We live in a world of shiny things that distract us from being in the here and now. The large majority of us toil in what society says is an undesirable life. We are told that with hard work or inexorable reinvestment in a highly improbable chance machine, we would be welcomed in to the desirable world where happiness and satisfaction awaits.
In the mean time, we are allowed to live vicariously through numbered, branded athletes, performers, as well as famous and infamous characters, in order to forget our undesirable lives. We are convinced by many of these same people that happiness is attained through things and it can be immediate when the right branded bauble is purchased. It used to be piped in through 2 appliances, audibly and visually but now streamed in through so many devices in our homes, our cars, our telephones and even now at gas pumps and in bathrooms. The propaganda is unavoidable.
We are convinced to eschew the plight of the needy and the poor as they can only be poor and needy out of laziness, stupidity or vice. We are convinced to vote down platforms of social justice or avenues of advancement because they threaten the institution of wealth and fame that we one day might be accepted in to.
With waning education and reduced critical thinking we are so busy straining to discover the key to ‘success’ that we have stopped using reason and stopped researching the issues on which we vote. Instead we listen to sound bites and vote by knee-jerk reaction.
We are so overwhelmed by the decay of society, our habitat, our environment that we become Last Men and teach our children to do the same, yet we decry the investment in change that others strive for. We fear it because at least we feel we know *this* system; at least we believe we can work within it. *This* system however was tuned and nurtured by those who prefer to maintain or gain their power and to them it is a zero sum game. To them, so long as they can distract, dissemble and sow discord among the ‘masses’, they can control the rules of the game and manipulate it as they see fit.
When the US had a common enemy in the USSR’s brand of socialism, the US government had to at least maintain a facade of goodness. Efforts were made to ensure that the weaker and more vulnerable were protected under the umbrella of our flavor of democratic, republican capitalism. Now however that the people of the Soviet Union have thrown over the old system for new capitalism, the obvious enemy is not there. Now corporations are not beholden to the government to protect capitalism. Now the corporations set their sights on the government as the enemy and they tear it apart from the inside out in the name of progress which in reality is power. Though democrats and republicans claim to be on opposing sides, they are in reality united in protecting and garnering power for the wealthy elites so that they in turn can siphon off the very life from this world for their own pleasure.
So why the diatribe of what seems obvious now? This is the day before the day we vote. Tomorrow some of us will fearfully shuffle into booths and do what we are told so that the two major parties ensure a monopoly for the powered elite that will perpetuate the spiral down into a more viscous morass of ethical decay that is the status quo.
So today I appeal to you to throw off the bonds of fear that has you cowering and conforming to a party that feeds you no more than effluvia, and even when in the majority, makes no effective moves toward the left but rather feigns effort in the fight because enough people are in it for the corporations on both sides that this two party tug of war is fixed.
Today I appeal to you to take a look at your local Green party ticket. Just spend one hour for your country and your planet. Look at a platform that stands on:
Ecological Wisdom
Nonviolence
Social Justice
Grassroots Democracy
Decentralization
Community-Based Economics
Feminism
Respect for Diversity
Personal & Global Responsibility
Sustainability
Even if you cannot find a politician that you can stomach on the Green ticket, please consider just registering as a Green now for the next election. Send a message to the Democratic party that they are losing numbers to a party that represents what they used to stand for. Tell them that you will not fall lock-step in to their hollow words out of fear. Tell them that you’ve seen the pattern of their effectiveness and that they have become as conservative as the Republicans of the 1980’s on a large amount of their platform and you reject it.
Remember that with the Democratic super-delegate system, your vote in primaries doesn’t equate to an actual vote anyway and this year, the Democratic presidential candidate is automatic.
For the party – register your values.
For the candidate – research it and vote your informed decision.
brightgreenbuddhist 