Clarity

Information rains down like a siren song of distraction. Be this. Buy that. Your problems are because of them. The answer is the boot. Take what is yours. Listen to my rage, my way of thinking. And on and on. The critical question of what really is escapes scrutiny. Emotions replace critical thought. It takes a powerful bullshit detector to see through the fog, smoke, and ubiquitous voices of powerful interests. And they are interests, often contrary to those of most of us (wages, healthcare, clean air and water, safe products, a say in how policies are made). When the haze clears, what is apparent is that we live in a system run by giant corporations that want only to improve their bottom line. At any cost. We live in a corporate state. If money, power, influence, and ownership count for anything, the state of things is clear. Corporations have the money and means and buy the talent to shape the minds of all of us. That is just what is. True, there are a few semi-enlightened captains of industry out there, like Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, but mainly the big guys are out to get more by reaching into our pockets, by extracting the last teeth out of a nature already bled to exhaustion. The watch dogs are sleeping as the foxes of defense contractors raid the budget hen house, as they tweak the tax codes to further fleece the tax payers. There is no money in telling the truth, so the truth languishes on the roadside, hitching a ride to somewhere that gives a damn. The only work worth doing, if we are to save ourselves, our planet, our battered democracy is to study the way things are, to figure out what to do, and to organize, to freakin' organize, to bear witness, to act. It's that or take our turns beneath the wheels of greed gone mad.