Against Democracy

Tags

a no-party system, American decline, are leaders needed, Cambridge Analytica, Canada, change, corporate greed, corporate meddling, corrupt politics, electoral ignorance, fake democracy, fascism, Gandhi, Illiberal democracy, lobbyists, media, paul william roberts, Plato, political hackers, Quebec separatism, revolution, Rousseau, US collapse, vested interests, voter rights

“The inflexibility of the laws can, in some circumstances, make them dangerous and cause the ruin of a state in a crisis. If the danger is such that the machinery of the laws is an obstacle, then a dictator is appointed, who silences the laws.”

 

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract

 

We may well wonder whether Rousseau is stating a fact here or being prescriptive, if indeed he discerned any difference between the two. Popularly viewed as the Father of the French Revolution, and hence a progenitor of European liberty, equality and fraternity, Rousseau is often mistakenly regarded as a proponent of democracy, which he indeed viewed as a perfect system of governance but, he stressed, one that would only work for a perfect society, a society he characterized, inter alia, as “one of gods, not men.” He was in fact an advocate of the simple life, an existence close to nature, in tune with natural cycles and the land. It resembles Gandhi’s vision of an India consisting of villages engaged in rural tasks and farming. These prescriptions for harmonious societies would seem to conflict and contrast with Plato’s Republic, which is distinctly a city-state, yet they all flounder on the concept of democracy, its meaning and function. For Plato, democracy – from demos, loosely ‘the people’ – is undesirable inasmuch as it results in mob rule. He charts four stages of rule: timocracy (rule by property-owners), oligarchy, democracy, and finally tyranny. By ‘tyranny’ he means essentially what Rousseau means by ‘dictator’, the not necessarily bad rule of a strong central figure, who steps in to correct the chaos of mob rule and unite the state. In the tribal or kinship-based societies of Africa, Melanesia and elsewhere, this is the “Big Man”, a perceived natural leader chosen for the position, not born to it. In post-republican Rome such a government was symbolized by the fasces, the commonly-displayed image of an axe bound around by sticks, origin of the word ‘fascism’. We have become so accustomed to thinking of democracy as good and, largely thanks to Nazism, fascism being bad that we now seem to be incapable of an objective view of either.

 

I will limit this mainly to the Canadian situation for brevity’s sake and because it’s where I live. What is democracy in Canada? Well, it’s a vote for everyone of age, a vote they can cast basically for one of three political parties, the winner forming a government, often with a majority in the House of Commons that allows them to enact whatever legislation or reforms they have promised from their electoral platform. The party with the next most votes gets to form an official opposition, and generally spends the next four years decrying everything the government does. The third party, nominally socialistic in ideology, and usually the New Democratic Party, has the luxury of criticizing both parties and proposing reforms it will rarely if ever be called upon to put in place, which creates a tendency towards the impractical if not the downright fanciful, and always prohibitively expensive. While the two main parties present themselves as dramatically divergent in ideology and outlook, citizens are forced to concede that when it comes to actual government there is very little difference between them, and certainly scant difference in the public effects of their rule. Taxes remain far too high; the cost of living steadily increases. Those who can tolerate the schoolyard cacophony of tuning into parliamentary shenanigans are frequently forced to admit the experience is far from salutary and often close to embarrassing. The time and vast amounts of money taken up by committees and commissions – the answers to all government dilemmas – is dishearteningly wasteful, as are the billions apportioned to boondoggles, foreign aid – when aid is needed at home — the military, and countless other dubious enterprises over which the average citizen, who finances them, has no say whatsoever. Ruling parties often come a cropper with corruption scandals, but are rarely called to account for them in any meaningful way, beyond, that is, being short of votes in the next election.

