by Chris Hedges
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
Truthdig
May 14, 2012
Image by Adrian Kinloch via Flickr
In Robert E. Gamer’s book “The Developing Nations” is a chapter called “Why Men Do Not Revolt.” In it Gamer notes that although the oppressed often do revolt, the object of their hostility is misplaced. They vent their fury on a political puppet, someone who masks colonial power, a despised racial or ethnic group or an apostate within their own political class. The useless battles serve as an effective mask for what Gamer calls the “patron-client” networks that are responsible for the continuity of colonial oppression. The squabbles among the oppressed, the political campaigns between candidates who each are servants of colonial power, Gamer writes, absolve the actual centers of power from addressing the conditions that cause the frustrations of the people. Inequities, political disenfranchisement and injustices are never seriously addressed. “The government merely does the minimum necessary to prevent those few who are prone toward political action from organizing into politically effective groups,” he writes.
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via Truthdig
Copyright © 2012 Truthdig
Chris Hedges spent two decades as a foreign reporter covering wars in Latin America, Africa, Europe and the Middle East. His latest books are Death of the Liberal Class, and The World as It Is: Dispatches on the Myth of Human Progress.
see
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Stay out of the streets— Go Door to door —Tell ALL a weeklong general Strike
Is the only way— Stay out of the streets — let the BEAST wonders were all are?
“Just enough to register your obstruction and defiance—and then get back out onto the street. That is where the question of real power is being decided.”
As one who has spent Occupy in the streets, on sofas, shelters, and the internet, I gotta say that I think the real question of power being decided is IN MY PEOPLE’S SOULS – here in the belly of The Beast.
I speak to urbanites, surbanites, Occupiers, et al and I sense a hesitation, a REFUSAL to follow the gut as an indication that no one has DECIDED that they are willing to the decent and necessary thing.
Many are just not (yikes!) completely convinced that TheCorporatocracy IS the problem.
The fall of the Soviet Union was accomplished by WOMEN who were ENRAGED about Chernobyl. They had absolutely NOTHING to lose, in their opinions. People followed suit, many becuz they were FED UP w/the KGB’s total control.
I just do not see MurKans and Canadians fed up ENOUGH. They are NOT getting the connections. And even OccuPartiers – many of whom are in the street are too self oriented to pay attention to the actual analysis of the #ows organizers do not see the FOLLY of elections. Instead, they too see it – the election “cycle” as infotainment they can spectacularIZE.
Seeing elections as part of the Corporate prison seems to be a looooooong way off.
Getting into the streets and symbolically tearing up ballots might help as a iconic cry against TYRANNY might have impact, but what do you do when The System of CONtrol, gives you tainted software means of servitude?
and so it goes and so it goes and so it goes. _Because _THIS _regime _wears _uniforms _that _are cunning, baffling and POWERFUL like any addiction. And the junkies line up to take “hits” from its dealer.
The intervention by said declasse intellectuals has not started in earnest.