Why I Support Dr. Jill Stein for President
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/why_i_support_dr_jill_stein_for_presiden
t_20160221/
Posted on Feb 21, 2016
By Chris Hedges
Were in this kind of magical moment, Jill Stein says. It has enormous
potential for transformation. The question is which way is it going to go.
(JILL2016)
The political crisis in America is severe. The old ideas that buttressed the
ruling class and promised democracy, growth and prosperityneoliberalism,
austerity, globalization, endless war, a dependence on fossil fuel and
unregulated capitalismhave been exposed as fictions used by the corporate
elite to impoverish and enslave the country and enrich and empower
themselves. Sixty-two billionaires have as much wealth as half the worlds
population, 3.5 billion people. This fact alone is revolutionary tinder.
We are entering a dangerous moment when few people, no matter what their
political orientation, trust the power elite or the ruling neoliberal
ideology. The rise of right-wing populism, with dark undertones of fascism,
looks set in the next presidential electionas it does in parts of Europeto
pit itself against the dying gasps of the corporate establishment.
We are caught between the jaws of the monsters Charybdis and Scylla, and our
escape route is narrow and diminishing. Playing the old political game,
attempting reform using the old rules, wont work. We must focus exclusively
on revolt, on overthrowing corporate power to reclaim our liberty and save
the planet from a coup de grâce delivered by the fossil fuel industry.
If we fail to revolt we will see the numerous mechanisms for control
enshrined in our system of inverted totalitarianismwholesale surveillance,
militarized police empowered to use lethal force against unarmed citizens,
the loss of nearly all civil liberties, the impoverishment of the majority
of the citizenry in the name of austerity, the use of the military as a
domestic police force, indefinite detention without trial,
government-ordered assassination of American citizensspread like a wildfire
across the landscape.
The battle before us is global. It is a battle being fought on myriad
fronts, including in Greece, Egypt, Spain and Venezuela. The ravages of
climate change, the ruthless exploitation of international finance and the
evil of American imperialism and militarism are as present outside our
borders as they are at home. The greatest enemy before us is not radical
jihadists, but the forces lurking within our society that threaten to
extinguish human liberty and eventually the human species itself.
Our real compatriots do not look like us. They speak in foreign tongues.
They come from different cultures and faiths. They fight on the streets of
Athens and Madrid and in Tahrir Square. It is only when we link arms, when
we make common cause against the hydra-headed monster of global corporatism
and American imperialism, that we will have any hope of victory.
Revolutions come in waves. They ripple around the globe feeding off each
others ideas, passion and energy. The French Revolution in 1789 and the
Haitian Revolution in 1804the only successful slave revolt in human
historywere direct products of the ideas and experience of the American
Revolution. The revolutions of 1848 reshaped Europe. The 1917 Russian
Revolution inspired numerous revolts including the 1919 Spartacist uprising
in Germany. Eastern Europe was remade in the revolutions of 1989. We will
create a new worldwide wave, we will rise up en masse, or we will be
crushed.
The imperative of revolt dramatically reduces the importance of elections.
Elections, managed by the elites, mean nothing if radical movements are not
powerful enough to disrupt and dismantle corporate power. To deserve our
support, a political candidate or party must hold fast to the goals of a
fiercely anti-capitalist, anti-militarist movement. Those running for office
must serve as the political expression of such a movement, for without
movements committed to radical politics and buttressed by sustained acts of
civil disobediencestrikes, lockdowns, mass rallies, marches, oil and gas
pipeline blockages and coordinated disruptions of the systems of corporate
power and the war industrywe will lose.
The focus of our energy must be on building nonviolent, mass movements keyed
to issues such as immigrant rights; Black Lives Matter; fighting male
violence against women, including pornography and prostitution; the
anti-fracking and environmental justice movement, which has spawned groups
such as the Delta 5; the cancellation of all student debt; the demand for a
living wage; the destruction of the animal agriculture industry through the
practice of veganism; health care as a human right; the struggle to
dismantle the security and surveillance state and expose the crimes of
empire; the abolition of trade agreements such as NAFTA and the
Trans-Pacific Partnership; and the rebuilding of militant unions. These
movements must build alliances with the oppressed around the earth,
including the Palestinians. We do not have the luxury, or the right, to pick
and choose whom among oppressed people it is politically convenient to
support. We will rise or fall together.
