The corporate media has striven mightily to minimize the destruction and to distract us with a political version of a pro-wrestling match pitting one corporate lackey against another; yet the MSM has still managed - in spite of itself - to convey powerful images and information of the widespread destruction.
Within the last decade we Americans have witnessed a tsunami of foreclosures and mass unemployment. Currently, our politicians are touting the news of a new, but anemic jobs program, in an apparent attempt to muffle the news of yet 3 more new free trade agreements. I suspect few Americans are gullible enough to believe that any new jobs program will re-employ all those workers who have become unemployed by all the outsourcing of successive free trade agreements; too many are aware that the workers of the world are being played like so many pawns on a big global chessboard. Meanwhile, news of a growing homeless population and growing food insecurity have not moved our politicians to help the average hardworking American and tax payer; the corporate whores who populate DC's congressional halls of ill repute seemed moved only to relieve the "distress" of the very bansksters and transnational corporations most responsible for the economic disaster. In spite of evidence of outright fraud and political bribery, the political class and Wall
Street try to convince anyone who will listen that they are mystified by the fact that Occupiers think that justifications for the bailout and other corporate entitlements only add insult to injury.
Within the last decade we Americans, via television and the web, have seen terrible images of environmental destruction. Environmental laws and protections are quite obviously impotent - either inadequate or unenforced - so we've been treated to images of well water bursting into flame, the ugly devastation of mountain top removal, our forests clear cut, and beautiful Gulf beaches desecrated with huge splotches of oily sludge. We the people have witnessed BP platform and coal mine explosions result in the deaths of workers as if their lives were of no more value than sacrificial lambs on an altar of greed. The corporate media could not keep the fact of mass fish kills laid upon that same altar. Many of us are aware that reliance upon Big Oil and "Clean Coal" threatens all life on this planet - as we suffer ever more intense climate extremes and we become ever more ever aware that we have little time left if we are going to rescue our planet.
Too many among the 99% felt helpless as we've watched the greedy neo-colonial grasp of transnational corporations use our soldiers like so many underpaid mercenaries - wars rubber stamped for their benefit by whatever corporate ho might be occupying the White House at the moment. Some of us see that the current occupant merely puts a black face on the white man's empire - and too many of us wonder if the "humanitarian bombing" of Libya and other intrusions unto the African continent shouldn't be attributed to the transnationals greedy' reach there as much as anywhere else. We, the 99%, are horrified to see city after city entirely leveled - in country after country - knowing that leveling has resulted in the murder of millions of innocent civilians. BTW, we, the 99%, will not accept the euphemism of "collateral damage" for one more single day!
I can only see one viable solution to our democratic, environmental, judicial, and economic crises. I am convinced there is only one practical solution to prevent riots, violence and property destruction: the peaceful dissolution of our union - into our separate bio-regions. I can no longer believe that our federal system can be reformed through the electoral system. I can believe that the Mafia is capable of reforming itself with more ease than I can believe our prostituted political system can do so. - I believe only by localizing our economies AND our political systems can we ensure domestic and international peace, encourage equity repair, resuscitate our moribund democracy, or salvage what's left of our environment.
I will quote what my Facebook friend Jeff Mince recently said because I agree with him so wholeheartedly: "We cannot preserve the ecosystem while supporting the very economic model which brings about its destruction. Thus reform and regulation are not the answer. The solution is not to have less destruction but to halt it outright. For if we only slow the pace of the destruction, we only slow the pace of our extinction." - In my own words: we simply can't afford the social & political costs of globalism, much less the environmental impact - we'll end up committing biocide - the destruction of all life on this planet. I think then, for the sake of avoiding serfdom in a transnational corporate empire - much less for the sake of our biological survival, we must reject globalism and the transnationals who want to pen us in that coral. In fact, if we must forsake globalism, I think we should consciously decide to go in the opposite direction - localizing our economic and political systems.
I think Americans want to dissociate themselves from the Resource Wars which are killing and oppressing so many people around the world, and we want to throw off own oppression as we face serfdom in an international corporate empire but so far - apart from the Occupy Movement - we haven't done much only because we haven't thought about what tactics could be successful. For all those who suffer in quiet desperation, I would like to suggest the following list of possible tactics:
1,)We can engage in boycotts and 2.)general strikes, 3.)we could refuse to pay our federal taxes - 4.)we can buy from worker owned enterprises like Winco Grocers or Bimart and 5.) we could focus upon buying and banking locally from locally owned firms to "fight" the transnational corporate empire or the military industrial complex which treats our soldiers like underpaid mercenaries to use in what I refer to as the "Resource Wars" and is responsible for the death of millions around the world. 6.)We could rely on barter when possible to avoid using credit, or 7.) buy 2nd hand if necessary. 8.)We can grow victory gardens to avoid buying from and thus encouraging the growth of the big monopolies If we, and, 8.) of course, we can support our local Occupy movements if we only bring them a single jar of peanut butter.
