This would be a good day to reread the Declaration. It is an extraordinary and revolutionary document and a real break with the conventional wisdom of that time. It says that all of us are created as equal. Obviously, what is meant by "equal" is equal rights within a political regime since that is the subject of the Declaration. This is, essentially, arguing against the notion of class and arguing for the idea, coming from Christianity, that we are all brothers and sisters as God's children. This was and still is a radical idea that all ruling-classes then and now oppose. The fact that phrase got in there is pretty dramatic since the delegates who signed the document were all members of the ruling class and the man who wrote it owned slaves. That does not mean these men were hypocrites so much as it meant they had a vision of what humanity could become despite the realities of oppression.
Even stranger than equality is the idea that we ought we have a right to Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. These men were all lawyers and knew that by capitalizing these terms they meant them as legal concepts. Any system of governments that impinges on any of this has to be called to account. When such governments refuse to grant citizens these basic and "unalienable" rights it is our right to change or overthrow the government. This is important. This document came before the Constitution and, to me, overrides it. It's saying, essentially, that we don't have to put up with the sort of shit we are currently putting up with we have the right and, as the Declaration clearly states the DUTY as citizens to overthrow this government. Essentially this document states the sovereignty of the people of the country to fashion their own government not on some religious foundation, not on the Divine Right of Kings, not on the basis of some aristocracy or men who "know better" but on the everyday people like you and I. It is by the needs and inclinations of the people that we institute governments.
Having said that, it is clear to me and, I'm guessing, to many of us view that the current government is clearly not acting in the interest of most people but only in the interest of oligarchs. Now let me be clear, I am an anarchist or someone who is against government on principle. I'll briefly explain what anarchism means to me--most of us believe that human beings are naturally cooperative and sharing in manageable groups and communities. Anyone who has been face with an emergency situation knows that leadership and teamwork occur spontaneously--those who can, use their skills as needed--no one needs a job title or job definition--what needs to get done gets done. I submit that in normal situations the same thing can occur. The reason it does not occur at present is because our life is highly regulated by both the legal government and the government of the workplace. We are all subjects to the State at this point in our history as well as subjects to our employers. Even if we are CEOs we our actions are constricted by the "System" which is really the overall government that includes all aspects of our life and includes all the rules, laws, regulations, systems of punishment and reward, information and education systems, and so on and so on that are tightly interlocked so much so that certain subjects of conversation are forbidden even in social situations. We all know what those subjects are and we know that only people who clearly agree with our outlook will want to hear anything we have to say and the rest will be upset and not only turn away but will ask us to stop talking about forbidden subjects. This self-imposed social constraints on what we can talk about is, as much as our parallel rejection of logic, science, and coherence (it's hard to hear a discussion that isn't just a bunch of platitudes strung together) due to a perverse kind of militant ignorance that, while present in my youth, goes way beyond that point--today inarticulateness is the norm.
To put it another way, our highly authoritarian System has aided in the degeneration of the population. It started in earnest with the assassinations of the 60s. JFK was murdered by a consortium of forces led by the CIA and his government was the last legitimate government. Had the mainstream media not failed us (they were worried that any doubt of the official story of the murder would create social chaos and cripple our ability to continue with the Cold War (one of the main reasons JFK was shot was that he was actively plotting with Premier Khrushchev to end that war against the advice of their respective militaries and government apparatchiks). The 1968 assassinations were existential in nature. Martin Luther King was becoming the nightmare of the ruling elites by threatening to create one big movement consisting of Labor, Civil Rights, the Poor, and the Anti-War movements in what was threatening to make flesh the dreams of the IWW of "one big union" that would be, at least on an equal basis as the oligarch class. Robert F. Kennedy was close to being elected President and he was in an alliance with King and might have turned Washington upside down, as Nixon actually thought of doing, by revealing the lies of the official JFK story. Others like Jesse Jackson and George McGovern were never able to fill those shoes first because they knew that the Deep State would no longer tolerate real dissent from the official picture and would then, as now, stop at nothing to maintain their grip on power which they hold to this day.
lf Americans understood not only this history, which one can research for him/herself with hundreds of books and monographs on the JFK and other operations which all show in excruciating and obvious detail how utterly fictional are the mainstream media Narratives on those events and countless others. If people understood that the mainstream media are clearly and unambiguously controlled by the intelligence services and learned how that control is applied every day. If people understood that there is not and was not a real "War on Terror" (the very name should arouse suspicions--how can there be a war on an emotion?) this was an invention. That does not mean some groups don't use terrorist tactics at times--all major powers have used these techniques the list here is too long here to list but most modern warfare does involve terrorist tactics. I can list chapter and verse for most wars of the past century or so even wars everyone supports like WWII involved massive civilian deaths--i.e., civilians were targeted to terrorize and wipe out vast populations on both sides of the conflict.
