I have to consider myself a radical leftist. Radical because I no longer believe we can solve our myriad of complex problems at the ballot box. Don't get me wrong, I love Bernie Sanders and all but could care less for his party, the Democrats. It was not all that long ago an "outsider" named Barack Obama was the anointed savior from the left. He more or less followed the policies of George W. who had more or less followed the policies of Bill Clinton (minus the ill timed oval office BJ). These guys are just the face of something so large it is invisible to most, the neo-liberal world order. I'm not talking about a James Bond style cabal of super villains. No, I think the reality is even worse. A tiny fraction of nameless, faceless people are hell bent on controlling the world's wealth at any cost basically run things for their own narrow benefit. When a British employee of Goldman-Sachs Bank said they run the world, he was not that far off. Basically everything is to be commodified and I mean everything- the gravel around your parking lot, each blade of grass, every tree and even the air and water. Everything of value is being sucked bone dry by those at the very top. Check out this this and this. So what does any of this have to do with Liberals, leftists and conservatives?
Liberal and Conservative are different labels for the same product, neo-liberalism. Here is a list of one-hundred ways the Democrats and Republicans are the same. Now both try to throw bones to their bases, God in schools, anti-immigrant with a dash of homophobia on the Conservative side and protect the environment, nanny state with a bit of the government can fix everything on the liberal side. I get it, this is an over simplification but hopefully, you get the point. Think of it this way; while the USA is protecting rotten regimes in the middle east and elsewhere via drones, death squads and only God knows what else, some in an unknown skyscraper is raking in billions. The national dialogue focuses on things like gay rights, abortion, immigrants and nonsensical religious stuff. Sure, some of these things are important but they serve to limit our national dialogue. There are some things that are simply not talked about at all, like nationalizing healthcare, questioning our capitalist model or the ever growing militarization of our society. Neither major political party has a coherent energy policy and are completely incapable of solving the huge problem of catastrophic climate change. Our fossil fuel driven society lacks imagination and the ability to change. It looks like we are in for a crash landing sooner than we care to think.
Our only hope lies in resistance. It is not too late for non-violence to work. We need to do what we can to disengage from and delegitimize the current neo-liberal world order and rebuild democracy from the ground up. Occupy was a start and it has not gone away. It has morphed into new movements like Black Lives Matter, etc etc. I think the best way to change the game is to stop playing. There is too much at stake not to listen to the lessons of history. If this thing goes violent, the world as we know it will cease to exist. It is scary as hell to think of the French and Russian revolutions with today's technology and weapons. In the coming years, we are going to be walking a fine line between just change and violence like the world has never seen before. All the paranoia and guns here in the USA, combined with growing inequality mixed with unprecedented powers of surveillance do not bode well for a peaceful future. Both major political parties are bought and paid for by financial interests who, blinded by greed, are incapable of seeing the tsunamis of climate change, energy depletion and overpopulation about to over take us all. This blindness is the reason why we must think radically about our collective future. So what will that look like? Will it be a disastrous crash landing or a controlled decent? Radical change is coming one way or another and sooner than you might think.
