The Radical Dream

Last night, between being awakened several times by our Irish Wolfhound, Patrick, I dreamt I was speaking to an audience. As an introvert, this is not my favorite way to communicate.  I seemed to be responding to the question, "What is your function as a radical"? Without hesitation, I came directly to the point. My purpose as a radical is to make you as uncomfortable as I can with the status quo. I attempt this through writing, speaking, participating in public protest, and in general being who I am where ever I am. I wear message T-shirts in order to provoke attention, conversation, and to raise the political consciousness of those with whom I am interacting. If you think the world is just the way it should be, then I will take every measure at my disposal to introduce you to my world. You are in need of a revisioning.  I am an anti capitalist. I believe that global capitalism, free of national identity and moral purpose, is destroying our lives. There are not such things as free markets.  The air, the oceans and the land are transformed into commodities to be sold. The public space is being supplanted by the private space. In California one-fourth of our state parks are being locked away from the public.  Private property rights are trumping human rights. And if you are among the ruling elites, you have your own parks.  Why support public lands?  Everything is for sale. A small percentage of ruling elites dominate our ability to have dignified human lives. Our democracy is owned by corporate elites who, in tern, own our representatives. You cannot have a political democracy without also having an economic democracy. I'm speaking of Democratic Socialism.  Capitalism is not an essential feature of democracy.  To be sure, it can exist along side democracy. But in the case of the United States, the economic system of corporate capitalism has supplanted our democracy. One can only look at "The People's Republic of China," a bastion of capitalism ... capitalism on steroids.

The corporate media airbrushes reality in such a totalizing manner that the unreality it portrays is uncritically accepted by the very public it is licensed to serve.  The public are made to serve it.  When people tell me they would rather have a corporation handling their health care insurance as apposed to a government program, using a single-payer system, I can only wonder at the level of brainwashing that has taken place through the corporate controlled media.

Private enterprise is tauted as the panacea. Government activities are disparaged. Social programs are described as vestigial remains of big government that must be supplanted by private enterprise.  At the same time the largest military machine in the brief history of human civilization is not understood as "big government?"  In reality it is the most egregious example of corporate socialism ... militaristic socialism.  And it is destroying our democracy.  Privatization of all public spaces is seen as the answer to all of our problems. Thus, neoliberal economics is forced upon us through the instrumentality of contrived crises compounded by natural disasters that are rendered dimensions more lethal by the intentional lack of government direct action. If capitalism, unbridled, unregulated, is the answer, why are there more than 25 million American workers right now who report that they would prefer full-time work. They can't get it. And, in a twist of the perverted concept of "American individualism," the victims of the corporate state are blamed for their problem. They did not plan. Shame on them! Would you be secure using an airline that could only guarantee that 80% of its passengers would arrive at their destinations? Yet we put up with an economic system that deals with unemployment as a structural given, an artifact of the self-regulating markets and the free enterprise system.  We tolerate a health care insurance system to leaves out 50 millions or more of our people.  It's just seen as part of life.  How can that be?

Here is a radical view.  Our government, our US government needs to employ everyone who wants a full-time job right now.  This should be through enormous public projects using private contractors, and any other public means available.  The national infrastructure is in tatters.  It is in desperate need of repair and expansion.  How many more bridges will have to collapse on people?  We need high speed trains.  We need to begin now the conversion of our carbon energy systems to renewable ones.  How many millions of idle Americans could be using their unique talents to restore our economy and our environment? 

The economic system has failed.  Even Greenspan admitted that he was wrong in believing that the free markets could regulate themselves.  It is time that our government intervenes for us for a change.  It is nothing less than a national defense issue.  Millions of Americans, I would hope, are not going to sit by quietly as their homes are seized, their savings depleted and their souls eviscerated.  The American Revolution needs to continue.  Will we have to hit the streets?  We need the ultimate bail-out of workers and managers and professionals who were not privileged to be among the Wall Street rulers who have recovered enough to be able to give themselves obscene bonuses while teachers and other public workers are being tossed away like unwanted refuse. 
I am a Democratic Socialist.  I believe in the power of government for good.  We need another New Deal or we will be facing the ultimate ordeal.  We must force our elected leaders to serve us and not the private interests of the ruling elites.  We have a Nobel Peace Prize winning President who is now presiding over more wars than any of his predecessors.  Our democracy has been transmogrified into the most lethal military empire in the history of the world.  It is so costly to maintain over 800 bases outside of our borders that we are facing deficits described as crises that can only be alleviated by cutting social services to our people.  Wake up.  It is time say enough!