 

What is it that makes up a voter’s mind about which party to vote for? True, there are people who rather inanely and illogically always vote for the same party, presumably wantonly ignorant or uncaring of the position taken on current issues. Perhaps sadder still are those multitudes who vote for a leader they imagine to be attractive or personable, as if a seemingly nice guy or gal cannot fail to be a great Prime Minister. Then there are all those whose vote is based on some envisaged personal gain: Pot will be legal: daycare will be free. And so on. Besides the first group, whose opinion was concretized somehow in a distant era, all of these decisions are based on media coverage in some way, or perhaps we ought to call it media manipulation. The grating shallowness and vacuity of many voters is frequently highlighted by man-on-the-street interviews, where you hear either the repetition of some party boast or slogan, or else mind-boggling nonsense usually addressing the interviewee’s pet peeve. And it is the amassing, measuring and categorizing of such peeves that parties scrutinize avidly for new avenues of vote-trawling. 49 percent think there’s too much immigration? Well, maybe we should say there is too much? Or should we say there’s not enough? What do the 51 percent think? It has nothing to do with the issue itself; it is simply about the votes. This is what Plato means by mob rule, the dictatorship of uneducated masses whose vote is obtained by the chanting of shibboleths: the swamp will be drained; tax dollars will be used to benefit tax payers; economic equality will be striven for; et cetera.

 

Should everyone have the right to vote? Yes, but only if they can prove they know why they’re voting and what for. I proposed a voters’ test years ago, to be howled at: fascist, elitist, and so on. I propose it again. What is wrong with a simple test that proves you understand the issues at stake and the positions taken by standing parties? It strikes me that the only possible objections would be from parties now unable to bamboozle, wheedle and con votes out of a vast chunk of the electorate whose uninformed vote is no more meaningful than the yells of a hockey crowd. But the elected government will place inestimable importance on those votes, proclaiming them as the mandate to do whatever it was they promised to do – although the outcome is rarely anything like the promo for it, and, no matter what happens, the rich will get richer, the poor sink slowly, and everyone else will struggle to remain above water. The rule of law is a boon trumpeted far and wide, but justice is far from just. To the well-off, a hundred-dollar speeding ticket is nothing; to the poor it is a day’s wages, the difference between surviving and suffering a little. This is not remotely just. Nor is a system that makes justice a commodity you can buy: the rich man or the corporation with lawyers on staff or retainer can tie up someone of modest means in a lawsuit that will either bankrupt them or impel them to abandon a civil action that may be just and honorable. The same is true for criminal cases: the person who can afford a good lawyer usually gets a far better result. Our prisons are full of poor people. It is said that anyone can run for political office, but those who have explored the possibility discover you need far more than good will to succeed at this: you need money. Little wonder that the ruling elites of whatever stripe, most but not all of them, come from affluent backgrounds, and some are multimillionaires. Many are lawyers, who earn a thousand dollars an hour or more, and are also trained to present right as wrong, or wrong as negligible. Without inherited wealth it is difficult, but admittedly not impossible, to thrive in business. Big corporations receive government funds – tax dollars – that are frequently spent on giving top executives annual bonuses amounting sometimes to a lifetime’s earnings for the average worker, who is taxed mercilessly on a pittance, and then taxed whenever she or he buys or sells anything, seeks licenses or permits, and in many more insidious ways. In return we get the system, its laws and police, who are surprisingly unhelpful if you ever need their help, and intolerably rude if you fall foul of them in your vehicle. Then there is the health care, which private insurance has to fund anyway for those expecting top-notch care, and which in some provinces is scandalously bad. The inequities go on, and on.   Is this the democracy promised in its brochures? No wonder the young are not voting in ever-increasing numbers. They see through the charade, realize it is merely a performance called Democracy and designed to create an impression that we have one, as if changing parties every four years were the very soul spinning there in the body politic, new brooms sweeping clean, a change finally arrived, the nation great again. Could a business operate on such lines, the owner and employees gone every four years? Perhaps it could, but the real question is why would it run that way, considering the expense involved and an incoming staff, even a chief, with little or no experience of the work? In fact government ministries rely totally on a formidable excess of civil servants who are permanent, unelected and ready to work for whichever government comes next, no matter if they find its stated policies detestable or conducive. The ruling party is then, in very real terms, a façade designed to promote a certain image with its specific message or messages intended to create for citizens the illusion that these people are different. Millions are spent on marketing, branding, psychological studies, niche identification and the innumerable vagaries of leading-edge advertising in order to conceive, shape and create such illusions. Nowhere is more being spent now than on the political weaponization of social media and the Internet. The news that Russia was doing this at home and in our home ought to have galvanized some dog-hole in CSIS rather than, as was the case, setting lightbulbs ablaze inside the brains of campaign managers and strategists, who immediately asked, “Wow, well how is that done, eh?” This, instead of drafting legislation to stop abuses and nail the perpetrators. The circus will now be a CGI show, hard to tell from the real thing, and sending you – just you – news morsels it just knows you’ll adore, because you’ve clicked like thirty times on this or that. They’re vampires of attention, because once they have yours – with some trifle or innocent vice – you’re their creature, moving up to the next level. With referenda like Brexit or Catalan independence, the fear is that an organization on the lines of Cambridge Analytica will be able to sway the vote by fair means or foul. The 1995 referendum on Quebec sovereignty – to be clear, the dismantling of Canada – was very close indeed. A digital push and the minority becomes a majority. In the recent Quebec election, an extraordinarily large percentage of the electorate was still undecided who to vote for a day before the election. These are voters easily lured by misleading promises or unwarranted warnings.

