Twelve Steps Toward Political Revelation by Walter Mosley

Author:Walter Mosley [Mosley, Walter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Participation - United States, Political Process, Electronic Books, Civil Rights, Political Participation, General, Political Science, Civics & Citizenship
ISBN: 9781568586427
Google: krBNuAAACAAJ
Amazon: B006CDDW5E
Publisher: Nation Books
Published: 2011-02-15T19:45:49+00:00

One thing to remember here is that the system thrives when its parts are all the same and therefore replaceable. The ideas that grow from your every day exercise need not equal what others have found in their selfinterrogations. We must be able to communicate with each other but we don’t have to share the same ideas. We need to come to terms but not to fit into molds that provide false security.

STEP SEVEN

MAKING DEMOCRACY

A merica is an oligarchy in democratic clothing. Our body politic is amorphous and intangible and therefore our actions cannot match our intentions; this disconnect is due to the fact that our political leaders are vetted by special-interest corporations that say they are political parties (i.e., Democrats and Republicans). These special-interest corporations dominate all three of the major platforms of federal representation (also state and local governments); they are owned by clients (the Joes) who pay for services rendered. They divide us by taking specific differences and unfounded fears and using these to drive wedges between the working-class denizens who should see themselves as one people rather than as innumerable castrated tribes.

People often tell me that America is a democracy because people have the right to vote. I reply that people voted in the old USSR too—but so what? If we are unable to come together in our voting, if we are ruled out of real choice by so-called party politics, then how can we say that we’re living in a democracy? If millions of dollars have more power to influence than the truth does, then how can we honestly say that we have a working democracy?

Justice in America is more a commodity than it is anything else. The rich have better lawyers at their side and people who understand their inner turmoils sitting upon the bench; they have prosecutors who can be overruled by backroom politics and enough dollars to pay for special treatment if they happen to receive a lesser sentence.

And if there is no balance in justice, how can there be democracy? If we, in our hearts, accept the disparity of our own system, then we abrogate our rights as citizens. But don’t get me wrong—this is not a condemnation of the will of the American people. The only mistake we have made is that we believe that the system is insurmountable and that wealth somehow has to have its privileges because there is an indefinable and inescapable affinity between capitalism and democracy.

In truth, capitalism is closer to totalitarianism and fascism than it is to the democratic process; that’s why unions appeared and why Congress once led a campaign against monopolies and cartels. Democracy has nothing to do with the decision-making process in the organization of capital. The wealthy would like us to think that it does. That’s why they build monuments to themselves, name foundations after their families rather than after the people they set out to help. The only affinity that the wealthy have with democracy is their money and their control of the media.

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