Occupy Wall Street - This Is Not Your Everyday Ordinary Protest. It's Demcracy Fighting For Its Life!
Excerpted from Thom Hartmann's newest book, Screwed; The Undeclared War Against the Middle Class -- And What We Can Do About It
The most ancient form of democracy is found among virtually all indigenous peoples of the world. It's the way humans have lived for more than 150,000 years. There are no rich and no poor among most tribal people--everybody is "middle class." There is also little hierarchy. The concept of "chief" is one that Europeans brought with them to America--which in large part is what produced so much confusion in the 1600s and 1700s in America as most Native American tribes would never delegate absolute authority to any one person to sign a treaty. Instead decisions were made by consensus in these most ancient cauldrons of democracy.
The Founders of this nation, and the Framers of our Constitution, were heavily influenced and inspired by the democracy they saw all around them. Much of the U.S. Constitution is based on the Iroquois Confederacy--the five (later six) tribes who occupied territories from New England to the edge of the Midwest. It was a democracy with elected representatives, an upper and lower house, and a supreme court (made up entirely of women, who held final say in five of the six tribes).
As Benjamin Franklin noted to his contemporaries at the Constitutional Convention: "It would be a very strange thing if Six Nations of Ignorant Savages should be capable of forming a Scheme for such an Union and be able to execute it in such a manner, as that it has subsisted Ages, and appears indissoluble, and yet a like union should be impracticable for ten or a dozen English colonies."
The Framers modeled the oldest democracies, and the oldest forms of the middle class, and thus helped create the truly widespread and strong first middle class in the history of modern civilization.
Back in Europe, however, the sort of democracy the Framers were borrowing and inventing, and even the existence of a middle class itself, was considered unnatural. For most of the seven thousand years of recorded human history, all the way back to the Gilgamesh Epic, the oldest written story, what we call a middle class is virtually unheard of--as was democracy. Throughout most of the history of what we call civilization, an unrestrained economy and the idea of hierarchical social organization has always produced a small ruling elite and a large number of nearly impoverished workers.
Up until the founding of America, the middle class was considered unnatural by many political philosophers. Thomas Hobbes wrote in his 1651 magnum opus Leviathan that the world was better off with the rule of the few over the many, even if that meant that the many were impoverished. Without a strong and iron-fisted ruler, Hobbes wrote, there would be "no place for industry . . . no arts, no letters, no society." Because Hobbes believed that ordinary people couldn't govern themselves, he believed that most people would be happy to exchange personal freedom and economic opportunity for the ability to live in safety and security. For the working class to have both freedom and security, Hobbes suggested, was impossible.
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When I read the last two paragraphs of this excerpt something clicked in the old sleepy brain. For a good many years, I could not seem to figure out what the Republicans (not all but most) are after. Especially in the light of the Tea Party Movement, which the wealthiest 1% of our nation had hijacked, I asked myself 'why are these rich b**tards trying to get in on this supposedly grassroots movement? (Hey, Elfie What's It All About?) I figured, maybe it's because the grassroots tea party types do not appear to be the brightest light bulb in the room. Maybe they are being manipulated because they hate so conspicuously and it’s easy to bend, shape and twist animosity any way you want to. But that’s way too simple, there just aren’t enough tea partiers to make a difference for the Rich Fat Cats.
Now, after reading Thom Hartmann's words of wisdom it seems all too clear. They don't want to take this country back, they want to take We The People Back... to a time when there was no such thing as a Middleclass. It was unheard of! As Tomas Hobbes (also excerpted from Screwed) once wrote over three hundred years ago:
"The world {is} better off with the rule of the few over the many, even if that meant that the many were impoverished. Without a strong and iron-fisted ruler, there would be "no place for industry . . . no arts, no letters, no society."
Hobbes believed that ordinary people couldn't govern themselves, he believed that most people would be happy to exchange personal freedom and economic opportunity for the ability to live in safety and security. For the working class to have both freedom and security, was impossible.
Holy Magnum Opus Leviathan Batman, it's perfectly clear to me now. They want a complete return of TOTALITARIANISM! Like visions of sugarplums dancing in their heads… They want OLIGARCHY, with all its privileges!
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BLOG.ANTIOLIGARCHY.COM: Are we heading for an oligarchy?
Are we heading for an oligarchy?
I have never been politically active other than watching the news and voting but recent events have caused me to want to become more active. When I see my country being slowly taken control of by billionaires and large multinational corporations it deeply concerns me.