 

Why hold elections every four years? It is the performance of that drama created so you will know beyond all doubt you dwell in a democracy, one which has of late taken to US-style braggadocio in trumpeting “the greatest country on earth” and seizing on those spurious statisticians who announce “Canada: best country on earth to live for vegetarian flautists and ballerinas of larger body-type.” Statistics, as we know, can be manipulated to show any result desired of them.  A poll or a chart is not, I’m afraid, going to give you even the faintest glimpse of what really goes on in the halls, amphitheaters, chambers, back rooms, cabinets, weekends on the links or in Bermuda, and in the many late night bars where big decisions are made. There is so much for the enterprising investigative journalist here, but who will print it? Objectivity is vanishing fast from the media, so unless a voter is willing to research a bit independently her or his vote may well soon be yet another commodity bought by those who can afford it. Democracy is no longer what it ought to be and is far from democratic. Is it time to change the system to one where there are no parties or leaders, just elected (and thoroughly vetted) experts running the nation for the nation?

 

Regarding Rousseau’s opening quote: One instantly thinks of Doug Ford’s move to shrink town hall. If I trusted Ford and believed his motives were purely altruistic, I’d have to concede that smaller government is a good thing, a thing to aspire to everywhere. But the whole Ford family is too hand-in-glove with big business to be trusted, no matter how much ‘populist sloganeering goes on. What is wrong with big business and a thriving economy, you ask. Nothing inherently, but a corporation is legally bound to make decisions benefitting its shareholders, and legally not allowed to make decisions which will reduce profits. Such restrictions particularly affect environmental issues. A costly waste disposal system that will greatly benefit the environment and is not mandated by law will not be built because its price will reduce profits. Capitalism is a fine way to create and expand a business, but to keep the share price and dividends growing profits must increase quarterly, no matter how this increase is achieved. Lay-offs, reduced quality of manufactures, and other cost-cutting measures often result from this, and as a long-term principle it has obvious problems. Such huge concerns contribute much and in many ways, not all of them legal, to political campaigns. This is not done from sheer altruism of course, and what these companies want in return are a myriad of things only governments can do, from rezoning land to acquiring permits and licenses for all manner of activities. Needless to say, some of these perquisites will not be in the public’s best interests. While Ottawa or Toronto is not infested with lobbyists for vested interests the way Washington is, Canadian politics is far from free of them. The health of the economy is always presented as something of unquestioned good for all citizens, but this is not necessarily so. The increasing privatization of major utilities is provably not in the best interests of anyone, except perhaps the new owners. Such concerns should all be state-owned since they are so vital to the welfare of all. I would include internet service providers in this group too, since the internet is no longer a luxury toy and indispensable to all, rich or poor, young or old. If any of our governments had a real concern for our well-being they would have nationalized all such utilities and operated them on a not-for-profit basis. Instead all have perpetuated the lie that nationalized industries are always badly run and costly. Ontario Hydro users can attest to this falsity, now paying some of the highest rates in Canada for a second-rate, callous and avaricious service. In short, democracy has failed us and continues to fail, continuing also to masquerade as something it is decidedly not. As we watch the steady decline and fall of America, riven by corporate greed and corruption, along with a broken political system, we ought to give serious consideration, we the people, to taking back our governance before it is too late. Revolutions must be planned carefully, to make sure that what replaces the old is not worse than it was. This requires prolonged study and the good will of all concerned; but I believe it is possible in this country, more than most in the West, to evolve a planning committee dedicated to a reasoned approach to replacing what is crumbling and atavistic with something that fully reflects the decency and egalitarianism of the public, while not exploiting the ignorance of some. Change is not just another slogan; it is a viable possibility with an intelligent population such as ours. A better society can only come into being through will, effort and a clear perception that what we currently have is collapsing and, if people of good will do not participate in the transformation, will be co opted by far darker forces, ones whose best interests are their own. I’d be interested in hearing arguments against this modest proposal and for the current system.

