"Clinton and Obama, and their Democratic Party, understand the destructive roles they played and are playing, they must be seen as far more cynical and far more complicit in the ruination of the country. Democratic politicians speak in the familiar "I-feel-your-pain' language of the liberal class while allowing corporations to strip us of personal wealth and power. They are effective masks for corporate power."
The con continues. Democratic-leaning media spokespersons continue to mislead people as do non-profit organizations that took millions of dollars to join the Obamacare effort. Now a new non-profit has been created to use Madison Avenue sales techniques to sell Americans inadequate insurance, Enroll America. They plan to spend up to $100 million to sell Americans health policies that assure that Americans who become ill will face the risk of bankruptcy and foreclosure. But, the scam is so effective because partisan Democrats are cheering it on, thinking they got a great deal when in fact they are being robbed.
Not all Americans are fooled. Some recognize that the ACA is part of a neoliberal economic plan that serves the corporations and not the people. They also recognize that Obamacare is part of an effort to destroy our social insurances. As a result, across the country campaigns that declare healthcare is a human right are developing. This week in Maryland hundreds marched for single payer.
Hedges concludes his essay quoting the anarchist Alexander Berkman who wrote in "The Idea Is the Thing:"
-- [M]any ideas, once held to be true, have come to be regarded as wrong and evil, thus the ideas of the divine right of kings, of slavery and serfdom. There was a time when the whole world believed those institutions to be right, just, and unchangeable. In the measure that those superstitions and false beliefs were fought by advanced thinkers, they became discredited and lost their hold upon the people, and finally the institutions that incorporated those ideas were abolished . . . how did they "outlive' their "usefulness'? To whom were they useful, and how did they "die'? We know already that they were useful only to the master class, and they were done away with by popular uprisings and revolutions."
There is work to be done. We must build a mass movement. One essay we published this week by activist Matt Smucker focused on first building a core group of people who are aware and committed but to make sure this core is strategic in its actions, and realizes that the path to success requires a mass movement, not a fringe movement. We must put aside our "more radical than though' egos and reach out, invite people in, applaud their positive actions whether large or small. Our core groups all over the country must be careful to not self-define ourselves as fringe, as small, but to see us as representing the interests of the vast majority and invite them in.
We'll close with the comments of comedian and social commentator Russell Brand, who wrote "We No Longer Have the Luxury Of Tradition" and created a lot of discussion when he appeared on BBC.
Brand, like Hedges also sees the need for a revolution of the mind. He is disenchanted with electoral politics but excited by something not on the ballot, "total revolution of consciousness and our entire social, political and economic system." That revolution begins by recognizing: "Capitalism is not real; it is an idea. America is not real; it is an idea that someone had ages ago. Britain, Christianity, Islam, karate, Wednesdays are all just ideas"nice ideas"when they serve a purpose." But, they are ideas that can change when they become obsolete or dysfunctional. He concludes:
"The revolution of consciousness is a decision, decisions take a moment. In my mind the revolution has already begun."
His conclusion is consistent with our experience. The revolution of the mind is underway. The seemingly impossible becomes inevitable.
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