Many people have asked me, especially of late, why I'm so angry. "Why are you so angry? Is your life really that bad? You could be like those people in Iraq or Israel or Afghanistan, so be grateful."

Be grateful? Hmmmmmmmmmmm...

I thought it might be nice to try and explain why people like myself do the things we do, and why we say the things we say. It would be all too easy to just sit and rail against concepts like Imperialism and Corporate Morality without ever once qualifying the motivations behind what is sometimes viewed as sheer lunacy. The fact is, as they said about poor Prince Hamlet, "Methinks there is Method to his Madness".

Activism is defined as "The use of direct, often confrontational action, such as a demonstration or strike, in opposition to or support of a cause." The reason that one chooses to engage in activism is because something in the status quo is so out of line or out of balance that there grows an inescapable need in certain people to express their discontent and push for awareness and change. The world is made up of billions of individuals, each with their own mind, heart and soul. But what usually happens in these types of situations is that the uniqueness of the individual is threatened or suppressed in favor of some form of conformist philosophy that benefits only a select few. Some (like myself) find that they cannot go on living day to day accepting this imbalance without doing whatever is in their power to change it, however effective or ineffective one's particular tactics may prove in the long run. For whatever reason, many of us find it hard to sleep at night unless we do something.

Although protest, activism, demonstration, and strike have been around as long as people have been able to organize themselves against any form of oppressive rule or repressive living or injustice, whether by the Pharaohs, the Romans, the Vatican, the British, the Soviets, the Americans, the WTO, or the Corporate world, most of us here in America readily associate only a few certain causes with the term Political Activism, namely the 1960's with the Civil Rights movement and the Vietnam War, otherwise known as the "Hippie Movement".

What made the Hippie movement so effective was that it was a cross-cultural revolt against a certain way of life that was being imposed upon us at the time, and conditions were ripe for a certain level of mass public expression of this discontent. People were fed up, they resented having their morality legislated. No one in a so-called "free society" wanted to be told how to live, that they couldn't drink or vote or smoke a joint or dress a certain way, yet they were expected to go halfway around the world and kill Vietnamese and get killed themselves so that a few could profit. "Hippies" were just a visible symbol of this rebellion in much the same way that "flappers" represented the backlash against Prohibition. But you see, both Hippies and Flappers were just symbols of collective opinion, they weren't representative of everyone who objected to racism or Prohibition or the military-industrial complex. But, as you will see in a moment, our history always tries to classify and consolidate movements in a sometimes vain attempt to control the future.

If you break down the human condition and human history to its basest elements you find that almost every major construct and conflict is about the unequal distribution of wealth, or, in its simplest terminology, it is all about money, about the division between Rich and Poor, the Haves and the Have-nots. This isn't ideology, here, this is just the facts. The ideology comes in when we create economic and political philosophies that serve the various camps across the social pantheon. And there is always one camp who wants what the other has, and vice versa. Always. The grass is always greener...

The past has seen ongoing battles between the social classes of all societies, but the usual situation is that there is one very small ruling class that possesses all the wealth and power, a large middle class charged with the management of the even larger underclass who is the labor or production force for the ruling class. The benefits or profits always move upward to the ruling class, and the ruling class has either treated the other two classes fairly, which usually results is a stable society, or unfairly, which usually results in some form of revolt. The Ruling Class believes that the lower classes are incapable of governing or caring for themselves, and so they believe they provide an essential service of leadership and governance due to their more highly-evolved, enlightened status. Conversely, most of the underclass feels they are individually incapable of making the decisions of the Ruling Class and gladly hand over the reigns of a society so long as their needs are provided for. this is understandable, as most people care first and foremost about the family, our basic structural unit.

When there are extreme disparities on any side, new economic and political philosophies arise to articulate the problem, and potentially solve it if at all possible. "Communism", for example, was the net result of the underclass reaching the limits of its tolerance with the Monarchies (Royal families) that had kept them living in subhuman squalor as they continued to get richer and richer, and died in massive wars that amounted to overblown family feuds. It was a quasi-utopian vision of a society in which all shared equally, and was created to give the underclass hope in a hopeless era, to give them an ideological basis from which to rise up against the Monarchies. To that end, they won, as the concept of ruling Monarchies has largely faded from our world.

But Communism itself was flawed and did not flourish either, because they forgot to take into account human greed, which does not know a social class but rather pervades all mankind. Also, most Americans understand the word "Communist" to be something malevolent and evil, a great dark looming menace that threatened to undermine the principles of Democracy, a term applied to any and all so-called "Un-American activity". Well, in truth Communism as practiced by the former Soviet Union wasn't true communism, it was Stalinist Totalitarianism, or "a form of government in which the political authority exercises absolute and centralized control over all aspects of life, the individual is subordinated to the state, and opposing political and cultural expression is suppressed". Bear in mind there are many varying degrees of totalitarianism as well (Ashcroft) besides the worst kind typified by the Nazi's or in Orwell's 1984. Ultimately communism opposed capitalism, so it needed to be vilified in order for capitalism to prevail. Plus, the Soviets weren't real nice people anyway, so it was easy to hate them. There are other notable factors in the eventual defeat of Communism, such as the elimination of Religion, but for the purposes of this argument, they are irrelevant.