 

Misappropriation of Reason

Tags

Afro-American, appropriation of culture, Appropriation of voice, bannock, blues, defending culture, eric Clapton, fascism, freedom of speech, globalism, Indigenous rights, intellectual property, Led Zeppelin, mob rule, multicultural world, no fix for the past, paul william roberts, Robert Johnson, Robert le Page, Rolling Stones, Slave, tyranny, unity not division

With the closing of Robert le Page’s Slave, a musical of traditional slave songs, whose crime was having a white lead singer, an intensely irritating fly in the social ointment needs once again to be plucked out with tweezers and left to dry in the sun somewhere far away. For those in a rush who just want a bottom line, a slogan to pluck out like a brolly when rain falls from the clouds of cultural fascism, here it is: “cultural appropriation” is a two-word phase whose components are mutually exclusive – like, say, “jello engineering” or “dental confabulation” – which renders the term meaningless and the concept non-existent in reality. There is then no such thing as cultural appropriation, or its companion in semantic folly “appropriation of voice”, which in its overweening arrogance and pomposity tells me I have no right to include African or aboriginal characters in my stories, because only they are allowed to use their voices and will not be my ventriloquist’s dummy. We’ll get back to this captious twaddle.

Let’s examine what happened to Robert le Page’s musical, in so far as we really know what happened, at least. Is there anything inherently wrong about a white person singing songs originating with African slaves working the southern plantations? Of course not. How could there be? For if there were the whole history of American pop music would be wrong, since all its roots were sunk deep in those cotton fields back there in the beginning. Robert Johnson had the blues, so is that what permitted him to sing them? But are we then suggesting that Eric Clapton, the Stones or Led Zeppelin are too wealthy to get the blues so have no right to sing them? I trust not, because blues are a ubiquitous feature or malady of homo sapiens — one man’s not remotely comparable to another’s in terms of crushing severity. Who can say if Robert Johnson’s miseries were any worse or any better than Clapton’s, a man whose only son accidentally fell to his death from the window of a Manhattan skyscraper, a man who suffered heroin and alcohol addiction, laudably overcoming these demons. If blues cannot be compared per se, what then is left to differentiate between singers? Only skin colour, which may be a crude indicator of class in endemically racist America, yet even there, not to mention across much of the world it indicates nothing of the sort. When the controversy over Slave first arose, Le Page pleaded for his potential audience to see the production first, see what he had done with it, before passing judgement. It seemed the only possible rational response to a hubbub over something protesters had not in fact seen. What they’d heard about – white woman in lead role singing black songs – was more than enough proof for them to be utterly certain this was just more of the same old exploitation and abuse. Why, it was scarcely any different from enslaving us to pick Le Page’s cotton till our figures bleed. You pictured him prowling his stage in white straw panama, loose linen suit, a cheroot clamped between his yellowed teeth, and the bullwhip cracking as he demanded more heft behind that bale. O Lordy! The CBC had a virtual ER of overexcited Afro-Canadian objectors, one of them asked why she didn’t take up Le Page’s offer and see the show first before complaining about it. “I don’t need to see it,” she screamed in outrage. “Do I need to see the hotplate where I burnt myself to know it hurt?” The host was no more certain about this analogy than I was. “I know it will cause me more of the same old pain, so why would I subject myself to that?” No one dared venture the obvious answer: Because it might not be what you think… This attitude is, I suggest, essentially no different from the one in Nazi Germany that said all books and art by Jews are poisonous monstrosities and must be burned. If there was someone who suggested the books ought to be read first in case some weren’t poisonous monstrosities, he was probably thrown on the pyre as well to burn on top of Marx, Freud, Kafka et al. For this is facism, which loves censorship, and this is mob tyranny, which hates freedom of speech, and indeed most constitutional rights.