This is why I support Dr. Jill Stein, who is running to be the Green Party
candidate for president after having won her partys nomination in 2012. I
support Stein because she understands that this is primarily about building
a global movement, not about participating in an election. She, unlike
Bernie Sanders, knows that this movement will never be realized within the
Democratic Party or by paying deference to the power elites, the Israel
lobby or the arms industry and the military establishment. She grasps that
until we name and destroy the evil of militarism and imperialism, genuine
social and political reform, indeed democracy, is impossible. She does not
want to work within the corporate establishment. She wants to dismantle it.
And all the pundits who tell us not to waste our vote miss the point. It is
time to stop playing the game.
Were in this kind of magical moment, its an existential moment which is
very personal and very real, Stein said when I interviewed her in Baltimore
for my podcast, Days of Revolt. It has enormous potential for
transformation. The question is which way is it going to go. How are we
going to make that happen? How do we optimize what history is going to do?
Because history will mobilize people as the treachery of the system
continues to be inflicted on us. And the question is whether we will
mobilize in time to change it.
The powers that be would love our movements to remain divided and
conquered, she said. The challenge of our era is to bring our movements
together so were working with a common agenda and to some extent a common
strategy. Thats what political parties can do. A political party can help
provide that conversation so that the movements can [articulate] and develop
our agenda, our priorities.
It is extremely corrupt, Stein said of the American political system. It
serves the interests of oligarchy. It puts people, planet and peaceit
subjugates those critical thingsto profit. We have a political system that
is funded and therefore accountable to predatory banks and fossil fuel
giants and war profiteers. Those are the interests it serves. Those are the
policies it creates. Its sort of like an amoeba that oozes its way into all
aspects of the system.
Its reached a level where no one except the 1 percent, or perhaps the 5
percent, is out of danger, she said. Were imperiled in a very clear and
direct waywhether youre talking about an entire generation of young people
who are locked into debt for the foreseeable future, the decline of wages,
the true joblessness that actually exists, the foreign policy of total
economic and military domination thats blowing back at us now
catastrophically or the immigrant human rights disaster, as 60 million
people were forced to migrate over the past year alone. And the climate is
in meltdown.
She called the presidential debates and political carnival around them
elaborate, staged events to create the sense that resistance is futile.
Were fed this corporate brainwashing, many times a day, that we are
powerless, she said. And therefore we have to choose between two
oppressors. Its really important to reject that lesser-evilism and stand up
and fight for the greater good. The greater good here has been lost in the
battle between the evils.
The politics of fear has delivered everything we were afraid of, she went
on.
She, as has Ralph Nader, pointed out that all the reasons liberals and
progressives are told they should vote for a Democratic candidateBill
Clinton, Al Gore, John Kerry, Barack Obama and now Hillary Clintonare
wrong. These Democratic politicians have never worked to halt the expanding
wars, end the assault on civil liberties, curb the looming ecocide, halt the
offshoring of jobs or stop the bailouts to Wall Street$800 billion under
President George W. Bush and $16 trillion under Obama. The corporate state,
with the complicity of the Republican and Democratic party leaderships,
continues to ravage the planet and disembowel the country.
You have differences around the margins, but the core stuff is essentially
the same, Stein said. The differences are not enough to save your life, to
save your job, or to save the planet.
We have to understand how absolutely deadly the threat is that we are
facing now, Stein said, whether its the next economic collapse, which we
are teetering on the brink of right now, or whether it is the meltdown of
our climate. We are looking at the collapse of our major ice sheets within
the next couple of decades. Within a handful of decades we could basically
ruin all coastal cities. When Pearl Harbor was bombed we called out a
national emergency, and within six months we had converted 25 percent of GDP
to a wartime footing and stayed there. We are facing an all-out climate
emergency. It got much worse under the Democrats. Obama [and the Democratic
Party] had two houses of Congress. People should not make excuses for
Obamait was the bad Republicans. This is the second point about the
politics of fear. The lesser evil paves the way to the greater evil. Its
not in opposition to it. It makes way for it.
Democracy needs values, she said. Democracy does not exist in a vacuum.
