I Feel Extreme Rage at the Establishment.
I started this primary season hoping to fix the broken system. Billionaires resisting being taxed on their gazillion dollars while trying to convince the world that the poor are being too uppity by demanding healthcare, and the corporate media reporting all of this content with undeniable racism, classism and bias against the poor, reminded me that they learned nothing from 2016. I lost faith in the vision that things can be fixed without a giant overhaul or a revolution.
The Democratic Party is not big enough for Joe Biden, the guy who attacked social security all his life and Bernie Sanders, the man who stood up to both parties to protect it. The Democratic party establishment has picked protecting the system over the people in the 2020 Presidential primary.
The goals of the moderate wing of the party are diametrically opposite to the goals of the younger, progressive base of the party by the sheer nature of the timeline to counter climate change, endless wars and poverty. Voters have to choose if we want to get on the Biden train that got us here or take the Bernie train that takes us towards Denmark. If you think Denmark is unchartered territory and can’t happen in America, consider the floods that will engulf the south, NYC and Florida in the next decade or so. Anyone would get on a train taking us into unchartered territory if our situation was dire enough. Bernie Sanders’ campaign is the campaign of those in dire situations already. People like myself.
Mine is an existence marked by:
- uncertainty of the future due to climate change;
- fear of mass surveillance and civil rights being under attack by the right;
- desperation to survive in an economy that’s creating all the problems we are facing;
- rage at the system that got us to where we are and those who protect it.
Joe Biden is a mealy mouthed centrist politician who shows signs of dementia and his supporters will learn quickly enough that words don’t heal poverty, plagues and a burning planet. Throwing Joe Biden at the problem that Trump and climate change is, is like throwing a cup of water to save your burning house.
What happens when Australia burns again? Or when there isn’t an Amazon forest left to even burn? Is that not completely irresponsible to ignore in favor of wars and moderate climate policy? Because these policies actually mean life or death for hundreds of thousands of people around the world, is it not absolutely and outrageously evil to provide a tepid response?
Bolsonaro’s fascist administration in Brazil is killing indigenous populations and mowing down the Amazon with astonishing speed and we never hear about it on CNN or MSNBC or FOX News. Afterall, only 25% of the planet’s oxygen comes from those trees; how important or relevant could it even be? And anyways, when has American media cared about reporting crimes against the indigenous peoples around the world. Don’t believe me?
At a session of the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva on 2 March indigenous people from Brazil along with NGOs told the international community that the policies of Jair Bolsonaro, in office since January 2019, are resulting in a dangerous escalation in invasions of indigenous reserves in the Amazon and across Brazil.
They especially emphasized impacts on the Moxihatetea and other uncontacted and isolated groups whose territories are being rapidly deforested by illegal miners, loggers and other intruders of conserved indigenous lands — while the government stands by and simultaneously dismantles indigenous protections.
Meanwhile, the Arns Commission, a human rights body, is sending a petition to the International Criminal Court demanding an investigation into Bolsonaro’s attacks on indigenous human rights. Deforestation in 115 of the worst-affected indigenous territories totaled 42,679 hectares from 2018 to 2019, an 80% increase over 2017–18.
The Arns Commission, and a new report, assert that the Bolsonaro administration’s socio-environmental policies are putting indigenous peoples at risk of ethnocide (the destruction of an ethnic group’s culture), and putting isolated groups at risk of genocide.
https://news.mongabay.com/2020/03/ngos-charge-brazils-bolsonaro-with-indigenous-genocide-at-un/
While all this murdering and pillaging on the behest of corporations goes on in the world, the media serves to protect them because they’re working for the same bosses. All of them, indirectly or directly, profit from the sales of weapons at home, war on drugs, international wars, oil pipelines in Canada, deforestation in the Amazon, cobalt extraction in Congo, and all the evil in this world. It’s all a web of exploitation, extraction, propaganda and violence.