 

Although never stated as such, the real argument was basically that to sing slave songs you had to have come out of the slavery culture. Someone might just have a great-great-grandmother living who could honestly claim to have come from a “slavery culture”, but the great-great-granddaughter can only claim knowledge of post-slave culture, which was admittedly often worse than slavery, but still no worse in essence than that suffered by working classes the world over, and indeed sometimes even a little better. To hear millennials talking about the legacy of slavery in their genes or souls, the ongoing bitterness of it, its eternal penumbra shadowing their lives, it all made recall the TV shows, songs and dramas where this sort of emotional language was forged, and where their sort of neo-Baldwinesque rage personae were released to roam the Afro-American psyche. My people were also persecuted periodically, despised and abused, even enslaved, but I don’t feel their rattling tribulations smashing around my subconscious. They were other people, ones I never met, and they were long ago. It could happen again, and vestiges of it do occasionally surface here and there. But all in all things have changed and I’ll take my chances in a different world. Sure, ancestors of the old enemy roam in our midst, but these are mostly far from the old enemy themselves. They’ve changed as everything changes. If these objectors have been taught that the past is still present, then they have been ill-taught, for a lie is no lesson. Let their teachers un-teach these errors, especially the error of thinking that the past can be undone, rearranged to suit the present and its new needs. No historical revisionism, and certainly no apologies from officialdom unable to apologise for crimes in which they had no part, and no mollycoddling exceptionalism in society can ever alter what was done long ago. It may even be damaging, because the pendulum swings both ways, and if one pushes it too hard, the other will find its arc scoring a far larger swath over very different territory. What was gained will then be lost.

 

A less popular way of seeing all this is its reflection in an essentially neo-colonial attitude of indulgence. Ah, it’s only the blacks and the Indigenous. They’ve had a rough time of it, so let’s indulge their whims, eh? They don’t have much, so no wonder they’re trying to hold onto it. Humour them, because who really cares anyway?

In short, treat them like the children we’ve always regarded them as in our patriarchal world-view. That is not my world-view, however, and since I never had a father I don’t really understand what a patriarch is – except to know I don’t want one. I address all you culprits as adults, so kindly cease and desist your promotion of nonsense about “cultural property”. Such a thing is imaginary. It is not like intellectual property, which is someone’s creation. Feathers, beads, dances, drums, work-songs, foods, speech-patterns, none of it and any of the rest is the work of any individual. Traditions created them over centuries, and traditions are streams flowing from every direction into the river you think of as yours. Well, it’s mine too, brother. One of those streams is me, sister. You want a better world? Then help make it by knocking down your imaginary enclosures, you walls and fences, because the only better world there can ever be is one multi-world, where all are earthlings first and foremost, and then whatever they want to be after that. The human genome is the same in everyone, so, in scientific terms, race does not exist unless it’s the human race. When you tell me what I can and cannot do with my imagination, it makes me want to unpack all of your conceits and ill-informed assumptions. But you must know what they are, how much of what you now consider yours is actually from the hated colonisers. Even your beloved bannock, even your steel guitars… even your religion and sometimes your name too. Who has whose cultural baggage?

 

I notice lawyers on the whole stay out of this, knowing as they must that a can of worms the size of Trump Tower lies beneath it, waiting hungrily for the first fool to launch a suit and feel the floor beneath him deliquesce as he falls forever through an eternity of wriggling worms. The case might be something like: Cinderella is a Teutonic cultural artefact and cannot be adapted to suit the needs of an Urdu movie. After expert testimony from seventy witnesses, the court will be wondering if Cinderella originated in Indonesia, Africa, Asia Minor, Iceland, among the Sioux or Lakota tribes, in Tierra del Fuego, Uruguay, and any one of a few dozen other places where versions of the tale exist in one form or another. This will make Jarndyce and Jarndyce seem like summary justice. For it could never end, since all mythologies and all languages spiral down into a single vat at the end. It is of course all interrelated, so no one can appropriate what is theirs to begin with. You who pride yourselves on being more attuned to the mystic than the rest of us ought to use the facility to put your facts where your myths are. Do not divide, unite, as you claim to believe we must all do.