Theres nothing more powerful than a moral compass. We have to bring that
moral compass to our democracy, because it is a ship lost in a storm right
now.
http://www.truthdig.com/ http://www.truthdig.com/
Why I Support Dr. Jill Stein for President
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/why_i_support_dr_jill_stein_for_presiden
t_20160221/
Posted on Feb 21, 2016
By Chris Hedges
Were in this kind of magical moment, Jill Stein says. It has enormous
potential for transformation. The question is which way is it going to go.
(JILL2016)
The political crisis in America is severe. The old ideas that buttressed the
ruling class and promised democracy, growth and prosperityneoliberalism,
austerity, globalization, endless war, a dependence on fossil fuel and
unregulated capitalismhave been exposed as fictions used by the corporate
elite to impoverish and enslave the country and enrich and empower
themselves. Sixty-two billionaires have as much wealth as half the worlds
population, 3.5 billion people. This fact alone is revolutionary tinder.
We are entering a dangerous moment when few people, no matter what their
political orientation, trust the power elite or the ruling neoliberal
ideology. The rise of right-wing populism, with dark undertones of fascism,
looks set in the next presidential electionas it does in parts of Europeto
pit itself against the dying gasps of the corporate establishment.
We are caught between the jaws of the monsters Charybdis and Scylla, and our
escape route is narrow and diminishing. Playing the old political game,
attempting reform using the old rules, wont work. We must focus exclusively
on revolt, on overthrowing corporate power to reclaim our liberty and save
the planet from a coup de grâce delivered by the fossil fuel industry.
If we fail to revolt we will see the numerous mechanisms for control
enshrined in our system of inverted totalitarianismwholesale surveillance,
militarized police empowered to use lethal force against unarmed citizens,
the loss of nearly all civil liberties, the impoverishment of the majority
of the citizenry in the name of austerity, the use of the military as a
domestic police force, indefinite detention without trial,
government-ordered assassination of American citizensspread like a wildfire
across the landscape.
The battle before us is global. It is a battle being fought on myriad
fronts, including in Greece, Egypt, Spain and Venezuela. The ravages of
climate change, the ruthless exploitation of international finance and the
evil of American imperialism and militarism are as present outside our
borders as they are at home. The greatest enemy before us is not radical
jihadists, but the forces lurking within our society that threaten to
extinguish human liberty and eventually the human species itself.
Our real compatriots do not look like us. They speak in foreign tongues.
They come from different cultures and faiths. They fight on the streets of
Athens and Madrid and in Tahrir Square. It is only when we link arms, when
we make common cause against the hydra-headed monster of global corporatism
and American imperialism, that we will have any hope of victory.
Revolutions come in waves. They ripple around the globe feeding off each
others ideas, passion and energy. The French Revolution in 1789 and the
Haitian Revolution in 1804the only successful slave revolt in human
historywere direct products of the ideas and experience of the American
Revolution. The revolutions of 1848 reshaped Europe. The 1917 Russian
Revolution inspired numerous revolts including the 1919 Spartacist uprising
in Germany. Eastern Europe was remade in the revolutions of 1989. We will
create a new worldwide wave, we will rise up en masse, or we will be
crushed.
The imperative of revolt dramatically reduces the importance of elections.
Elections, managed by the elites, mean nothing if radical movements are not
powerful enough to disrupt and dismantle corporate power. To deserve our
support, a political candidate or party must hold fast to the goals of a
fiercely anti-capitalist, anti-militarist movement. Those running for office
must serve as the political expression of such a movement, for without
movements committed to radical politics and buttressed by sustained acts of
civil disobediencestrikes, lockdowns, mass rallies, marches, oil and gas
pipeline blockages and coordinated disruptions of the systems of corporate
power and the war industrywe will lose.
The focus of our energy must be on building nonviolent, mass movements keyed
to issues such as immigrant rights; Black Lives Matter; fighting male
violence against women, including pornography and prostitution; the
anti-fracking and environmental justice movement, which has spawned groups
such as the Delta 5; the cancellation of all student debt; the demand for a
living wage; the destruction of the animal agriculture industry through the
practice of veganism; health care as a human right; the struggle to
dismantle the security and surveillance state and expose the crimes of
empire; the abolition of trade agreements such as NAFTA and the
Trans-Pacific Partnership; and the rebuilding of militant unions. These
movements must build alliances with the oppressed around the earth,
including the Palestinians. We do not have the luxury, or the right, to pick
and choose whom among oppressed people it is politically convenient to
support. We will rise or fall together.
