Even if your only news outlets are corporate megaphones Fox News and CNN you must still be aware of the ongoing Occupy Wall Street protests, demonstrations and organizing taking place in lower Manhattan. Indeed, the spirit of resistance appears to be spreading faster than a Texas wildfire as similar encampments have sprung up all over the country. To gain a sense of the scale you can check out Occupy Together, which is providing a collection point for access to information on the various protests that have been created, and are being created, in solidarity with Occupy Wall Street.
What began as a modest sized gathering in "Liberty Plaza" in lower Manhattan has steadily grown to encompass large scale mobilizations in cities across the nation. We need to nurture and foster this growth, because such direct demonstrations of real democracy are the only way the majority, all of us, will be able to exert any kind of political and economic power in what now can only be described as the Corporate Oligarchy of the United States.
If pulling a voting booth lever every 2 or 4 years remains your only participation in what passes for our democracy, then it's time to switch the TV channel to something other than Fox News or CNN. If you still need convincing, still think that vote has meaning, just consider the shape that the 2012 presidential election (as an example) is taking. It is more than a year away from the elections and one can already describe the nature of the choice that one will be confronted with upon entering the voting both. If you remain committed to self destruction then you are likely to be tempted by one of these shining examples of human thought; Mitt (corporations are people, yes, really they are) Romney, Rick (let's just pray for rain) Perry, Herman (I will stand against Sharia Law) Cain, Michelle (minimum wage, we don't need no stinking minimum wage) Bachmann. That's not the full list of Republican candidates, and I didn't even get to Rick Santorum, or Newt Gingrich, but you get the point. So, if you can't find the intestinal fortitude to connect the arrow for one of these corporate clowns what other option do you have? Well, sadly, that "other" option is also largely a corporate clown, President Obama. Elected ostensibly to usher in "change," Obama has shown himself to be a staunch defender of the status quo. He has done more to foster cynicism and extinguish hope within his own political base than any Republican could have.
There is no meaningful choice here, "elections" in the US have largely become public relations exercises whose primary goal is a manipulation of voters so as to cynically ratify an intolerably unjust system that has abandoned the needs of the vast majority of the population in order to extract ever more profits for a privileged minority of super-rich and their lackeys.
As the election cycle gears up, billions of dollars will be spent--billions of overwhelmingly corporate dollars--to "purchase" candidates and influence the outcome. Endless hours of vacuous punditry will be spoon-fed to the population by the corporate media to convince us of the "excitement" and "importance" of the election. You see, when the outcome is so rigged in advance, the game at least has to look convincing or else too many might realize the true nature of the charade being perpetrated. And while at least theoretically a candidate might still be elected who would provide some challenge to the corporate oligarchs, their virtually bottomless electoral war chests serve to reduce those odds to a virtual impossibility. And as additional insurance against even marginally meaningful elections, those ostensible lovers of American democracy just can't wait to pass laws making it harder for people to vote.
The corporate media's response to all this has been anything if not predictable, and follows the standard playbook. First, attempt to ignore the protests. What, there are protestors? What, there are problems that might actually justify protests? Second, when it becomes impossible to ignore the situation, then attempt to criticize, denigrate and dismiss the protestors and distort their message and reasons for demonstrating. Typical of the latter tactic was the abysmal performance of CNN's newest "anchor" Erin Burnett in her debut show on the network where, rather than attempt to explore the issue in an objective way, she simply attempted to mock and dismiss the protestors as "...dancing...and bongo playing...hippies..." See also Glenn Greenwald's total evisceration of Burnett and with it the bulk of what passes for American journalism these days.
But of course the corporate media doesn't get it. Consolidation of media ownership has left a handful of large multinationals in control of the news outlets from which the majority of Americans regularly get their information. Any pretense of public service has long since been eroded with the effective sedation of the regulatory responsibility of government. After all, regulations are "job killers," if we are to believe the right wing meme that is repeated endlessly, and never challenged, in the mainstream press. Public service gets in the way of profits. Can't have that. So naturally these corporate media conglomerates are just another cog in the edifice of oligarchy, and an important cog at that.
If you're one of those still harping about "liberal media bias," then it's long past time you dusted off the remote and did what's left of your brain a favor and switched off Fox News. The only bias in the corporate media is that which slavishly supports their own corporate and economic interests, which, more often than not are in direct opposition to the interests of the vast majority of citizens. The media's "celebrity" and outrageously compensated anchors are for the most part members of the same economic and political cohort as the corporate CEOs and managers that finance them, so naturally they tend to identify with the same ideology.
With the ballot boxes bought and paid for the only way to halt the slide into further plutocracy and possibly fascism is direct democratic action, like the Occupy Together movements. It is a fundamental right of the people to peaceably assemble to petition the government for a redress of grievances. Corporate elites recognize this, hence the several decades long war against any avenue for collective democratic action, such as unions, fairer labor practices, and enforcement of workplace safety regulations.
It increasingly appears likely that our only route to a saner, more equitable and more sustainable future is via direct democratic actions. Occupy Wall Street is leading the way. Let's get behind them and push. We are the 99 percent.
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