by Dave Lefcourt
OpedNews
The occupy movement is
critical for America 's
future.
The path we are on is
disastrous; endless wars, torture, targeted killings (even of Americans),
severe unemployment, loss of jobs, home foreclosures, bankruptcies,
homelessness, wide disparity of income between the rich 1% and the 99%, no
health insurance for 50 million, severe college debt and diminished job
prospects for graduates, teacher lay-offs, union busting through the
curtailment of collective bargaining, severe environmental degradation,
infrastructure deterioration along with austerity measures and the cutting back
of the safety net being placed on the backs of the most vulnerable by the mania
of deficit hawks in the House of Representatives and some state houses (both
underwritten and funded by ultra right moneyed special interest PACS) not to
mention the dysfunctional political theatre and corrupted machinations in
Washington that is incapable of any real problem solving as it serves the
plutocracy of oligarchs that reign supreme for their benefit only while
destroying the middle class and making for a society increasingly becoming one
of masters and serfs.
That system must be uprooted
and discarded. That won't happen in some violent overthrow or coup. That would
be tantamount to disaster. No it has to be non-violent and bloodless while at
the same time be unrelenting in demanding because the current system is so
flawed, dysfunctional and incapable of being of, by and for the people.
King George III before our
revolution had greater support of the people than our Congress has (11%) today.
Our current president, who
initially held such great promise, has become no better than his predecessor in
fact as well as deed. Brilliance and eloquence can not replace an innate
connection to the plight of the people who are (and have been) at the mercy of
the plutocratic forces that have usurped our representative democracy to use
for their sole benefit.
So what is the occupy
movement really all about? It is restoring the voice of the people, removing
the chains of powerlessness, inertia and passivity to ultimately challenge and
peacefully demand our current dysfunctional non representative leaders accede
to its legitimate demands.
There are times in history
that movements emerge when conditions are such that nothing less than a
complete overhaul of the existing system is justified and necessary.
Of course that can happen in
a violent revolution and civil war or as we have seen recently with the demise
of the Soviet Union and the dismantling of Communist regimes in Eastern Europe ; regime change was essentially bloodless.
Even the Arab Spring revolutions in Tunisia
and Egypt
were essentially bloodless and instructive even though the aim for each country
was the removal of a repressive dictator and his regime.
In the U.S. we do not have a
dictatorship despite the recently assumed powers of the executive (under at
best, questionable Constitutional legality underpinning executive authority
i.e. torture, targeted assassinations of Americans, indefinite detention,
warrantless wire tapping et al) that could be interpreted as dictatorial rule.
Even the Congress, though hardly representative of the peoples interests could
be functioning in that capacity as the peoples real representatives if they
were selected to run and were elected in a fair, publicly financed electoral
process where private money was removed from the process that now thoroughly
corrupts that process.
We are passed the point
where minor reform, tinkering and tweaking of the current electoral system in America will
suffice. The corporate, oligarchic plutocracy that has resulted must not be
allowed stand.
The occupy movement is the
catalyst that can make that happen. It must continue to persevere until its
demands are met.
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