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Truth is, stress and duress in society created by corporate dominance and power in this country has led to an American people who have psychological traits of the Corporation.
We all try to get by as those with the money and power exhibit callous unconcern for the feelings and plight of others, we all try to maintain enduring relationships despite our incapacity to stay grounded in the illusions we need to entertain to get so that these relationships can continue, we all show a reckless disregard for the safety and well-being of others, we all practice a level of deceitfulness and con others to maintain a hold or grip on the rung of the class ladder that we temporarily occupy, we all to a certain degree have an inability to feel guilt or responsibility for war, for continued environmental destruction, for government repression, for policies creating vast inequality and manifesting a great fear in the Other, and we all are prone to a failure to conform to social norms with respect to the law.
We act out because we know we must to survive. We act out because we see others doing it and figure if others do it and we can get away with it then it must be okay.
The psychology of the corporations which have penetrated the halls of power, the traits of the special interest groups that now for the most part control what goes in and what comes out of Congress have over the past decades spread rapidly like a virus to American citizens.
We now think like they do. We think about the good of the country and not ourselves or our communities or the greater humanity, which we are a part of.
We subscribe to the idea that this is the way things are and we have to get used to it just like the CEOs, boards of directors, and other members of the moneyed elite want us to do so they can continue to direct the bewildered herd which they are convinced they must direct and exact influence over for the good of the country.
We have been brainwashed to believe we must get change through the system and any action for change outside the system will go nowhere and so our actions for the change we believe in prevent from happening what leaders and politicians don't want us to believe in.
The idea of "change we can believe in" prevents creative action which could blow open a whole set of possibilities for radical reforms and systemic change if a mass majority participated in it. It shrewdly deludes us all into thinking, instead, that incremental change is what's possible and what's only possible.
It leads us to the current point in history when "Yes We Can" and "Change We Can Believe In" has transformed into phrases like "Change is hard," "Change isn't supposed to be easy," and "Change doesn't happen overnight." Such phrases put a damper on all populism across America.
So, finally, the disappointment of Obama's first year is that several opportunities presented themselves for real change: health care reform could have been single payer, "financial reforms" could have been created to include a worker's bill of rights, the PATRIOT Act and its expansions could have been repealed, the economic crisis of the time could have kickstarted a radical restructuring of our national economy in favor of Main Street not Wall Street, the bloated military budget could have been cut significantly so that more money could go toward education, jobs, housing, etc, foreign policy could have been created to end the wars in the Middle East, and much more could have been done to deal with the impending environmental destruction that will occur as a result of global warming.
All of these changes could have been put into motion, but these were deemed changes we were not to believe in.
Change we can believe in was never anything more than a
figment of our imagination, a largely undefined belief to keep us all in check
and allow for a president to tap in to the political energy and frustrations of
the time.
"Change is hard" is
not an acceptable outlook for the future. "Yes we've failed" is much more appropriate for summing up the past year since Obama's election.
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