Saturday, January 22, 2011

Power To the People, Uh Huh!

We can have democracy in this country or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we cannot have both.
- Louis Brandeis


Corpocracy is a term that I thought up about 10 years ago, when I started dictating a book about the evils of the Corporation as an entity, while I was driving across the United States, accompanied by my cat. (But that's a story for another day.) Anyway, no sooner did I get to LA than I went to a launch party for Thom Hartman's Book Unequal Protection, and I just quietly slipped mine into the circular file.

It's here now. We don't have any civil liberties anymore; but what we do have is the power of the people. I don't just mean only on a grass-roots level, but as Dr. Laibow says, on a level made possible by some of the very Corporate Giants who now run our country.

Ironic.

Because what they've done, with the Internet, and Social Media Marketing, and 24-hour-a-day connectedness that is getting to be the norm because of the wonders of cell phones and other portable devices, is create, truly and really, for the first time, a Global Village. The Global Village that has been predicted since Marshall McLuhan first used the phrase in the late 1960s.

Think of it! They've undone themselves with their greed and lack of morality. I can sit here in my bedroom and help a political prisoner in some country I've barely heard of because, if I choose, I can get daily updates on who to harass with emails and phone calls to make it stop.

Less than ten years ago, a large numbers of people, working together, from every part of the United States, through an activist organization, each signed up for an exact time that they were to call their Senator and/or Congressman. The intention was to overwhelm the government with a particular political message (I don't even remember what it was) but the effect--as the little dots with peoples names started popping on and off all over the map of the US on my computer screen, was totally unexpected.

It completely jammed the phones systems on Capitol Hill and the surrounding areas. No calls in, and no calls out. I never got to make my scheduled call. It was a result they had never considered.

Think of it! It was never on the news, of course, but, nevertheless, don't be deluded into thinking that we're powerless; as they would have us believe. We're definitely not. And we don't even have to do anything dangerous, illegal, or even strenuous. We don't have to go out and picket, putting ourselves in jeopardy of being maced and clubbed by police force or National Guard, or militia.

At that time, there wasn't any such thing as Facebook (released to the public in 2005), or Twitter (2006) and those people were able to have that much impact; just with the telephone. Google was founded in the late 90s, and Gmail was only released to the public in 2004. The explosion in the technology, has had an unexpected and even unconsidered effect of turning the marketing and brainwashing, the government by fear, the censorship back on them.

We can act together as one to stop a particular act of Corpocracy, or of any other abuser of the earth or of the people of the Earth simply by our sheer numbers. On the Internet, which has an amazing jargon that is practically a new language, the effect is known as "going viral." Marketers think it is a wonderful thing. And it is, but not just for them, as was intended, but for the people, the People as well. We can do it. We can do anything.

The Internet, the cell phone, the various portable devices are our friends. Yes they can track them. Yes, they kidnap and torture a few activists, but they've always done that. Even tracking, recording, putting people on lists won't stop it once people realize what we are capable of by our sheer numbers. "It's a new dawn, it's a new day", and we're just starting to realize the power that we've been given. Look at the dates I talked about above. It's been just a few years, but we're learning fast. We'd be learning even faster if it weren't for the suppression of the news of the kind of event like the one on Capitol Hill that I talked about.

Censorship: They're trying hard. And they're doing a pretty good job, And there are still a lot of people who blindly believe what they see on the evening news, or hear on the radio. But it's slipping through their fingers, and they can't pin it down and hold it still or stop it, any more that we could capture little globs of mercury that my generation played with as children--because, the Powers That Be who had known for millennia, that it was toxic, suppressed the information because it was "just so useful"

If you want to know about what's going on in your country, watch the news about it as reported in some other country. In the United States, for example, New Zealand might be a good choice. You might actually see some of the events both public and secret that never make it into the news here.

"It is a new dawn and a new day" and new year and a new century. The one in which the people, despite the grim news in the media about the disappearance of the middle class--the news they try to terrify us with--the century that the people are going to take the power. Not take it back, take it for the first time, ever.


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3 comments:

  1. I LOVE the Nina Simone YouTube at the end. I watched it about three times. I think it said something about it being someone's grad school project?

    ReplyDelete
  2. I love your blog. Yes, you are a wonderful writer, and express your views very entertainingly. We disagree on some fundamentals, but agree on a lot of other things.

    I do agree with your major premise that we can take it back, and now is the perfect time.

    Thanks!

    ReplyDelete
  3. And, yes, I would like you to be a guest blogger for me. Contact me at Twitter, @RockyII, email afilmaker1@att.net, or on my blog, http://truthrock.blogspot.com/

    ReplyDelete

I would enjoy reading your comments.