Forum Post: Radical Movements Keep this Country Honest
Posted 11 years ago on Jan. 17, 2013, 10:27 p.m. EST by TrevorMnemonic
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Video uploaded on Oct 16, 2011
Chris Hedges came down to Occupy Wall Street in New York. Hedges gave this compelling talk on the history of radical movements and the power of the people to create change. Here's what he had to say.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8UW__mFMd8
Chris Hedges brilliantly lays it out in a speech everyone should listen to.
"The question is not how do we get good people to rule.That's the wrong question. Most people attracted to power are at best mediocre and usually venal. The question is how do we make the power afraid of us?"
Occupy Wall Street
You ever hear the story of Ken Hechler and Nixon?
Hechler was a fighter for the miners. He was fighting for a black lung bill that would provide benefits. Nixon didn't want to sign it. Hechler held a press conference and said something along the lines of "if Nixon doesn't sign this bill tonight, every mine in this country will shut down."
You better bet Nixon signed that bill. Later on Hechler came out and said, "I had no idea if they were gonna shut down or not."
We have to let them know we will not be tossed aside. When they fear us, they will have to treat us with respect.
Just finished the final chapter in his book Days of Destruction Days of Revolt and it is incredible. He speaks with someone named Zeese in OWS who provides amazing insight.
The corporate rule doesn't understand if they continue their path of destruction they will destroy themselves with the rest of us.
I know that occupy is a horizontal movement, but we really need to get some specific radical leaders into the spotlight somehow.
I guess you have seen this already. I just linked it to you on a different post.
What gives the rulers the power is the contemporary money.Once this money is abolished there can be no rulers then.And that is a very radical idea.
The “Grand Bargain,” which Black calls the “Grand Betrayal” is Obama’s willingness (lust, actually), to effect a so-called compromise with Republicans by doing what he always has wanted to do: Gut social programs and dismantle the New Deal and Great Society – programs that have benefited the 99.9% and helped close the income/wealth gap between the ultra rich and the rest of us.
I urge you to read Black’s artile.
Attacking these programs is political suicide for the Republican Party – unless a Democrat leads the unraveling of the safety net. Only a Democratic President can make it politically safe to inflict the Grand Betrayal of the Nation’s most popular and desirable federal programs.
http://mythfighter.com/2013/03/17/another-great-bill-black-article-needing-just-one-addition/
Obama chose Bill Clinton, which is to say Bob Rubin, and Ronald Reagan as his models for the presidency rather than Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The Wall Street wing of the Democratic Party and Reagan shared the same fawning attitude towards finance, and their typically bipartisan anti-regulatory policies proved so criminogenic that they produced the recurrent, intensifying epidemics of accounting control fraud that drive our rapidly escalating modern financial crises. The remarkable fact is that none of this has discredited the policies or the policymakers. Jacob Lew is the latest in a long line of failed protégés of Rubin that Obama has chosen as his principal financial advisors.
One of the repeatedly failed policies that the Wall Street wing of the Democratic Party and the Republican Party agree on is the virtue of austerity. Austerity was the first, and paramount, pillar of the “Washington Consensus” – and both words in that term are revealing. The consensus was inflicted primarily on Latin America. It was a “consensus” – the amount of theoclassical group-think was and is chilling. It was a product of Washington, a bipartisan consensus embracing austerity. The Washington Consensus caused so much harm and rage that nearly a dozen leaders have won election in Latin America by running on a platform of opposing the consensus.
http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2013/03/slate-agrees-that-obamas-vanity-drives-the-grand-betrayal-and-praises-the-betrayal.html#more-5008 (This is the Original Article - Click for full Text )
In the U.S. context there was always an important asterisk to the consensus because the Republican Party’s dominant leaders never believed in austerity when they held power. They cheerfully ran large budget deficits, which the Fed typically supported with stimulative monetary policies. The Republicans leaders went far beyond Keynes. Their “supply-sider” claims (which always proved false) were that tax cuts were magic and would promptly cause deficits to disappear.
Unfortunately, the Wall Street wing of the Democratic Party actually believed in austerity, and because the Democrats were in power the Republicans gleefully supported Clinton’s cuts in social programs. The budget surpluses quickly generated deficits in other sectors (see my colleagues Randy Wray’s and Stephanie Kelton’s explanation of sectorial balances in dozens of articles on our New Economic Perspectives blog) and helped drive our economy into recession. Recessions inevitably cause budget deficits to grow rapidly.
The Democratic Party has an enormous electoral advantage born of being on the right side of the most important domestic issues. The New Deal’s concept that the Nation should provide Social Security and health care to its people has produced a “safety net” that has transformed the Nation. Before Social Security, old age meant misery for most Americans. Before Medicare and Medicaid premature death due to lack of access to timely health care was common. These three programs (and remember that Social Security’s survivor benefits support millions of children) and food stamps (SNAP) have made America far more humane and productive. Americans love these programs. Republicans love these programs. Attacking these programs is political suicide for the Republican Party – unless a Democrat leads the unraveling of the safety net. Only a Democratic President can make it politically safe to inflict the Grand Betrayal of the Nation’s most popular and desirable federal programs.
Everyone should read a detailed Washington Post article discussing, on the basis of insider interviews with White House and Republican leadership sources, the Grand Bargain negotiations in 2011. “Obama’s evolution: Behind the failed ‘grand bargain’ on the debt” (March 17, 2012). http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/obamas-evolution-behind-the-failed-grand-bargain-on-%20the-debt/2012/03/15/gIQAHyyfJS_print.html
The article is particularly useful for examining Obama’s motivations because his staff were open about Obama being driven by his obsession with his place in history.
http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2013/03/slate-agrees-that-obamas-vanity-drives-the-grand-betrayal-and-praises-the-betrayal.html#more-5008 (This is the Original Article - Click for full Text )
Is those the only comments which has left? What happened?
There's a typo in there.
They will not destroy us only themselves. They better act quick though I think we have waited long as need be. That path of destruction is circling back and the path makers are the only ones there. We People have taken the other road that leads to the America/World we want to live in and shall amen...
they are destroying "us" - that's the whole problem.
Look at Camden and other cities absolutely pillaged by capitalism... or just look at poverty in your own city. Look at the wars for corporate profits. Look at the levels of pollution destroying ecosystems. Climate change is real and it is only going to get worse as pollution increases exponentially over the years.
Not denying how suck ass things are. Just not throwing in the towel like the corruption win/destroys us because it does no such thing Stand, Speak, Act is what the people shall do and so we can fix it no matter how bad it may appear. We are bigger than it now everyone hands in the air, that is to God not officer with gun.
I'm not throwing in the towel. I'm just saying what needs to be said.
Capitalism kills, loots, and pillages.