Editing,
commentary by Carolyn Bennett
The thoughts
of Patrick Martin and Lawrence Lessig interest me. Martin published an article
this week at World Socialist Web Site.
Lessig spoke in interview this week on Democracy
Now but has also spoken and written in other sources including his website.
These writers articulate essential truths that are intentionally or unintentionally
omitted in varieties of mass media, independent and corporate.
I
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dentity/ Race/Self-centered Politics and Politicians
domain of the Deliberately Mentally Impaired
“Black Lives Matter”: “pseudo-radical phrase-mak[ers]”
A “Black
Lifer” addresses one of the Democratic Party’s 2016 presidential campaigners as
someone
“I’ve
looked up to … since I was like a baby.” [How do you spell “sycophant”, a base or servile attentive flatterer,
self-seeker, slavishly currying favor with the [queen]—a flunky,
gopher, lackey, slave, stooge, etc.? (Merriam Webster defines)]
The speaker further states, as if it were true
but is patently untrue about the candidate and doubtful about the speaker, “I’m
an ardent feminist”.
Looking through a clearer set of lens Patrick Martin
describes this Democratic Party candidate more honestly as
A ‘leading representative of the American
imperialist bourgeoisie…, a highly experienced political operative of the most
ruthless ruling class on the planet, the American financial aristocracy …; an
experienced ruling class politician [who is] able to easily twist Black Lives
Matter activists around her finger [as] the political outlook … lends itself
quite readily to this exercise in twisting.’
The pageantry
in duplicity, the deliberate exercise in stupidity is not about “equality” or “inequality”—is
surely not a struggle for the former or against the latter. It is about “me”
politics.
D
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angerously Narrow Identity Politics
Patrick Martin
writes that activists in the recent encounter with Hillary Rodham Clinton presented issues “entirely within the framework of race and identity politics, which
has been the semi-official program of the Democratic Party since the mid-1970s”
[Of course the “Democratic” Dixiecrats of the 1940s were out and proud, far less the dissemblers
in their rabidly regressive politics].
This callous collusion of Clinton and “Black Lifers”
manages to reduce, pervert, debase “the
social structure of the United States [into] entirely black-white terms,
painting white workers as inherently racist”—and embodies or effects another arm
of the oppressive, oligarchic cabal. The characters, activists and Clinton, feed
on each other in a ridiculous and selfish play for their own aims—not the needs
of society as a whole. When was it said that “We hold these truths to be self
evident” that all are created equal? 
“Black Lifers,” Martin writes, “represent a section of
the privileged middle class, seeking greater access to positions of influence
and a share in the spoils of American capitalism” and they are “happy to play
the role set out for them by Clinton.”
But the justifiable anger and grievances in the United
States and elsewhere “over ever-rising economic inequality, unemployment and
poverty as well as racism by police directed at African-Americans, Hispanics
and other minorities” is not part of their agenda. Their goal is self. They
speak, Martin correctly asserts,
‘on behalf of a section of the middle
class, wedded to race politics, that is looking for more perks and positions,
particularly within or through the intercession of the Democratic Party.’
Raise the Level of
Debate to Equality of the Citizen
A real concern
for equality and its importance in the larger society goes beyond itself,
beyond self, beyond politicians and political parties and definitely beyond
identity politics and race preachers and professionals.
Lawrence
Lessig speaks to a more fundamental and imperative movement, a way of thinking
that is decisively different from the pageantry makers and panderers.
“This is about achieving the fundamental equality of our democracy,” he says. “If we raise the level of the debate” to “talking about the commitment of a representative democracy—as Madison said: … ‘…where the rich would have no more power than the poor in this democracy’—we could build the political movement we have to build to win.”
This is the
fight to be waged, he says, “and it has to be a fight “in the court of public
opinion where, if the public is reminded of this COMMITMENT OF EQUALITY in our
democracy, they could see how we could get a democracy that could work again;
and if we did, these problems” such as “climate change or the debt or student
debt or Wall Street or gun control—all of these problems would be problems we
could actually solve.”
We need an
actual “responsive democracy, he says, in which “inequality, corrupted
inequality, has been removed.” Moreover, we would have a world in which no one
has “to stand and say ‘Black Lives matter’ because we would have equality in
the system” such that “that statement would be crazy even to imagine the
necessity of uttering.…” He concludes,
We’ve
got to stop with the fantasy politics and address the reality that we [must] fix
our democracy if we’re going to have a democracy that works.