What prevails now is Capitalism: An economic system in which the means of production and distribution are privately or corporately owned and development is proportionate to the accumulation and reinvestment of profits gained in a free market. Inherently, it is not a bad system. Those living under Capitalist economies have a better standard of living than any other large-scale society we have known. But as with all economic and political systems, there is always greed, and the consequences of greed.

The most interesting thing about Capitalism is its ability to assimilate and co-opt everything, and I do mean everything, Hippies and Presidents alike. It knows no discrimination except the discrimination against poverty. In a Free Market Economy everything has a dollar value, good, bad or indifferent. That being said, Capitalist hegemony (or dominance) is based upon market-share, and Capitalism is the first true economic system that reproduces asexually, meaning that the more money you have, the more money you make. This is because when everything is dictated by how much money you have, public exposure becomes not a measure of balance or justice, but of profit. As such, this is why, for example, only the richest can afford to run for President in a country where allegedly all men are created equal and anyone can grow up to be President. Do you remember being taught that in grammar school?

But unless you can afford television airtime, you haven't a chance in the world of being elected, or selected, for that matter. And despite a so-called "free press", there is little free about it when only 6-10 entities total own and operate all the public information. That being the case, they report not on what is most pressing or relevant, but what is most profitable. As such, if the truth isn't profitable, it doesn't get reported, and a new "profitable" truth is inserted in it's place. This is the simplest and most direct reason that "Leftist" or "Populist" politics have no voice in the mainstream. If they don't fall in line with the beliefs of those running the media outlets, they don't get mentioned period, as it threatens the hold the media already has in a cutthroat market. As a result, because this is where we get our public information, most often our public information is only made up of strategized partial truths constructed to serve a particular agenda (ugh, there's that word again).

Look at what The Guardian says about it:

Economics is more than a social science. It has become the theology of public policy in liberal democracies, justifying how societies are taxed, the ownership of the media and immigration policy. As its norms encroach on many other disciplines, such as politics, sociology, the law, even biology, its base assumptions and its evolution require a mainstream dissemination. Desai refers to this as 'social astronomy' which would be fair if it concerned only descriptive analyses of the structures in society....But for those who still express moral indignation at pronounced and prolonged inequality and poverty, the market is the most likely rescue route. Whether it is called the market, or capitalism, or neoliberalism, it is a tool that has not yet been harnessed fully for poverty alleviation....The market is a tool for eliminating scarcity. It is departures from the free market, such as big subsidies for agriculture in rich countries, that are doing most to solidify poverty. Even from a tactical perspective, arguments expressed in the language of the free market are listened to, whereas moral sentimentality about excessive inequality is worthy but ineffective.

"Moral sentimentality about excessive inequality is worthy, but ineffective." That sums it all up right there. In a system in which one can realistically claim that the standard of living is at its conceivable best, who can really take issue with the status quo? My answer comes in the form of one word, not "inequality"--for there really can be no true equality regardless of all our hopes, prayers, and revolts--but in the form of the word "injustice". By what means are those who profit gaining their profits, and who suffers as a result, and is this suffering just or unjust? When we tiny group of activists speak out against something it is because we have seen the truth in any particular situation and wish the truth to be known, because someone is unjustly exploiting another for profit, and we all suffer as a result.

No one I know wants to "overthrow the system" or lead some mass revolt in the streets, and none of us adhere to some quasi-utopian idea of a society of true equals. We all know that is many generations beyond us right now. There is too much greed and fear and hate in the world for that to be even a remote possibility. But there are limits as well, and many of the groups we speak out against are crossing the line of decency and necessity into realms where the only prevailing idea is, as I mentioned last week, enlightened self interest. Dressing up the problem in suits and government rhetoric still does take away the fact that we are being exploited. Look at your history. If we just sit back and let these things go on without speaking up, without trying to make just one other person aware of it, well then, how much better are we than those perpetrating crimes against humanity?

THIS ACCOMPLISHES NOTHING

So the next time you hear or read something that goes against what the mainstream media is saying, before you go ahead and dismiss it as the illogical rantings of some Leftist looney, just take a second and ask yourself what point, if any, does the "other side" have? What isn't being said, and what is being said between the lines. When we have our heads buried in the sand, it is hard to hear anything, isn't it? All an activist does is try to pull your head out from wherever those in power have tried to stick it against your will. And remember, most often Satan comes with a smile, not a sneer. Because somewhere between the depersonalized mainstream, and the hyper-personalized counterculture is the truth, waiting to rip out its gag and begin screaming to all those who would listen.

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