CHAPTER FIFTY THREE. WORLD WAR III: THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT.

Written by: Rick Staggenborg, MD on Nov 17, 2009 7:13 AM PST

This essay is dedicated to General George Marshall, the chief architect of the plan to rebuild Europe and Japan as democracies from the ashes left by the war between the fascists and their democratic and communist opponents. He proved that when the country unites to peacefully and generously encourage democracy and freedom, America can be a powerful force working on behalf of the people of the world. Let us hope that Europe and Japan remember that Americans are at heart good people, and that our 30 year dalliance with fascism was an aberration, not an expression of our true national character. We will need their help if we are to restore democracy to America.

We are in the midst of a global war, one that promises to truly be the war to end all wars. This is a war between the international corporatists who nearly claimed victory in the struggle for global dominance of the people of the Earth and patriots throughout the world who struggle now to save us from these malign forces of unenlightened “self-interest.” 

It is our task to awaken the sleeping giant in America that is a people inflamed by the righteous anger at the perversion of the American ideal in the name of American exceptionalism. Neither this country nor the world can afford to tolerate any longer this naïve worldview that threatens the continuation of human society. The kings and kingmakers are now lined up like dominoes, and we are at the tipping point where victory is assured if we are wise and humble enough to work together toward this final goal.

Big Brother, the voice of the machine, has announced the beginning of its own downfall when it let slip the news that Christopher Dodd, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, capitulated to the forces of democracy in Connecticut. In introducing a bill that would strip the Fed of most of its power outside of determining monetary policy, he has pointed the finger at the ultimate villains, each of whom deludes himself that he would be King of the world. These are the Princes of the New World Order envisioned by Poppie Bush and friends.

It does not matter that other professed “Democrats” will spike the bill. What is important is the acknowledgement by a powerful Senator that he is afraid enough of the anger of his constituents to speak up for the American people and risk the wrath of the Puppetmasters of the financial industry that constitutes several heads of the international cabal that I have labeled “The Hydra” in a previous chapter. 

This is an issue that resonates with conservatives as much as liberals, more so even than the desperate need to establish a sustainable system of universal health care by taking out the bloodsucking leeches of the medical insurance, pharmaceutical and corporate medical provider industries.

It is time to go beyond praying that Christ will come and save us through the power of our belief that good is stronger than evil. Christ has come and gone to his reward, leaving us the secret that will allow us to save ourselves if we are wise enough to understand, strong enough to act and love peace enough to do what must be done without bringing physical harm to our tormentors. 

The secret is that love alone conquers all. We must learn to love all our brothers and sisters as we would like to love ourselves if we are to become the Doctors who will Heal the Ourselves and the teachers who will educate a new generation to take us beyond this pale version of reality and to the stars.

The Revolution will not succeed if we repeat the error of the victors in WWI, punishing the misguided “patriots” who thought that the zero-sum game was the only one in town and acted accordingly, telling themselves it was for the love of God and Country. In the new world order to come, all nations will be free and equal, as the Cheney regime, through its official spokesperson Dubbya, claimed to want when they spoke of “democracy and freedom” as the aims of the wars of choice planned to establish American dominance of the Mideast oil supply.

Our victory depends on our steadfastly resolving to respect and even love each other, so that we might work together for the salvation of mankind. The religious fundamentalists are not wrong when they point out that the Four Horsemen are riding among us. They are just too frightened to think rationally about how to defeat the malign forces of war, famine, disease and pestilence. 

Shiva will not destroy this world. He only dances to the music that we collectively direct. If the rumor that the Dalai Lama is the last incarnation of Buddha is true, then the End of Days is indeed upon us. Abraham brought together the twelve tribes of Israel, but some tribes were lost. As Muhammed reminded us, all the believers in the great Western religions are People of the Book. Together, let us find the lost and return them to the comfort of Abraham’s bosom, in which dwells the true heart of humanity.

I believe that there is significance in the fact that a number of physically and temporally separated societies predicted the end of the world in 2012. That is precisely two American election cycles away. Think of the world as it will be when we defeat sufficient numbers of the meat puppets currently wasting space and time in our Congress: If the will of God is to ensure the continued survival of humanity and its continued struggle toward self-perfection, all it takes for the kingdom to come is that His/Her will be done on Earth, as it is in Heaven.

In the memorable words of Faces Small:




Over bridge of sighs
to rest my eyes in shades of green.
Under dreamin' spires
to Itchycoo Park, that's where I've been.


