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Self-Governance in an Unreasonable Age

Self-Governance in an Unreasonable Age

Part IV: A Conclave of Reptiles

Once again, the country descends into the fetid morass of double-talk, obfuscation, and contemptible cacophony known as election season. Right on cue, every slithering incumbent and mucilaginous political rookie is crisscrossing his/her/its respective area of operations in the hope of bamboozling the required number of dolts into scratching an “X” in their favor. It is a perfectly ridiculous exercise, founded in fanciful expectations, false hopes, and dreams of remembered greatness.

This biennial exercise in national self-delusion will take place across a vast, arid political landscape bereft of any cooling breeze of intelligent debate and denied even the barest sprinkling of intellectual honesty to settle the duplicitous dust of what passes for political discourse in this ghost of a country. Instead, the voting populace will get its usual entrée of verbal offal dressed up with the emotional condiments of their choice. Then, the farce will come to its emotional apogee on election day (oh, blessed day) when the electorate will once again squeeze out a collective turd that looks pretty much identical to the deuce they dropped two and four years earlier. The product of this national bowel movement will smell the same and you wouldn’t want to step in it, but at least it’s out of the system for a few months. At least until the sibilant whisperings of our reptilian ruling class begin to tickle our ears once again…, and again…, and again. Welcome to scatological Ground Hog Day on the Potomac.

The Definition of Insanity

As usual, the voters will return some ridiculous percentage of Senators and Representatives back to the very Congress, which they ostensibly hold in utter contempt.

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America’s Dying Democracy

America’s Dying Democracy


In the fall of 2001, in the aftermath of 9/11, as families grieved and the nation mourned, Washington swarmed with locusts of the human kind: wartime opportunists, lobbyists, lawyers, ex-members of Congress, bagmen for big donors: all of them determined to grab what they could for their corporate clients and rich donors while no one was looking.

Across the land, the faces of Americans of every stripe were stained with tears. Here in New York, we still were attending memorial services for our firemen and police. But in the nation’s capital, within sight of a smoldering Pentagon that had been struck by one of the hijacked planes, the predator class was hard at work pursuing private plunder at public expense, gold-diggers in the ashes of tragedy exploiting our fear, sorrow, and loss.

The World Trade Center's Twin Towers burning on 9/11. (Photo credit: National Park Service)

The World Trade Center’s Twin Towers burning on 9/11. (Photo credit: National Park Service)

What did they want? The usual: tax cuts for the wealthy and big breaks for corporations. They even made an effort to repeal the alternative minimum tax that for 15 years had prevented companies from taking so many credits and deductions that they owed little if any taxes. And it wasn’t only repeal the mercenaries sought; they wanted those corporations to get back all the minimum tax they had ever been assessed.

They sought a special tax break for mighty General Electric, although you would never have heard about it if you were watching GE’s news divisions — NBC News, CNBC, or MSNBC, all made sure to look the other way.

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Food Sovereignty: This is What Anarchy Looks Like

Food Sovereignty: This is What Anarchy Looks Like

“This is what democracy looks like” goes the popular protest chant.  However, it’s not democracy that captures the imagination, provides answers, and drives today’s resistance  movement.  Something much more interesting has been taking place during protests, forums and intentional communities. In his book The New Left the anthropologist David Graeber states that anarchy has become the logical and probably last hope of the international resistance to capitalism.  Mondeggi, an agricultural squat in the Tuscan countryside celebrating its first year this summer demonstrates how that might just be the case.

Anarchy is completely misunderstood amongst the larger public. The word in modern vocabulary has come to mean chaos. This is ironically the opposite of Anarchy, which could be described  as organic order of horizontal self-governance. The misunderstanding comes partly due to political theory ignorance, propaganda from the right, and due to some of the “violent” acts of some historical anarchists such as blowing up bridges and factories in the context of oppressive monarchies, world wars, and Fascist regimes. These extreme strategies are ironically much less drastic that the systematic widespread organized violence of the various state regimes through history.

Chomsky argues that Anarchism is based on the assumption that any structure of authority and domination has to justify itself. All such structures have a burden of proof to bear and if they can’t bear that burden they’re illegitimate.  If they are illegitimate they should be dismantled and replaced by alternative structures which are free and participatory and are not based on authoritarian systems.

Democracy allows for the exploitation and destruction of the environment that is taking place today because of the financial interests of a few organizing the nations states according to the bottom line of international profit. Direct democracy does allow for taking some of the responsibility and control of affairs yet it still maintains the existence of the state.

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The Hundreds: Thomas Jefferson’s Forgotten Plan for Restoring a Failed Republic | Casey Research

The Hundreds: Thomas Jefferson’s Forgotten Plan for Restoring a Failed Republic | Casey Research.

Thomas Jefferson became one of my heroes when I was 13 years old. So you’d think I’d enjoy hearing people say good things about him, but very often, I don’t. My reason is simple: the people who praise Jefferson seldom really understand him, and if they did, it’s questionable that they’d like him. (Others try to get rid of him by trashing his reputation.)

What People Don’t Know

A crucial thing people don’t know about Jefferson is this: he was fully convinced that freedom in America was fatally wounded—in fact on its deathbed—by 1810 or so. He maintained that he and his fellow founders had blown their opportunity and that American freedom had already slipped away.

Now, since what I’ve written above will seem almost inconceivable to many Americans, let me back it up by quoting a few of Jefferson’s letters:

Letter to John Holmes, April 22, 1820:

I regret that I am now to die in the belief that the useless sacrifice of themselves by the generation of 1776, to acquire self-government and happiness to their country, is to be thrown away by the unwise and unworthy passions of their sons, and that my only consolation is to be, that I live not to weep over it.

Letter to Nathaniel Macon, 1821:

Our government is now taking so steady a course as to show by what road it will pass to destruction. That is: by consolidation first, and then corruption, its necessary consequence.

Letter to John Cartwright, June 5, 1824:

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Olduvai IV: Courage
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Olduvai II: Exodus
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