Lazario wrote:Further, Iceflash- I agree that we should all be trying to do something. But... what exactly can we do? Thanks to the harping on social issues by politicians (which I think they do on purpose to turn us against each other), and the common apathy we have in general, Americans really don't care about each other. We care about ourselves and the people who we think are like us. Except for the devotion to family, I don't think Americans have enough goodwill together to spearhead any serious change. [...]
I think you're right when you say that politicians from both parties try to divide the people amongst each other. Often they use so-called 'wedge issues', like gay marriage or abortion, to get the people to the polls to vote for them, or they will play the race card. Sadly, a lot of the time, it works. Imagine what could happen if all those divided people decided to work together...
I think people have more power than they often realize. If you just look at history, you can see how much common people have accomplished together, defying established powers and existing morals. Look at the women suffrage movement, the civil rights movement. Change can be accomplished by the people, if they push for it hard enough and work together. In this age of internet and social media, that should even be much easier. Imagine that all those millions of people who made small contributions to the Obama campaign in '08 (because they thought he would accomplish real change), put all that money and all that time they spend going door to door, into a viable third party candidate. The Democratic and Republican Parties haven't been around forever, so who says they should be the only two options for eternity?
When you look at most Latin-American countries over the past decade (ignoring the propaganda from the corporate media), you'll see many examples of massive political shifts in favor of the common people. Look at a country like Paraguay. Until 2008, the country had been ruled by one single party for 60 years! (That's including a 30+ years military dictatorship under Alfredo Stroessner.) 'Elections' were always marked by bloody violence, intimidation and fraud, and that's how the ruling party stayed in power. But in 2008, the common people decided to stick together and support their candidate, someone out of politics. They resisted all intimidation and elected Fernando Lugo, a former bishop, nicknamed "the bishop of the poor".
Of course, they were heavily inspired by their neighbouring countries. In 2006, Bolivia elected its first-ever Indigenous president, Evo Morales, a former coca grower. Even though the Indigenous people make up the largest segment of the population, not one of them had ever served as president. They were ruled by white presidents from the political establishment. Now a former union leader is leading them. In Brazil, the same. Their president, Lula da Silva, comes from a family that grew up in devastating poverty. He was arrested several times in the 1970's and tortured because he opposed the military dictatorship in his country. Now, he's president and overseeing a country that has seen its economy grown with 8% a year for a decade, despite a world-wide economic crisis, and literally millions of people have been lifted from poverty.
The same happened in Argentine. Their president, the late Nestór Kirchner, became president in 2001, when the country was facing an economic crisis as big as the Great Depression in the US in the 1930's. The country was on the break of bankrupcy, riots were going on in the streets. When he left office, the economy was growing every consecutive year; unemployment went down from over 20% to under 10%; people living in poverty went down from over 42% to about 16%; and he also found time to lift amnesty for former members of the military dictatorship and get their asses hauled in front of a judge. Oh, and he fought succesfully for gay rights as well. This great hero died this year.
What all of them have got in common (together with Rafael Correa in Ecuador, Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua, Hugo Chavez in Venezuela and former president Michelle Bachelet in Chile), is that they are/were politicians 'of the people'. They could only succeed, let alone even get elected, because the common people decided to band together and defy the political establishment. Even though the establishment did everything it did to prevent this from happening --and they still do. Their country's media are ranting and raving against these presidents 24 hours a day. They are being smeared and blackened in American and European media all the time. They have think tanks and so-called 'ngo's' working for them all over the world, to discredit these president. But the people decided to ignore the propaganda, defy the intimidation, stick together, and elect these presidents.
When one of them, Hugo Chavez, was deposed by a fraction in the military, aided by the corporate media in 2002, the common people rallied in the streets with hundreds of thousands in the capital alone --must've been millions all over the country. They demanded their president be re-instated. And they succeeded. It was the pressure of the people that made a fraction of the military decide to re-instate Chavez --embarrassing the Bush administration, which had already recognized the coup government.
That's the power of the people. If you wait for the politicians to act, it will never happen. Why would the establishment want to change anything about their comforting positions? The days of the Roosevelts and Kennedy's are over. Now it's up to the people. Campaign finance reform; the establishment of a third party; and breaking up the media monopolies will not happen unless the people make them happen. Once there was a Boston Tea Party. Now that historical event is being hijacked by a tiny group which is secretly funded and organized by big corporations to attack a perceived-'liberal' president. It's time to reclaim the term 'Tea Party' for the regular people.
I'm very sorry for your parents. (I would add another political rant here, but that probably would be inappropriate. I wouldn't want to politicize their situation.) I wish them all the best.