T
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he problem with selfishness—whether
among politicians or activists, industrialists, sycophants or propagandists—is
that it burns the forest. It leaves so much out that is essential for human development,
society’s progress. To maintain the status quo in its favor, selfishness does what
is unthinkable to a sane person; and in so doing, it fuels regress; never
progress. Sustained long enough in the character, human beings become
desensitized to all other in creation except self. Like an addict of one kind
or another, they reduce the larger context to worthlessness; they annihilate
all around them, including themselves, in order to achieve and maintain a zombie-like,
anesthetized oblivion.
A conscious nation remembers and reaffirms:
“When in the Course of human events,
it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands
which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the
earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s
God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that
they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all … are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
“That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted …,
deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,
“That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of
these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to
institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and
organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to [achieve]
their Safety and Happiness.
“Prudence … dictate(s) that
Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient
causes …. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing
invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce [the people] under
absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such
Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.” [In Congress,
July 4, 1776, the Unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States of
America]
Sources and
notes
“Hillary Clinton and Black Lives Matter: A revealing
confrontation” by Patrick Martin ,
August 22, 2015, http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/08/22/clin-a22.html
“We Need to Fix Our Democracy: Lawrence
Lessig Weighs Presidential Run to Rid Money from Politics,” August 24, 2015 Democracy Now Lawrence Lessig interview, http://www.democracynow.org/2015/8/24/we_need_to_fix_our_democracy
LESSIG
author of: “Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress—and a Plan to Stop It”
CITIZEN
EQAULITY ACT 2017 Lessig, https://lessigforpresident.com/the-act/
Lessig’s
website: https://lessigforpresident.com/meet-lessig/
Entered this week on
my Facebook page
HEAR! HEAR!
● Lawrence Lessig: “The CITIZEN EQUALITY ACT of 2017: The Citizen Equality Act
is presented here as a template for three fundamental reforms that must happen
if we are to have equal citizens. We are presenting this package now, pointing
to the proposed legislative source for each element. If the campaign is
launched after Labor Day, then in the fall, we will crowdsource a process to
complete the details of this reform, and turn it into proposed legislation by
January 1. At this point, you should read the act as embracing at a minimum the
reforms included within the source for each element: EQUAL RIGHT TO VOTE: We
must have a system that guarantees a meaningfully equal freedom to vote. To
achieve that, we must at a minimum enact the Voting Rights Advancement Act of
2015 and the Voter Empowerment Act of 2015. We should as well add automatic
registration, and shift Election Day to a National Holiday.● EQUAL
REPRESENTATION: Equal citizens must have equal representation in Congress. That
means, districts must be drawn, and election systems structured, so as to give
each citizen as close to equal political influence as possible. FairVote has
offered the most comprehensive solution to achieve this equality. At a minimum,
the Citizen Equality Act would incorporate their proposed “Ranked Choice Voting
Act,” which ends political gerrymandering and creates multi-member districts
with ranked choice voting for Congress. ● CITIZEN FUNDED ELECTIONS: A core
corruption of our political system is the concentration of funders of political
campaigns. That concentration creates extraordinary inequality. The Citizen
Equality Act would end that inequality, at a minimum by adopting a campaign
funding proposal that is a hybrid between John Sarbanes’ Government by the
People Act, and Represent. US’s “American Anti-Corruption Act.” That hybrid
would give every voter a voucher to contribute to fund congressional and
presidential campaigns; it would provide matching funds for small-dollar
contributions to congressional and presidential campaigns. And it would add
effective new limits to restrict the revolving door between government service
and work as a lobbyist.” Lawrence Lessig, https://lessigforpresident.com/the-act/
A lifelong American writer and writer/activist (former academic and staffer with the U.S. government in Washington), Dr. Carolyn LaDelle Bennett is credentialed in education and print journalism and public affairs (PhD, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan; MA, The American University, Washington, DC). Her work concerns itself with news and current affairs, historical contexts, and ideas particularly related to acts and consequences of U.S. foreign relations, geopolitics, human rights, war and peace, and violence and nonviolence. Dr. Bennett is an internationalist and nonpartisan progressive personally concerned with society and the common good. An educator at heart, her career began with the U.S. Peace Corps, teaching in Sierra Leone, West Africa. Since then, she has authored several books and numerous current-affairs articles; her latest book: UNCONSCIONABLE: How The World Sees Us: World News, Alternative Views, Commentary on U.S. Foreign Relations; most thoughts, articles, edited work are posted at Bennett’s Study: http://todaysinsightnews.blogspot.com/ and on her Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/carolynladelle.bennett. http://www.prweb.com/releases/2014/08UNCONSCIONABLE/prweb12131656.htm http://bookstore.xlibris.com/Products/SKU-000757788/UNCONSCIONABLE.aspx Her books are also available at independent bookstores in New York State: Lift Bridge in Brockport; Sundance in Geneseo; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center in Buffalo; Burlingham Books in Perry; The Bookworm in East Aurora
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