 

There was one plaintive but truer note in all the jargon and sloganeering over Slave. Someone said the lead role should have been given to a black singer because she was herself a black singer and could use the work. Honest if naïve. That a director of Robert le Page’s stature and radiant resume could be suspected of racial bias is preposterous and insulting. Anyone aware of his work could only be certain that he’d select as his cast the very best performers who auditioned for each role. The production itself could also be presumed to represent his finest work given whatever limitations might have existed, and his greatest efforts under any circumstances. I imagine the backers closed it down, thinking, like all moneymen, of the bottom line and any damage to their reputation. Put quotes around “thinking” because it’s only their euphemism for reacting. Had anyone actually thought, they would have realised this nonsensical codswollop could be stopped with a little pertinent straight talk. But political correctness – another vile misnomer – is a creeping distemper in the arts community reminiscent of the 80s herpes scare. You can be afflicted by someone who doesn’t even know they’ve got it. You can catch it by sharing a meal or a doorknob. And when you’ve got it you will lose all your friends and have to consort with others similarly afflicted. The slightest hint of a derogatory remark, even an innocent query – isn’t basket-making more of a craft than an art? – will see you flung into the outer darkness. So no wonder an Achilles did not appear to shout from the ramparts: “There’s no such thing as cultural appropriation!” But you’d have thought at least someone would have echoed Robert le Page’s suggestion, his very fair and reasonable suggestion: see it first. But none did. Those unwilling to defend imagination and the arts from censorship and tyranny in a thousand forms deserve to have no arts at all, since they already lack the quintessential imagination to house them and the vital courage to follow them wherever they lead.

 

The End of His Story?

Tags

america, assault weapons, electoral system, equality, fascism, gun control, gun lobby, hidden agenda, inherited wealth, lobbyists, Manitoba, mincome, National Rifle Association, Pentagon, police state, poverty, privatization, School shootings, trump, universal income, US Army, US military, US politics, violence, Washington corruption

 

“All this violence, the inner cities, the school shootings – it’s always the same weapons, the AR-15 and so on, the assault rifles… you make then unattainable, well, you’ve gone a long way to solving the problem… so why don’t these politicians do it? You got to face the fact that someone wants this shit to go on, the killing, the terror of our kids… they do say that fear is what feeds a police state, the kind of high security admin situation that someone like Trump wants in place… if his daughter got blown away you might see some action on guns – ‘til then though you’re going to see nothing…”

 

–       Caleb Bencher (Florida)

 

“More folks die in traffic accidents every day, we’re going to ban the car? Of course not. We need more guns not fewer… have armed guards in every school… a gun is the only protection any of us have got against these terrorist…”

 

–       Henry Posner (National Rifle Association)

 

 

O, America! You’re

supposedly a democracy, aren’t you? Have a referendum on this gun

issue, it’s the democratic way – see what the people really think and want.