Not only do we live in an era of active denial and a the glorifying of fantasy at all levels of our society but we also live in an age of cowardice. Courage is rare in both private and public life. I'm not immune--there have certainly been situation where a little bit of courage would have helped me. But the fact that courage as a kind of abstract ideal may exist but as a practical matter it is highly discourage by society. In its place is our obsession with "security" and comfort. For all the faults of the signers of the Declaration, they did not lack for courage. They changed history because they cared about their society and cared deeply enough to risk their lives in an enterprise that was not assured of victory against the most powerful empire in the world. Fortunately for the Signers, that empire had overstretched itself and had many enemies so it didn't take that much for the colonists to prevail--but they really had not way of knowing that on July 4, 1776.
We must find the courage first to move away from living in the fantasy of "American Exceptionalism" which means that we are, by nature, superior to all societies and are destined to rule the world because we only act in the interests of freedom and democracy unlike every other major power in the world. This is obviously and demonstrably false and has no logic or proof--it is the equivalence of a cargo cult--it is a belief system that is even more primitive and illogical than the most absurd religions you can imagine. Even the Nazis only though they deserved to rule because they were a "master-race" and they had little interest in the happiness or prosperity of anyone else--ironically, many Zionists feel the same way about Israel and Jewry--they deserve to rule because they are a master-culture but they are only interested in benefiting their own people and could care less about the rest of us. But we, in the USA, believe we are out for the welfare of everyone when most of the evidence points in exactly the opposite direction--except the reality is that we, as a country, aren't even interested in our own welfare and support a ruling elite that is stunningly selfish and greedy. Why? Because mythology always trumps reason and, indeed, this showed up most dramatically in the election of Donald Trump.
We need to take tonight to think of these things. We don't need to "do" anything because there is not much we can do--other than this--we can change. We can change and use our mythological illusions as mythological strengths. We can actually use the words and slogans we tell ourselves to live our commitment to Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness starting in our own lives and moving into the lives of others close to us. We need to understand that we humans are "hard-wired" for connection with each other--we need connections of all kinds not just sex--in fact we put way too much of a burden on sex to connect. We need to connect and celebrate together, to bond, to move away from our culture of narcissism and selfishness and do for others using our unique gifts as we can not as an assertion of ego but as an assertion of the wisdom of the heart. I believe the Signers of the Declaration we are and should celebrate today were a rare group of people who not only wanted to improve the lot of their fellows but had an eye for posterity which means us. Yes, as individuals they did not value human life equally--but they felt it was important that they should--it was an ideal they did not meet but, nevertheless, it was an ideal that generations could work out and in many ways we did despite the coup of 1963, despite the murder of MLK and so on. We do it now when we refrain from the easy and reflexive hate-speech, when we refrain from blaming others without looking deeply into our own hearts.
Even stranger than equality is the idea that we ought we have a right to Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. These men were all lawyers and knew that by capitalizing these terms they meant them as legal concepts. Any system of governments that impinges on any of this has to be called to account. When such governments refuse to grant citizens these basic and "unalienable" rights it is our right to change or overthrow the government. This is important. This document came before the Constitution and, to me, overrides it. It's saying, essentially, that we don't have to put up with the sort of shit we are currently putting up with we have the right and, as the Declaration clearly states the DUTY as citizens to overthrow this government. Essentially this document states the sovereignty of the people of the country to fashion their own government not on some religious foundation, not on the Divine Right of Kings, not on the basis of some aristocracy or men who "know better" but on the everyday people like you and I. It is by the needs and inclinations of the people that we institute governments.
Having said that, it is clear to me and, I'm guessing, to many of us view that the current government is clearly not acting in the interest of most people but only in the interest of oligarchs. Now let me be clear, I am an anarchist or someone who is against government on principle. I'll briefly explain what anarchism means to me--most of us believe that human beings are naturally cooperative and sharing in manageable groups and communities. Anyone who has been face with an emergency situation knows that leadership and teamwork occur spontaneously--those who can, use their skills as needed--no one needs a job title or job definition--what needs to get done gets done. I submit that in normal situations the same thing can occur. The reason it does not occur at present is because our life is highly regulated by both the legal government and the government of the workplace. We are all subjects to the State at this point in our history as well as subjects to our employers. Even if we are CEOs we our actions are constricted by the "System" which is really the overall government that includes all aspects of our life and includes all the rules, laws, regulations, systems of punishment and reward, information and education systems, and so on and so on that are tightly interlocked so much so that certain subjects of conversation are forbidden even in social situations. We all know what those subjects are and we know that only people who clearly agree with our outlook will want to hear anything we have to say and the rest will be upset and not only turn away but will ask us to stop talking about forbidden subjects. This self-imposed social constraints on what we can talk about is, as much as our parallel rejection of logic, science, and coherence (it's hard to hear a discussion that isn't just a bunch of platitudes strung together) due to a perverse kind of militant ignorance that, while present in my youth, goes way beyond that point--today inarticulateness is the norm.