I come from a middle class family, both my parents were teachers and to say the least we were not rich. My mother worked at two jobs when I was a child, teaching grade school during the day and college math at night and my father worked at one of the toughest high schools in downtown Detroit.
Somehow with the help of the right wing media and PR firms people like my parents are now being demonized as over paid government employees out to suck the taxpayers dry. Nothing could be further from the truth; they were hard working, caring and educated people.
MORE HERE - http://blog.antioligarchy.com/2011/03/14/are-we-heading-for-an-oligarchy.aspx
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What is Totalitarianism (or totalitarian rule) It’s a political system where the state recognizes no limits to its authority and strives to regulate every aspect of public and private life wherever feasible. Totalitarian regimes stay in political power through an all-encompassing propaganda disseminated through the state-controlled mass media, a single party (GOP) that is often marked by personality cultism (TEA PARTY), control over the economy, regulation and restriction of speech, mass surveillance, and widespread use of terror. (Bush/Cheney administration)
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We better start realizing this to be a fact, as the architects of ‘Occupy Wall Street Protest Movement’ comprehends. This opposition to the 1% wealthiest of our nation, is real and it’s in all our best interest to either join them or support them. (As I intend to do, from this day forward, unless the top 1% corporatists lockstep in and crush it in its tracks.)
Please watch the video of this movement and how a handful of rogue cops show their ignorance (ignorance because they are middleclass also) and try to scare the protesters by pepper and mace spraying a few. What these police officers did, instead of promoting fear, they brought light to this movement and perhaps we owe them a bit of gratitude. (Gratitude that their enormous empty-headedness forced the MAINSTREAM MEDIA to acknowledge the plight of the OCCUPY WALL STREET evolution. thinkingblue
'Occupy Wall Street', US awakening
Tue Sep 27, 2011 3:1PM GMT
By Kourosh Ziabari
With its brutal and bloody crackdown on the peaceful demonstrators of the "Occupy Wall Street" movement, the New York police demonstrated that the United States doesn't deserve to call itself a "beacon of freedom" and cradle of democracy anymore.
"Occupy Wall Street" is a grassroots movement which aims at protesting and challenging the increasing social and economic inequality and political intolerance in the United States. The movement describes itself as a "leaderless resistance movement with people of many colors, genders and political persuasions." The organizers of the movement say that the only thing which they have in common is that they constitute the 99% that will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1%. Journalists, political activists and citizens are the members of this popular movement, which has gained momentum after its advertisement was first published in July.
Now "Occupy Wall Street" is a member of the national network of political activists who are stepping up efforts to organize protests and demonstrations against the US government ahead of the upcoming November 2012 presidential elections. They are allied with the "US Day of Rage" movement, which is planning nationwide protests before the presidential elections. Their motto is "One citizen, One dollar, One vote" and their manifesto clearly indicates their dissatisfaction with the social, economic and political status of the country. They believe that certain interest groups and lobbies are running the United States and it's not the will and power of the people which prevails.
"Bought by hard and soft dollars, disloyal, incompetent, and wasteful special interests have usurped our nation's civil and military power, spawning a host of threats to liberty and our national security," their manifesto reads.
"Corporations, even those owned by foreign shareholders, use money to act as the voices of millions, while individual citizens, the legitimate voters, are silenced and demoralized by the farce," the manifesto adds.
The recent demonstrations and protests by the members of "Occupy Wall Street" was responded with the brutality and atrocity of the Manhattan police, which is said to have arrested some 100 people so far and injured many of them. According to New York Daily News, on September 24, "Hundreds of people carrying banners and chanting "shame, shame" walked between Zuccotti Park, near Wall St., and Union Square calling for changes to a financial system they say unjustly benefits the rich and harms the poor."
New York Times has released an amateur footage, which shows that the police forces have hit several protesters with pepper spray near the 12th St. and Fifth Ave. and injured many others using batons and sticks. According to NY Daily News, witnesses who were present at the scene of conflict have said that "they saw three stunned women collapse on the ground, screaming after they were sprayed in the face."
"I saw a girl get slammed on the ground. I turned around and started screaming," said Chelsea Elliott, 25, from Greenpoint, Brooklyn, who said she was sprayed. "I turned around and a cop was coming ... we were on the sidewalk and we weren't doing anything illegal."
MORE HERE: http://www.presstv.ir/detail/201454.html
posted by thinkingblue at 9:53 AM
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