Evolution of Consciousness

Outstanding essay by Chris Hedges called “This Country Needs a Few Good Communists” gets to the heart of the matter. It’s about what happened to the once robust left in this country, and how Americans now need to find their way out of the grip of the Corporate State.

Dean Baker, in “Why Should We Listen to Deficit Hawks?,” questions the wisdom of taking advice from those who are only interested in picking our pockets once again. It’s time to smarten up, people, or whither away.

Good article by Paul Krugman called “The Pain Caucus” expands on the idea of governments now making economic decisions based on what is best for the wealthy class, to the detriment of everyone else.

This is what Class Warfare feels like, the fruition of Reagan’s trickle-down dream. Push all the money to the top, and let the rabble fight over pennies (which explains the parallel emergence of Walmart, now the largest corporation in the land, where most Americans spend their hard-earned pennies).

It’s been a slow, steady dismantling of FDR’s New Deal, which was created in response to the first Republican Great Depression. This time we’ve got a complicit Democratic Party playing along, plus a retrograde Supreme Court, and a completely supine media.

The Owners have this country in a stranglehold, and revolution is looking like our only way out.

These are interesting times we live in.

We are currently being presented with some momentous decision points concerning government and economics, so it is becoming more and more important for people, the masses, to understand what is happening at the foundational level.

If we continue passing through these crises largely unaware and misinformed (Hello, Teabaggers) we could go the way of the Weimar Republic (totalitarian fascism). That is what ignorance could bring.

On the other hand, this is also a golden opportunity for us to take an evolutionary step in a much more positive direction, but in order to accomplish that we must have some basic understanding of the actual forces involved. We need to attain a critical mass of consciousness about what is currently happening.

Naomi Klein’s book The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (2007) provides excellent background on this subject, and here’s a few more recent discussions on the latest events…

• “Austerity Does Not Produce Prosperity” by Robert Kuttner
• “The Greeks Get It” by Chris Hedges
• “Euro-Bankers Demand of Greece” by Michael Hudson

Glenn Greenwald takes a look at the disgruntled mood of the electorate this year: “Why Do Voters Hate Incumbents?”

This desire for change from the citizenry is good, and certainly called for, but in order to usher in truly healthy change and growth, it must have some footing in reality. There must be a modicum of understanding and intelligence behind it. We don’t want to throw the bums out, only to replace them with something worse.

I think the challenge in this country right now is to combine the revolutionary energy of the right with the progressive intelligence of the left. It’s time for the people of this country to come together against the wealthy and powerful elite. We’ve got to put the old Party divisions behind us (along with the psuedo ideologies that have powered them). It really is time for something new.

David Michael Green approaches the subject from a different angle in “Fear Comes of Age“; and Robert Scheer makes an attempt to close the circle with “Who’s Afraid of Rand Paul.”

Matt Taibbi has some fun with Sarah Palin.

David Swanson gets all crazy on foreign policy.

And Joe Bageant hits it out of the park with “Lost on the Fearless Plain.”