This is why I support Dr. Jill Stein, who is running to be the Green Party
candidate for president after having won her partys nomination in 2012. I
support Stein because she understands that this is primarily about building
a global movement, not about participating in an election. She, unlike
Bernie Sanders, knows that this movement will never be realized within the
Democratic Party or by paying deference to the power elites, the Israel
lobby or the arms industry and the military establishment. She grasps that
until we name and destroy the evil of militarism and imperialism, genuine
social and political reform, indeed democracy, is impossible. She does not
want to work within the corporate establishment. She wants to dismantle it.
And all the pundits who tell us not to waste our vote miss the point. It is
time to stop playing the game.
Were in this kind of magical moment, its an existential moment which is
very personal and very real, Stein said when I interviewed her in Baltimore
for my podcast, Days of Revolt. It has enormous potential for
transformation. The question is which way is it going to go. How are we
going to make that happen? How do we optimize what history is going to do?
Because history will mobilize people as the treachery of the system
continues to be inflicted on us. And the question is whether we will
mobilize in time to change it.
The powers that be would love our movements to remain divided and
conquered, she said. The challenge of our era is to bring our movements
together so were working with a common agenda and to some extent a common
strategy. Thats what political parties can do. A political party can help
provide that conversation so that the movements can [articulate] and develop
our agenda, our priorities.
It is extremely corrupt, Stein said of the American political system. It
serves the interests of oligarchy. It puts people, planet and peaceit
subjugates those critical thingsto profit. We have a political system that
is funded and therefore accountable to predatory banks and fossil fuel
giants and war profiteers. Those are the interests it serves. Those are the
policies it creates. Its sort of like an amoeba that oozes its way into all
aspects of the system.
Its reached a level where no one except the 1 percent, or perhaps the 5
percent, is out of danger, she said. Were imperiled in a very clear and
direct waywhether youre talking about an entire generation of young people
who are locked into debt for the foreseeable future, the decline of wages,
the true joblessness that actually exists, the foreign policy of total
economic and military domination thats blowing back at us now
catastrophically or the immigrant human rights disaster, as 60 million
people were forced to migrate over the past year alone. And the climate is
in meltdown.
She called the presidential debates and political carnival around them
elaborate, staged events to create the sense that resistance is futile.
Were fed this corporate brainwashing, many times a day, that we are
powerless, she said. And therefore we have to choose between two
oppressors. Its really important to reject that lesser-evilism and stand up
and fight for the greater good. The greater good here has been lost in the
battle between the evils.
The politics of fear has delivered everything we were afraid of, she went
on.
She, as has Ralph Nader, pointed out that all the reasons liberals and
progressives are told they should vote for a Democratic candidateBill
Clinton, Al Gore, John Kerry, Barack Obama and now Hillary Clintonare
wrong. These Democratic politicians have never worked to halt the expanding
wars, end the assault on civil liberties, curb the looming ecocide, halt the
offshoring of jobs or stop the bailouts to Wall Street$800 billion under
President George W. Bush and $16 trillion under Obama. The corporate state,
with the complicity of the Republican and Democratic party leaderships,
continues to ravage the planet and disembowel the country.
You have differences around the margins, but the core stuff is essentially
the same, Stein said. The differences are not enough to save your life, to
save your job, or to save the planet.
We have to understand how absolutely deadly the threat is that we are
facing now, Stein said, whether its the next economic collapse, which we
are teetering on the brink of right now, or whether it is the meltdown of
our climate. We are looking at the collapse of our major ice sheets within
the next couple of decades. Within a handful of decades we could basically
ruin all coastal cities. When Pearl Harbor was bombed we called out a
national emergency, and within six months we had converted 25 percent of GDP
to a wartime footing and stayed there. We are facing an all-out climate
emergency. It got much worse under the Democrats. Obama [and the Democratic
Party] had two houses of Congress. People should not make excuses for
Obamait was the bad Republicans. This is the second point about the
politics of fear. The lesser evil paves the way to the greater evil. Its
not in opposition to it. It makes way for it.
Democracy needs values, she said. Democracy does not exist in a vacuum.
Theres nothing more powerful than a moral compass. We have to bring that
moral compass to our democracy, because it is a ship lost in a storm right
now.
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