Then, whatever the result, at least we’ll know who bears the tragic flaw, who

in fact wants this slaughter to continue on forever. But I suspect

Washington fears to have what the people really want etched there in stone

for all the world to see – for the government has no interest in what the

people want, and it rarely ever has. This explains the vested interest in

stupidity for the masses that every administration since Roosevelt has

displayed in a concerted and wholly successful attack on education. If the state schools are bad the working poor attending them won’t get any smarter, will they? And further assisting this stupidity drive, many will drop out of crummy schools around Grade Nine or Ten, certified for life as dumb. When you’re dumb, politics, the economy, etc etc, are beyond your ken, outside your sphere of reference – which encompasses sports, maybe religion (invariably fundamentalist Christian), hunting, food, possibly drink and maybe vacations in the US. Perhaps you see voting in elections as a waste of time; perhaps you always vote for the party that convinces you it’s on your side? This is always the Republican Party, whose candidates are always schooled in what you want (but almost never give it to you – and you always seem to forget or overlook this betrayal). The corporate-owned media see to it that your position of extravagant stupidity is never lampooned, or not cruelly, and indeed extolled in numberless dramas as a paragon to be aspired to by all invisibly indentured Americans, the wage-slaves who are the nation – but, alas, the nation isn’t them. Docility, steady work and obedience are guaranteed by the vast range of loans they all have to pay into each month, the mortgages, rents, health insurance, pensions, car loans, kids’ education fees and all the other rabid but unforeseen drains on the wallet to which we’re all vulnerable heirs. A thousand sources say this is the way, the truth and the life all yearn to live – and if you don’t or can’t read, how can you ever discover it may not be all they say it is? You do what your friends do, vote for the person who claims to be all about you and your needs, but remaining loyal and undeterred when they prove to have been fibbers (but not for themselves, f course, but rather because of unexpected situations arising during their term). In effect, the blue-collar masses always vote against their own interests, which are best represented by policies of the more liberal-minded. It’s a mystery. But the overall subtext of TV and video broadcasts clears up the mystery. Not all but most programs or shows reflect values, celebrate and endorse the situational plight of a proletariat oppressed and exploited by Big Business — without them even knowing it, which shows you how well-planned and successful the scheme is. This is the truth about most of America – and few dare

utter it, none of this few ever allowed to utter it on major media.

 

As in Britain and elsewhere in the West particularly, education is for a monied elite, those who can effortlessly afford the vertiginous fees of private schools, where classes are small (less than a quarter of those in the best state schools), the syllabi rigorous, useful and thorough. These schools of course feed the major universities (the lesser ones are mostly all businesses in disguise, profit their only real concern, their decrees scarcely worth the paper they’re on), where fees are a struggle for the poorer students, many of who are paying off loans into their forties or beyond. It is a system designed solely for the wealthy, to ensure their caste remains near the apex of our social pyramid (which once all North Americans could climb, but now all are discouraged and even prevented legally from climbing it –  just as they do in Europe to keep the strata stratified). It is blatantly iniquitous, this system, and until it is dismantled – all receiving the same education – society will not evolve or adapt well to a rapidly evolving global world. Private schools are the principal problem here, and there is no rational justification for their continued existence if a society is truly egalitarian. Poverty is a part of this problem too, though, and one of its solutions may well be a guaranteed universal wage, the sum paid to all regardless of their situation and without a means test. Small-scale experiments – conducted here in Manitoba – have shown that a major effect of this guaranteed income is people returning to school or college, or else continuing on with an education without fear of a chronically reduced income. Of course there are those who say why give people money for nothing – it’s unnatural and encourages the idle. But the vast subsidies paid out to  large businesses are generally money handed out for nothing. For that matter so is inherited wealth. Descendants do nothing generally to earn their inheritances – which are sometimes fabulous – yet these same people denigrate those who receive a guaranteed income to help them out of poverty, and for which they have done nothing – if caring for sick relatives, raising children, cleaning homes, pursuing a course of study, and so on are nothing. In fact just cutting subsidies to big businesses – which often use this money to pay executives ridiculously inflated salaries – would in itself finance the guaranteed universal income, which is still the only sure way to date for a practical eradication of poverty and its concomitant transformation of society. Naturally, though, I don’t expect this to happen, not soon and not ever – for those we elect to govern us, not all but most of them, either are or become beholden to the cash from big business interests, the real powers that be, whose interests are all too well known and immovably rigid when it comes to certain issues. This is far more true in America than it is in Canada, but the cautionary tale so much easier to see is still indispensable here. Just watching the pathetic spectacle of a distraught public pleading for Washington to do something about guns is a grim warning of how easily things can slide – with a President tweeting that the FBI is to blame for not following through with tips about the latest shooter, and this was because all 33,000 of their special agents were tied up being obsessed with the Russian collusion red herring. God, how do Americans tolerate this?

