Trust
(This is a Red-Ken post. It is satire and should not be taken too seriously. Seriously.)
Trust
“The ghost of Belle Starr she hands down her wits
To Jezebel the nun she violently knits
A bald wig for Jack the Ripper who sits
At the head of the chamber of commerce”
“Tombstone Blues” Bob Dylan (Robert Zimmerman)
Lately, the White House and the democrats have been decrying the horrors of campaign finance trouble and how the chamber of commerce has done great damage to Democracy by bringing in record breaking amounts of secret money to inject into our political system. Though inject suggests that this is a small needle trickling little more than a couple of shot-glasses into the vein of the body politic; this is a bit more like a gas funnel used to fill a water balloon.
I only have a rather simple question for the president: Where have you been? I grant you, the Republican side of the two headed plutocratic ettin historically has supped a lot more in terms of legal bribery, but it isn’t as if the Democrats have shied away completely from these corporate cookies either. Both parties have used all manner of trickery to smuggle in donations to their campaigns and free advertising to their cause. Until recently there has been a veneer placed in front of this activity for political campaigns called campaign finance reform. It was a gentleman’s agreement designed so that both hungry heads of this giant would get about the same amount of food and dominate the political landscape.
The chamber of commerce is not a real threat to communism as they stupidly imagine themselves. They are merely a threat to the illusion of a Democratic party that seeks to placate the masses with promises of balancing the needs of society versus the greed of the powerful few. It really is an illusion to anyone with an attention longer than a humming bird and a 6th grade level of reading proficiency. The more they chip away at the party that pretends to be the champion of working people and when the illusion collapses a real working movement can begin.
The Democrats that have been complaining about foreign money being used to influence elections could possibly study a bit of the history on this as we have certainly used money to affect or distort the elections of other countries for many decades, spending it both on legal and grossly, despicably, insanely illegal actions. One need only look the coups and corruption in Latin America to see how much we really respect the democratic process
So in a way this really is a chicken coming home to roost. A big chicken. Huge. Mammoth. A chicken you would expect out of a fifties monster movie. The economic formulae that we call corporations, that we somehow view as being both good-hearted, job-creating, titans of industry and good global citizens, mutated decades ago into what were called transnational corporations. So somehow the idea that this ‘foreign money’ issue is new seems a bit odd. All corporate money put into our system is an example of how money trumps democracy.
This flood of money is the epitome of one of the most basic communist critiques of the capitalist system and it is a reality that we communists have been aware of since our theories were first formulated. Simply put: you cannot separate the economic from the political dimension of society and the economic dimension will invariably command the political. Money and wealth have always defined power and, until we create an economically just society they will continue to do so.
Democrats and the mixed economies of Europe believe that you can yoke the beast of capitalism and force this beast to do good. To train it like an elephant to do tricks and carry things or break it like a wild pony to give rides to poor helpless orphans. The beast of capitalism cannot be trained and it is more akin to The Blob, than any circus animal. It flows and twists and contorts and it escapes all methods of containment. It consumes everything in its path to create more of itself. It dissolves individuality and turns everything it touches into the same banal corporate friendly tasteless mush. It has all the charm of the ‘best of’ McDonalds jingles playing on your MP3 player and it has all the affection of being drowned in a cement mixer filled with French fires.
Let me be the first communist to thank the Supreme Court (albeit rather lately) for removing the façade of fairness from the great injustice that is our political system. I am grateful to you for demonstrating the inequality and hypocrisy of our nation. Now we can say that our nation is dominated by the dollar and little else counts.
The communist solution would inevitably be that the apparatus of the government be dissolved and all power handed to the people to determine through direct democracy decisions would be made by the public at large or by rotating leaderless bodies. This is no Soviet or Maoist style ‘show-socialism’ with party bosses and big leaders on top throwing commands down and dominating resources. This is Real communism where property is collective, and decisions making is free and consensual.
Trust
“The ghost of Belle Starr she hands down her wits
To Jezebel the nun she violently knits
A bald wig for Jack the Ripper who sits
At the head of the chamber of commerce”
“Tombstone Blues” Bob Dylan (Robert Zimmerman)
Lately, the White House and the democrats have been decrying the horrors of campaign finance trouble and how the chamber of commerce has done great damage to Democracy by bringing in record breaking amounts of secret money to inject into our political system. Though inject suggests that this is a small needle trickling little more than a couple of shot-glasses into the vein of the body politic; this is a bit more like a gas funnel used to fill a water balloon.
I only have a rather simple question for the president: Where have you been? I grant you, the Republican side of the two headed plutocratic ettin historically has supped a lot more in terms of legal bribery, but it isn’t as if the Democrats have shied away completely from these corporate cookies either. Both parties have used all manner of trickery to smuggle in donations to their campaigns and free advertising to their cause. Until recently there has been a veneer placed in front of this activity for political campaigns called campaign finance reform. It was a gentleman’s agreement designed so that both hungry heads of this giant would get about the same amount of food and dominate the political landscape.
The chamber of commerce is not a real threat to communism as they stupidly imagine themselves. They are merely a threat to the illusion of a Democratic party that seeks to placate the masses with promises of balancing the needs of society versus the greed of the powerful few. It really is an illusion to anyone with an attention longer than a humming bird and a 6th grade level of reading proficiency. The more they chip away at the party that pretends to be the champion of working people and when the illusion collapses a real working movement can begin.
The Democrats that have been complaining about foreign money being used to influence elections could possibly study a bit of the history on this as we have certainly used money to affect or distort the elections of other countries for many decades, spending it both on legal and grossly, despicably, insanely illegal actions. One need only look the coups and corruption in Latin America to see how much we really respect the democratic process
So in a way this really is a chicken coming home to roost. A big chicken. Huge. Mammoth. A chicken you would expect out of a fifties monster movie. The economic formulae that we call corporations, that we somehow view as being both good-hearted, job-creating, titans of industry and good global citizens, mutated decades ago into what were called transnational corporations. So somehow the idea that this ‘foreign money’ issue is new seems a bit odd. All corporate money put into our system is an example of how money trumps democracy.
This flood of money is the epitome of one of the most basic communist critiques of the capitalist system and it is a reality that we communists have been aware of since our theories were first formulated. Simply put: you cannot separate the economic from the political dimension of society and the economic dimension will invariably command the political. Money and wealth have always defined power and, until we create an economically just society they will continue to do so.
Democrats and the mixed economies of Europe believe that you can yoke the beast of capitalism and force this beast to do good. To train it like an elephant to do tricks and carry things or break it like a wild pony to give rides to poor helpless orphans. The beast of capitalism cannot be trained and it is more akin to The Blob, than any circus animal. It flows and twists and contorts and it escapes all methods of containment. It consumes everything in its path to create more of itself. It dissolves individuality and turns everything it touches into the same banal corporate friendly tasteless mush. It has all the charm of the ‘best of’ McDonalds jingles playing on your MP3 player and it has all the affection of being drowned in a cement mixer filled with French fires.
Let me be the first communist to thank the Supreme Court (albeit rather lately) for removing the façade of fairness from the great injustice that is our political system. I am grateful to you for demonstrating the inequality and hypocrisy of our nation. Now we can say that our nation is dominated by the dollar and little else counts.
The communist solution would inevitably be that the apparatus of the government be dissolved and all power handed to the people to determine through direct democracy decisions would be made by the public at large or by rotating leaderless bodies. This is no Soviet or Maoist style ‘show-socialism’ with party bosses and big leaders on top throwing commands down and dominating resources. This is Real communism where property is collective, and decisions making is free and consensual.