To put it another way, our highly authoritarian System has aided in the degeneration of the population. It started in earnest with the assassinations of the 60s. JFK was murdered by a consortium of forces led by the CIA and his government was the last legitimate government. Had the mainstream media not failed us (they were worried that any doubt of the official story of the murder would create social chaos and cripple our ability to continue with the Cold War (one of the main reasons JFK was shot was that he was actively plotting with Premier Khrushchev to end that war against the advice of their respective militaries and government apparatchiks). The 1968 assassinations were existential in nature. Martin Luther King was becoming the nightmare of the ruling elites by threatening to create one big movement consisting of Labor, Civil Rights, the Poor, and the Anti-War movements in what was threatening to make flesh the dreams of the IWW of "one big union" that would be, at least on an equal basis as the oligarch class. Robert F. Kennedy was close to being elected President and he was in an alliance with King and might have turned Washington upside down, as Nixon actually thought of doing, by revealing the lies of the official JFK story. Others like Jesse Jackson and George McGovern were never able to fill those shoes first because they knew that the Deep State would no longer tolerate real dissent from the official picture and would then, as now, stop at nothing to maintain their grip on power which they hold to this day.
lf Americans understood not only this history, which one can research for him/herself with hundreds of books and monographs on the JFK and other operations which all show in excruciating and obvious detail how utterly fictional are the mainstream media Narratives on those events and countless others. If people understood that the mainstream media are clearly and unambiguously controlled by the intelligence services and learned how that control is applied every day. If people understood that there is not and was not a real "War on Terror" (the very name should arouse suspicions--how can there be a war on an emotion?) this was an invention. That does not mean some groups don't use terrorist tactics at times--all major powers have used these techniques the list here is too long here to list but most modern warfare does involve terrorist tactics. I can list chapter and verse for most wars of the past century or so even wars everyone supports like WWII involved massive civilian deaths--i.e., civilians were targeted to terrorize and wipe out vast populations on both sides of the conflict.
Not only do we live in an era of active denial and a the glorifying of fantasy at all levels of our society but we also live in an age of cowardice. Courage is rare in both private and public life. I'm not immune--there have certainly been situation where a little bit of courage would have helped me. But the fact that courage as a kind of abstract ideal may exist but as a practical matter it is highly discourage by society. In its place is our obsession with "security" and comfort. For all the faults of the signers of the Declaration, they did not lack for courage. They changed history because they cared about their society and cared deeply enough to risk their lives in an enterprise that was not assured of victory against the most powerful empire in the world. Fortunately for the Signers, that empire had overstretched itself and had many enemies so it didn't take that much for the colonists to prevail--but they really had not way of knowing that on July 4, 1776.
We must find the courage first to move away from living in the fantasy of "American Exceptionalism" which means that we are, by nature, superior to all societies and are destined to rule the world because we only act in the interests of freedom and democracy unlike every other major power in the world. This is obviously and demonstrably false and has no logic or proof--it is the equivalence of a cargo cult--it is a belief system that is even more primitive and illogical than the most absurd religions you can imagine. Even the Nazis only though they deserved to rule because they were a "master-race" and they had little interest in the happiness or prosperity of anyone else--ironically, many Zionists feel the same way about Israel and Jewry--they deserve to rule because they are a master-culture but they are only interested in benefiting their own people and could care less about the rest of us. But we, in the USA, believe we are out for the welfare of everyone when most of the evidence points in exactly the opposite direction--except the reality is that we, as a country, aren't even interested in our own welfare and support a ruling elite that is stunningly selfish and greedy. Why? Because mythology always trumps reason and, indeed, this showed up most dramatically in the election of Donald Trump.
We need to take tonight to think of these things. We don't need to "do" anything because there is not much we can do--other than this--we can change. We can change and use our mythological illusions as mythological strengths. We can actually use the words and slogans we tell ourselves to live our commitment to Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness starting in our own lives and moving into the lives of others close to us. We need to understand that we humans are "hard-wired" for connection with each other--we need connections of all kinds not just sex--in fact we put way too much of a burden on sex to connect. We need to connect and celebrate together, to bond, to move away from our culture of narcissism and selfishness and do for others using our unique gifts as we can not as an assertion of ego but as an assertion of the wisdom of the heart. I believe the Signers of the Declaration we are and should celebrate today were a rare group of people who not only wanted to improve the lot of their fellows but had an eye for posterity which means us. Yes, as individuals they did not value human life equally--but they felt it was important that they should--it was an ideal they did not meet but, nevertheless, it was an ideal that generations could work out and in many ways we did despite the coup of 1963, despite the murder of MLK and so on. We do it now when we refrain from the easy and reflexive hate-speech, when we refrain from blaming others without looking deeply into our own hearts.
No comments:
Post a Comment