Waking Up To Reality: The System Is Not Legitimate

Waking Up To Reality: The System Is Not Legitimate

Throughout the years I have attended countless protest  rallies in different cities, targeting all kinds of abuses by those in power; protests against wars, against environmental destruction, against workers’ exploitation, against surveillance, against police brutality, against Walmart, and McDonald’s, and gentrification in the SF Mission District, and many other causes.


Wake Up America by Jacquelin Bond

I fully recognize that the people behind the organizing of these protest rallies put an extraordinary effort to make them happen, to spread the word, to motivate people to attend, to try to get media attention.Nevertheless, throughout all those years I’m always left with a nagging question or impression about the people who attend these protests: It seems to me that the vast majority of them cling to the notion that the system is still legitimate.  In other words, my impression is that they think that when they take to the streets in protest, that somehow people in power are either paying attention or care about their grievances…

I perceive a certain innocence, even naïveté about the true nature of the system.  I’m left thinking, “Is everybody here on the same page when it comes to the understanding that we are dealing with true malevolence, with outright tyranny, with heartless individuals who would as soon cause the suffering of millions of people without blinking an eye?”

And the reason I think all that is because in my view what’s needed at this point, when it comes to social justice activism, is a certain type of militancy.  I’m not talking about violence of any kind, of course.  I’m talking about focus, about discipline, about being able to engage in direct action and resistance on an ongoing/sustained basis.

I often mention this, but I think that for the purpose of this discussion I should mention it again… By 2000, and certainly after 2001, it was clear to me that we were dealing with a wholesale takeover of government by monied interests and that they were putting into place the framework for what was to become a corporate state protected by an increasingly oppressive total information awareness police state and a two-tiered legal system.  Basically, what I’m referring to is proto-fascism, tyranny.

And I knew that that meant that those in power were going to engage in wholesale looting of the country’s treasure; that there were going to use their money and power to buy off politicians in order to push self-serving policies that were going to systematically strip citizens off their constitutional rights, their economic security, and democracy itself.

I don’t know how to explain it, but my impression throughout all these years is that average Americans somehow lack in their ability to understand malice, malevolence, in essence, how truly evil and despotic ruling classes can get, blinded by their depravity and unquenchable greed.

Over a decade ago it was clear to anybody paying attention that we were heading towards the type of massive looting that lead to the 2008 economic depression, and towards the type of proto-fascist total information awareness surveillance police state we have today.

The rest is pretty formulaic, actually: The ruling elite institutes a regime based on Neoliberal policies; policies designed to systematically undermine the public sector, i.e., democracy itself, in favor of profiteering, of the systematic transfer of wealth and power from the citizenry to the tiny ruling class.

And what does that all mean?  That’s also easy to foresee: It means more poverty and homelessness; more economic insecurity for more and more people; the gutting of public education in favor of for-profit “charter schools” that double of corporate re-education camps; it means union busting; it means widespread despair, and fear, as the social fabric comes undone, at the altar of a Neoliberal regime of a global scale.

And here’s the thing: I’ve noticed that for much of that time (over a decade) there was sometimes a very harsh reaction and indignant incredulity exhibited by the majority of people those warnings were meant to reach.  I’m aware that historically that has always been the case when it comes to the middle class, but I can’t quite understand why that’s the case.  Wouldn’t middle classes have the most to lose in this type of situations?  Would it not make sense that they would put up a real fight to protect their hard-fought rights and economic security?  Isn’t one of the benefits of being middle class having a little more time to think, to evaluate what’s happening with our institutions?

Recently I’ve seen people like Henry A Giroux, Bill Moyers, John Nichols, Mark Leibovich,Chris Hedges, David Kay Johnston, and Matt Taibbi, among others, wondering out loud how is it that in the face of the depravity and greed by the ruling class, which is causing untold misery, people haven’t taken to the streets.

Well, finally, it looks like people are doing just that, as reported by fellow kosack clenchner in a recent diary: New Report on Global Protest Movement, 2006-2013

One of the things I found interesting about the report is how accurate the grievances and causes for the protest were:

Economic Justice and Anti-Austerity: 488 protests on issues related to reform of public services,  tax/fiscal justice, jobs/higher wages/labor conditions, inequality, poverty/low living standards,  agrarian/land reform, pension reform, high fuel and energy prices, high food prices, and housing.
Failure of Political Representation and Political Systems: 376 protests on lack of real democracy;  corporate influence, deregulation and privatization; corruption; failure to receive justice from the  legal system; transparency and accountability; surveillance of citizens; and anti-war/military industrial complex.

Global Justice: 311 protests were against the IMF and other International Financial Institutions  (IFIs), for environmental justice and the global commons, and against imperialism, free trade and  the G20.

Rights of People: 302 protests on ethnic/indigenous/racial rights; right to the Commons (digital, land, cultural, atmospheric); labor rights; women’s rights; righttofreedom of assembly/speech/press; religious issues; rights of lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgendered people (LGBT); immigrants’ rights; and prisoners’ rights. A lesser number of protests focus on denying  rights to specific groups (eg. immigrants, gays).
In other words, it seems like the protesters are reacting to this reality:

“The globalization of the exchange of services, capital and patents has led over the past ten years to establish a world dictatorship of finance capital. The small transcontinental oligarchies that hold the financial capital dominate the planet… The lords of financial capital wield over billions of human beings a power of life and death. Through their investment strategies, their stock market speculations, their alliances, they decide day to day who has the right to live on this planet and who is doomed to die.”– Archbishop of Tegucigalpa Cardinal Óscar Andrés Rodríguez Maradiaga (confidant of Pope Francis)

[The emphasis is mine]

It is also important to point out some of the main points made by the report, as pointed out byclenchner:

We are in the midst of a major global upheaval comparable to 1848, 1917 or 1968.
The most sobering finding: the overwhelming demand is not for economic justice per se, but for “real democracy” which would allow national governments to address core economic issues.
This core demand is coming from every kind of society, from authoritarian to liberal democracies.
Protests are attracting sectors of the population historically less likely to participate.
Increasingly, protests include some form of civil disobedience or meaningful direct action.
                                                             [The emphasis is mine]

One thing I’ve found very disturbing throughout the years is that many people who seem to protect or stand up for the status quo often point that that the fact that I’m able to write these things without having some jack-booted government thug breaking down my door in the middle of the night and taking me away to a detention center (after having put a hood over my head) proves that no, there is no proto-fascist government in the ascendance.The tyranny of today is of a different kind (so far); it’s systematic; it’s done through policy-making (because of the wholesale takeover of our debased political class).  But in the final analysis, its effects are as brutal as previous ones.  It (eventually) engenders terror on millions of people; it engenders brutality, abuses of power, corruption, wholesale looting, the destruction of the environment, poverty, homelessness, suicides, and many other social ills.


Over ten years ago many people were flabbergasted to notice the passivity with which the population was reacting in the face of what was obviously a fast-rising tyranny.  People didn’t rise up in opposition, in resistance, and the middle class ended up losing constitutional rights, economic security, and wealth (in the tens of trillions of dollars), at the hands of the increasingly depraved and despotic ruling class (billionaires, coporatist cartels and the debased politicians of both parties in their payroll).My humble advice?  I’m not necessarily saying that we all need to rush to the streets with protest signs and chant against the Man (although that should be in the mix).  What I’m saying is that we finally have to come to terms with the true nature of the system; we need to understand it is malevolent, exploitative, oppressive.  This situation is not something that can be fix by relying only on the ballot box (although obviously we can’t give up on that either).  We need to join in unity and solidarity under a common understanding of the true nature of the system.  We need to join the movement!