Photo by Nahid Hatami on Unsplash
Of course we ditch fascism. But why restore a failed plutocracy, continue the abuse of people everywhere, and permanently destroy the Earth?
Not so long ago, there was a pandemic and we learned a lot. (If we were honest with ourselves, we’d admit that it never ended.) We learned that rich people, giant corporations, politicians, CEOs and executives are useless. We learned that many of US are essential workers. And that NONE of the elite are.
We learned that most of our jobs are nonsense and wouldn’t be missed if they disappeared.
We learned that we hated commuting to work and that we could find better, more satisfying things to do than waste our lives in cubicles or on factory floors. Even making sour dough bread was more fun. And more meaningful.
Yes, sour dough bread is fresh healthy food, we made it ourselves, it tasted great and it was good for us. It was so much better than capitalism and plutocracy — the actual systems we live in, hidden behind the rhetorical lies of “freedom” and “democracy.”
Of course, we didn’t like the disease or being cast into the unknown. We hated the isolation. Oh, and the deaths, many of which were the fault of lies spread about science and medicine and vaccines, lies often created and promoted by the leaders. Much of the pandemic was horrible and much of the suffering was preventable.
But our eyes were opened and lessons were learned.
The systems and leaders we have now — worldwide — are useless and destructive and we can do much better without them.
Furthermore, during the crisis of the pandemic, we were largely able to find our own way. We don’t need them, the egos and demands of incompetent undeserving elites. The demands of those lazy selfish parasites are a heavy burden to carry.
It’s time to live the lessons learned from the pandemic. Especially now that the systems and leaders are openly at war against us.
The Shredded Social Contract
We had an agreement that we would work and pay taxes and, in return we would receive adequate compensation and value for our tax dollars. Oh, the other side was never fully in compliance, but most of us had enough and held up our side of the bargain despite the increasing abuse of corporations and “public servants.”
But even then, to our shame, we usually looked away from the suffering of those who did not have enough.
Today the already questionable “social contract” has been shredded by fascists and plutocrats. And some of the elites are at war with each other. The crashing stock market is making some ultra-rich spongers much richer — and costing others trillions of dollars.
What all of the elites agree on is that the people who do the work and pay the taxes — WE THE PEOPLE — have no role to play except to serve them.
In the last few decades, we’ve had experiences which resulted in little change — but those experiences did open our eyes and prepare us for this moment.
Occupy taught us that we live in a society dominated by the ultra-rich and that peaceful protesters will be brutally removed and silenced by their police force.
Candidate Bernie Sanders showed us that, challenged by popular support to level the playing field and remove the privileges of the ultra-wealthy, our politicians will organize together to stop the threat to rich people’s undisputed power.
And we learned that the systems under which we live, that we never challenged before, are useless at best and — more accurately — destructive to our wellbeing and are ruining our planet, dooming our children.
We should see, and many of us do see, that not only must we remove the threat of the current fascist regime, but the entire sick underpinning of corruption and cruelty must be rooted out and ended.
We can do better and now is the time of real people power — not through the systems that are corrupted to protect the rich, but by refusing to cooperate with those systems.
We can win and we will win by our own rules. We will withhold our cooperation with our exploiters. We will dedicate our time and energy to helping each other, and to protecting our already grievously damaged planet.
From today onward, the people’s law is the law of conscience. And the laws of our oppressors are null and void.
Better Ideas
The ideas of (fake) democracy and capitalism, at least as they have been manifested, are discredited and failed ideas. They result in what we see today—a world ruled by corrupt and supremely stupid elites. These systems are not merely failures, but catastrophic failures. Allowed to continue, even the “winners” will ultimately destroy themselves.
It is said that we cannot even imagine a world without capitalism. That’s false. Many people have imagined such a world and developed thoughtful and humane alternatives to our current shitshow. We would do well to reject the shitshow, refuse to continue serving it, and throw our support behind any of the far superior alternatives.
Two such alternative systems—one political and the other economic—are ideas that our group—The Saners—see as excellent choices for a better world.
The economic alternative is called Doughnut Economics. The political system is called Tiered Democratic Governance. These are not the only alternatives to our current disaster, but they are some very, very good ones.
But What About Today’s Fascist Regime?
Ah, but today we still have plutocracy and fascism. We cannot institute new systems as long as we remain prisoners of the current ones.
Fortunately, the revolt has begun, it is growing, and the form it is taking is one with a record of success. We have a coalition of people in the streets who are learning the power of nonviolent resistance.
Violence is the power of our foes, pretty much their only power. They create nothing. WE are the people who create. Fascists and plutocrats produce only lies, while they destroy and threaten and make demands.
As long as we continue to comply, to carry out their demands, they remain in power. But once we begin to refuse, once we stop building the bombs, stop acting as their police and military forces, stop producing their yachts and private jets, stop cooking and serving their food—then they are done.
They are helpless babies. They portray themselves as supermen who build pyramids, launch rockets, and run empires.
But the reality is, they barely know how to make a sandwich. They are helpless babies, and, like babies, when they don’t get their way, they hold tantrums.
Only these babies have fools operating guns and bombs and nuclear warheads for them. We disempower the babies by refusing to be their servants, their fools.
A common misconception is that we need everyone united together against our oppressors. History shows this to be false. Historically, it takes 3.5% of a population to successfully overthrow the old order. In the United States, this would be 11 million people. At the recent Hands Off protests, we had (perhaps, hard to know!) more than 3 million in the streets.
This was the first of an ongoing series of protests. As conditions worsen, the protests will get bigger. We will reach 11 million, and probably surpass it.
We are likely to win. BUT we must be smart and careful.
It’s very easy to oust an evil regime and have a new dictator or thug take over. We can avoid that by RIGHT NOW promoting, learning about and committing ourselves to a better set of choices—and to a positive vision of an attainable, monumentally better civilization.
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