Politicians can have the best of intentions but if they aren’t willing to push against the agenda of the oligarchs, they are serving as their employees. This is especially true of neoliberal moderates who are seen as the pragmatic middle. In truth, they are not the middle but the middlemen standing between people and power. The half measures, the “lesser of two evils”, the compromises, the technocratic careerism, the bending of the knee to the right while giving a finger to the left is cowardly; it is cruel and, it is a lie. That’s why the media paints a negative picture of ideas and candidates that hurt their diversified stock portfolios to benefit poor people. When was the last time CNN had a working person who makes $50,000 a year on their panel discussions? Is there a single big media outlet where a factory worker perspective is represented?
We got here because the Telecommunications Act signed by Bill Clinton in 1996 gave free reign to corporations to consolidate control of the media, internet and phone. Today, about 90 percent of the country’s major media companies are owned by six corporations.
The political, economic and media oligarchy, constitute the establishment. They control our destinies by having full and open access to the halls of government. In a democracy, government is supposed to be representatives of the people, by the people and for the people, but our politicians run for elections taking money from the oligarchy working to further their interests. Our government is an incestuous institution run by the people, the rest of us need protection from. We have all seen the famous photographs of Donald Trump, Bill Clinton, Mike Bloomberg and Harvey Weinstein hanging out. That’s what “the establishment” looks like. Any hypothetical oligarch who probably benefits from Bolsonaro killing the indigenous and taking their land for farming meat also benefits from CNN programs that tell the people of America why they don’t deserve healthcare, Cuba is bad, and that Bernie Sanders is the devil. That same dude could, hypothetically, also run in the Democratic primary because the Democratic Party would change their rules for him. That same dude could also air ads of his own presidential campaign or a pharmaceutical company he owns simultaneously. These people have more money than god and it just flows between them. It does not trickle down. Power doesn’t trickle down either. This is why I rage at the establishment, because they are willing to put the future of the entire world in jeopardy to maintain their 5th private jet.
This is why this speech by Greta perfectly encapsulates the lack of power people feel when the establishment is choking the world and gets to control the narrative with lies and demands of civility.
Tepid climate change reform is climate denialism at this point. If I had cancer and the doctor recommended I take 1000 mg of Vitamin C a day as treatment, I’d say the doctor was trying to kill me. Establishment politicians are trying to kill us by telling us that nice words and good feelings are a solution to fascism, wars & climate change. How dare they mislead, lie and put us in danger? — quoting myself here.
If you’re not realizing the moment in history that we are in, your judgement is putting the rest of everything you love in danger. You can play it safe and watch the world burn to ashes and get carried away into the ocean or you can stand with those burning and drowning and do something about it.
In India, the Modi administration is engaging in a pogrom against Muslims right as I type this. It started when Trump visited India. Muslims are being dragged into the streets of Delhi and set on fire. Modi got re elected and endorsed Trump when he visited Texas last year. When fascists get re elected, they feel they have the public mandate to up their efforts to burn down their enemies, drag them away, jail them, and commit massive human rights violations. The media is owned by oligarchs in India too. They don’t report inconvenient facts there either.
If you think Trump has been an evil tyrant from 2017–2020, don’t you think he will exceed all expectations of cruelty when he does not have a re election to worry about? Do you think Biden, a man who can’t string together 5 sentences will be able to beat the biggest danger facing this country and planet? Do you feel comfortable sending a weak candidate whose mental health is in clear decline to defeat fascism? I rage because the media and the Democratic Party establishment has the power and all I have is my rage.
I rage every single day, most likely shortening my life span, because I understand that very few people have way too much and a lot of people have very little. I rage because just pointing that out is controversial. Who wants equality? Those who don’t get treated equal. Who fights against equality? Those who benefit from inequality or those who don’t understand what it is like to be treated less than. The poor are fighting to gain some equality in the economic and political system through Bernie Sanders and those who are lining behind Biden are fighting against equality, standing with the one who serves the system, not the people.
I want a movement of people who come together and fight the power. I want to take on the oligarchy standing in the way of all progress and my ability to make rent and breathe clean air. I want to take on the establishment that gaslight working people into voting against their own interests and does so through teaching years of revisionist history in schools and propaganda machines we call TV.
Like, at this point, if you’re not seeing the signs of a world in desperate need of change; I really hope you get to see the results of your political and social choices before you leave the planet because you should live to regret it. Your kids and grandkids certainly will…