 

Stupidity would be one answer, although it’s spread over different areas, like the nationalist fervour that makes some reluctant to criticize the leader, or a class-bond with the ruling elite that chooses not to tarnish the GOP by broadcasting about the very bad apple in its current barrel. These are all forms of stupidity, whose brand burgeons by the day all over the world, and is the sole cause of social injustice and inequity. If you don’t support the abolition of private schools, for example, you’re stupid – because being part of the problem is just plain dumb. Ditto if you believe society has to be stratified, since people are not born equal or independent. Ditto if you have convinced yourself that some lead, some follow, and the rest should get out of the way. And ditto if you feel big profits justify fraud, deception, shoddy goods sold for top dollar, a thousand percent or more mark-ups, and any other felony or shameful practice you wouldn’t want practised on yourself. There are more of course, but the point is made. It is really all quite simple, this transformation of society from inequity to true egalitarianism, from plutocracy to real democracy; but it will never happen with the systems as they are – and a system will never change unless society itself is changed. It is a vicious circle, one leading only to even greater misery, really oppressive tyranny, vaster inequality, greater divisiveness, or of course bloody revolution – and these never work out well, assuming that when one nightmare is gone utopia ensues. No, an even worse hell takes over, and a dystopia no one has yet thought up ensues. You can see the problem. This latest gun issue is it in microcosm. Have the referendum – it’s clearly the only fair, reasonable and appropriately democratic course of action, isn’t it? What possible objection could there be? But will it happen? No, not in a dozen millennia. Why not? Well, this is the tricky part: the answer is because the United States is not a democracy by any stretch of the term, and it never has been. The electoral system is merely an elaborate guise to bamboozle the masses into believing the PR, when in fact two parties is an alternative not a choice, and the alternative is no alternative at all – look at the mass of congressmen and women: they’re all from the same caste, with some tokenism thrown in to make it deniable. These are not representative Americans, not remotely. Elections are easily rigged too, not that they really need to be rigged – no one undesirable ever runs for office. Win or lose, if you’re a ruler the government doesn’t change – it merely appears to change, usually by the character and personality of the leader, not – God forbid! – by any policy changes. US foreign policy has been consistent since the seventies, and economic policies have never veered far from a course set back in the late forties. You might assume from this that Americans don’t want change, but that is transparently untrue – a glance at the catastrophic conditions in cities shows you this, as does the decay of industry and the steep rise in unemployment. No, things don’t change because America’s rulers mostly serve those who are staunchly resistant to change, not per se but because the current deplorable state is good for business – their businesses of course. And these biggest businesses are the greatest of all worries: the arms trade, or the military-industrial complex, and now supply and logistics companies to keep a privatized army in all the things it used to do for itself, from rations to highly trained security personnel, men and occasionally women who fight for $1,000 a day alongside grunts earning a government salary of less than $100. It ought to give the military an idea of how it’s viewed these days – as an outfit ripe for replacement by robots – but a soldier’s code (aka brainwashing) instills a patriotism so fierce any criticism of the government is like wiping your ass on the flag. But do the math. Big Corporations = arms biz = government = perpetual war= ever-growing profits = dividends for shareholders = big corporations. The money-flow is circular, progenitors being the ultimate recipients too. But the system still depends on a proletariat to function at all – although this may soon change with robotic automation and other new technologies. So if change is to be it needs to come soon, or the cachet of labour will vanish, and with it all leverage. But change is not to be if so simple and rational a thing as banning assault rifles will never happen because too many in Congress are in the pocket of the National Rifle Association, one of the numerous very wealthy lobby groups that are also among the first things an y intelligent person would abolish in order to make government more viable. But they won’t go either, and because naked greed predominates in the upper echelons of American society – which in turn hands more power over to the ultra-rich. Another vicious circle; another condemnation of the moral character Americans love to flaunt as if they’d invented it – and usually as if they possessed it. I see a nation asleep down there, with no one at the wheel, each one thinking someone else will steer, so no one will ever steer. How terminally sad is it to see an entire country grieving over – what? – the 87^th school shooting in a year, and wondering what to do about this malaise; then discovering that stronger gun controls will actually help immensely; and finally finding that this will never happen, the carnage will continue, many more children will die, and all because your elected representatives rely on handouts from the gun lobby to prop up their high lifestyles and bolster campaign funds? Is there anything sadder? Well, there is: the parents of those dead children who find their government mutters platitudes and says empty prayers, but does nothing useful at all – because it doesn’t really give a shit about kids in the morgue or their grieving kin. All those suits and ties care about is money – and that is not sad, it’s fantastically monstrous! Land of the Brave, Home of the Free? How anyone can sing those words with a straight face these days baffles and appalls me.

 

Paul William Roberts