It might be a good time to remind ourselves that politics and government are not the same thing. We see a lot of definitions and propaganda that would suggest otherwise, but if we think about what governing is – it’s the creation and oversight of “laws” or standards by which members of a given society mostly agree to live by.
There’s no reason a society can not have government without political parties. However, tribalism is a deeply ingrained trait for all living beings. By the natural instincts of human beings, they will always naturally form groups and a leader will emerge. This is where politics enters the picture.
The leaders of societies must have help from others, and the way of getting help is to give something. People will abandon morals to get what they really want, because we are naturally selfish beings. We have a conscience that harbors the ego, and gives us the freedom to choose. We can analyze our environment and decide we don’t need to kill our “enemy” to get what we want. This makes us different from animals who are mostly instinctual and usually don’t sit around stewing in anger, planning an all out attack on neighboring tribes. Most animals kill for survival, or by instinct.
Because we have the freedom of choice, we have a long history of making tactical plans for how to best execute a war with another tribe. The end point is really to try to get something for oneself, or being caught up in defending oneself against that who is coming to take what is yours.
If we could evolve away from the idea of killing one another, it might become clear that mostly, as a society, citizens want the same thing. If we looked at it as a whole society, and not two sides, or two different Americas, we can probably agree that we don’t want murder, violence, theft, or corruption to be acceptable in our rules for society. Those rules are meant to help us live together in peace.
Once we go backward into a tribalistic viewpoint, we see the rules applying only to some people and not to people in our tribe. This is the story of mankind and its civilizations throughout history.
Right now, it is time for us to start thinking more critically about the decisions we make in our own world. None of us knows which conspiracy theories are true, and which are not, because we have not been in those rooms, we can only ever hear rumors and be presented with theories and not complete evidence. By listening to the same media sources over and over again, and not seeking out multiple sources to get all viewpoints and then read between the lines of all of them to try to form our own opinion, we simply reinforce one point of view to ourselves and are therefore very responsible for supporting the followers of that point of view.
Politics is there to divide us. It may not have started off that way, but it may have started off that way. We, as voters, have to look at candidates and try to pick a best choice of out people who are politicians – they will give to get, and at a federal level those in the highest offices get what they can for their group of friends, some of which are representatives of the opposing party.
What we have is an Oligarchy. It hasn’t mattered what administration has been in control, which political party has had control during our lifetimes, they worked to enrich the 1%, they supported and helped build the Oligarchy we have today.
Politics is there to keep the voters arguing with one another. The appearance is that nothing can ever get done because congress always seems to block the other “side” at any chance to create and pass laws that benefit the 99%. So then the working class wants to perpetually argue with one another about whose guy is better and how the other is to blame – when they are both the same. This drives people who are not political absolutely crazy.
The political “sides” experiment, the two party democracy, has resulted in a current mentality of contingents of men who want to have civil war. Neither “side,” when it comes to militia groups, seems to represent law and order, neither seems to represent a majority viewpoint, it seems what they have in common is the same as inner city gangs – they just want to kill each other. But if they’d met under different circumstances they would probably be friends.
It would be easy to lay all the blame at the feet of the extremists, but on both “sides,” all Americans have been complicit in the agenda of the Oligarchs. It’s was easy for them to advertise to us, send subliminal messages, get us to compete with one another, get us to obsess over self image, and get us greedy. We are consumers, and we are the most wasteful country on the planet. As Americans, we all have the same issue, in that our Federal and often state governments do not work for the common voter, they work for the Oligarchy.
The fact that billionaires fund political candidates, and basically buy elections right in front of the working class, does not interest the voters in unifying to fight against that, instead we still just want to fight with whoever is not for the candidate we support. We see over and over again corruption in presidential administrations on all “sides” and yet we so easily agree to support wholeheartedly every one that is on our “side” no matter how openly corrupt.
This is the America, we the people, have built. It’s probably time for us to resist the urge to fight with one another. It is probably time for us to make an earnest attempt to have a system of government run by the common, working class voters, and the 99% who are not the magnanimously wealthy few who own almost everything, including the government and media.
It is possible to have a governing system in place without having “sides.” It is possible to have governing where we all work together. It’s possible to have a democracy which is also a fair and equal system of capitalism. It is possible to have small businesses thriving and not being driven out by corporate America. It is possible to shrink the wealth gap by insisting on fair and patriotic capitalism and insisting that government completely separate from big business.
Common sense could come in when we all agree that capitalism should not be initiated for social services. Privately owned fire departments, police departments, jails, prisons, healthcare services, emergency services, and other social services should not be privatized. When we privatize these services they are no longer about what is agreed to be best for society, they are now about a for profit agenda run by what is best for the profiteers.
Political propaganda is poison. It can have us all believing one side wants authoritarianism and one side wants socialism, when the giant middle actually wants a Democracy where government is run by trustworthy people and it works to help the free citizens thrive and prosper. Propaganda can have us believing that one side is preventing the other side from working for the voters. The Oligarchy prevents progress that helps the 99%.
There is no other side except that 99% and the 1%. Astonishing we fall into this game of rhetoric and trickery time and time again, so that we don’t see how easy it would be to use the power of numbers to take back our government. It’s not a liberal or conservative thing, it’s an American thing. We can rid ourselves of corruption, we just have to notice it’s not the other “side” engaging in it.
Getting sucked into a “side” is an energy drain especially during a time when tensions are high. There are many more who will rise above the mentality that neighbors are enemies, and there is hope for a day when we can see that there are no sides, there are just people, and here in America, we are all in the same tribe. We’ve forgotten that.
Help Raise Consciouness 