We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Wednesday, August 3, 2016

America’s Election 2016: War, Globalization and “Fake Democracy”

Click here to access article by Abayomi Azikiwe from Global Research.

The author describes the efforts of the two capitalist parties in their recent conventions to engage in fakery to deceive the overwhelming majority of Americans into voting for one of their capitalist candidates and therefore voting against their real interests. He concludes by writing:
The only solution lies in the formation of a mass party of the working class and oppressed which speaks directly for and in the interests of the people. What we can expect from the Democrats and the Republicans is much of the same propaganda and broken promises. The future resides with the efforts of the exploited and the oppressed when they are organized, mobilized and deployed in their own name.
I agree with the last sentence, but not the first because such a party will never be allowed to participate in any capitalist controlled elections.

In another article by the same author, I particularly liked this very insightful observation about the parties that are allowed to participate in elections in the US and Britain:
Although the capitalist parties in Britain and the U.S. are facing internal rebellions from both the right and the social democratic left, these institutions appear to have outlasted their functionality as instruments for the social containment of the working class and the nationally oppressed. This is why even the semblance of bourgeois or parliamentary democracy are absent within the context of intra-party affairs. Trump can walk in and take over the Republican Party without ever having to hold public office. Clinton with her laundry list of indiscretions and racism towards African Americans and other oppressed peoples is being sold to the electorate as a defender of “diversity” and stability.