary people as Presidential candidates. Barack moves our hearts and minds, but Mitt Romney is the one with the plan. They really both represent the same party. President Obama, respectfully speaking, has always been centrist, but made himself fit into the Democratic Party mould. He has always stood center to the left and the right. Similarly, Mitt Romney always had libertarian roots but made himself fit into the official Republican Party platform.
The lobbyist media wants you to think this Presidential race is about the Rich vs. the Poor, but it's really about competing corporate interests. Democratic Party run JP Morgan makes $500 million annually from the food stamp progamme, a programme designed to make people think it supports the poor, when really, it brings profits to certain banking institutions. And how about the Democratic Party's own finance manager, Jon Corzine who stole 1.2 billion from average Americans and says, he "doesn't know where the money went?"
It is clear that the media never portrays these Rich vs. Poor scenarios accurately because most of the time, the Democratic Party is stealing from the poor while profiting big banks, like JP Morgan.
And who supports the Democratic Party aside from those Hollywood celebrities who are part of that 1%?
It is ironic that the Presidential candidate in 2012, who actually wants to create that Change, who is for the Average American citizen, would be portrayed by the media as being part of the corporate institution that we all hate. Through sound bites, re-mixed speeches, and apt cartoons, we will never know who Mitt Romney really is.
We won't remember that he gave 30% of his income to charity. We won't remember that he donated 1 million to the Utah Olympics. We don't remember that he didn't accept his pay as MA governor, something politicians have never done before, because he didn't want to add to the state deficit. We forget all of Mitt Romney's accomplishments and instead we just believe the slander campaign against him, paid for by the 1%.
So, here we are at an impasse. Is it more important to have a Presidential candidate who is publically utilising celebrities to promote his liberal social positions in lieu of forgoing our civil liberties?
Or is it more important to have a Presidential candidate we hate for having been born rich, who actually wants to strip government of its power over businesses and wants that mom-and-pop store to be able to compete with large corporations?
Perhaps if we strip away the exterior, there is actually little ideological difference between the two candidates; however during election time rhetoric, one side demonizes the other and the exaggeration of its argument ad hominem takes place over the actual issues that affect society on a larger scale. The things politicians don't talk about are because those answers often make people uncomfortable.
Anytime we blindly follow a politician and idolise him, we are in danger of becoming like those very people who give away our civil liberties because we never fought for them.
No comments:
Post a Comment