What did you do there?
I got high!
What did you feel there?
Well, I cried!
But why the tears there?
I'll tell you why:


It's all too beautiful,
It's all too beautiful,
It's all too beautiful,
It's all too beautiful.


I feel inclined to blow my mind,
get hung up feed the ducks with a bun.
They all come out to groove about,
be nice and have fun in the sun.


Tell you what I'll do (what will you do?):
I'd like to go there now with you.
You can miss out school (won't that be cool).
Why go to learn the words of fools?


What will we do there?
We'll get high!
What will we touch there?
We'll touch the sky!
But why the tears then?
I'll tell you why:


It's all too beautiful,
It's all too beautiful,
It's all too beautiful,
It's all too beautiful.


I feel inclined to blow my mind,
get hung up feed the ducks with a bun.
They all come out to groove about,
be nice and have fun in the sun.


It's all too beautiful,
It's all too beautiful,
It's all too beautiful,
Ha! It's all too beautiful.




Note to the reader: Please do not feed the ducks with bread. It damages their feathers. We all deserve to fly, if we can.




Rick Staggenborg, MD


Coos Bay, OR (near the duck pond at Mingus Park)

APPENDIX V: PLAN TO END CORPORATE PLUTOCRACY

Most discussions of how to pass a constitutional amendment to abolish corporate personhood dismiss what is likely to be the only possible solution. Instead of calling for a constitutional convention, we should be focusing our efforts on getting an amendment introduced into Congress. While a number of prominent amendment advocates regard this as impossible, the idea of calling for a constitutional convention is far less plausible and much more complicated. With the rapid expansion of corporate power in the politics of the United States, we simply do not have the time to spend focusing exclusively on the unlikely goal of getting a constitutional convention.

The assumption behind the skepticism of those who reject the idea of getting an amendment introduced into Congress is that it won’t pass because Congress as a body is too corrupt. This is clearly true, but what has not been widely recognized is that with Dennis Kucinich, Ron Paul and many other members of Congress publicly challenging the power of corporations over government, the stage is set for interested members of Congress to introduce the amendment itself. As more come out in favor of such an amendment, the amendment can become a prominent campaign issue that will enable the public to easily discern between candidates wishing to be elected to serve corporate interests and those who intend to work for the citizens who actually elect them.

With nearly 80 percent of both self-identified liberals and conservatives opposed to Citizens United, we can make support for such an amendment a litmus test in every subsequent congressional election where we can find candidates willing to take a pledge to amend, as dozens did in 2010. On May 22 at the Green Festival in Seattle, Kucinich publicly pledged to actively work to get cosponsors in Congress. Americans can help get the amendment on the floor by making their members of Congress know that we will support them if they do. This would not be difficult if efforts are focused on gathering petition signatures and passing resolutions at local and state levels calling on members of Congress to introduce and champion the amendment.

In one Arizona House District a hard working supporter of Move to Amend has single-handedly gathered 2,000 signatures for a petition in favor of the introduction of an amendment abolishing corporate personhood. Paul Winger reports that over 95 percent of those he has approached in his door-to-door effort have been eager to sign the petition. As a member of the National Council of Alliance for Democracy, I have proposed a campaign to solicit endorsements to a pledge to amend from 2012 candidates for Congress. The campaign will be very similar to the one carried out by Public Citizen in 2010, though the wording of the pledge will be different. The Public Citizen campaign resulted in dozens of candidates declaring their support for an amendment that would strip corporations of the “right” to pay for the election campaigns of their favored candidates.

Imagine the difficulty a contender for national office would have convincing voters that they will represent their interests if they oppose the one measure that would assure that they cannot win election by soliciting corporate money. Once the amendment is passed, members of Congress would have no choice but to serve the people because they won’t be able to depend on propaganda campaigns financed by the corporate interests who put our current crop of legislators in office. Thus, a strategy designed to get an amendment introduced and passed in Congress is feasible because it should gain wide support of voters across the political spectrum who recognize that this is not a partisan issue, regardless of how the corporate media spins it. 
 

In contrast, the idea of a constitutional convention is widely opposed by both liberals and conservatives. Both are justly concerned about the results of a convention where a fundamental restructuring of the constitution could conceivably take place.  Coming from fundamentally different perspectives, neither camp would be willing to take the risk that the other side would hold the day in an open convention. The process would also run the risk of being subverted by the same corporate interests that we are trying to challenge. It is hard to imagine that we would do any better selecting representatives for the convention than we do when we select our representatives in Congress. It seems unlikely that in the end there would be many who would want to take that chance. 

The idea of calling for a constitutional convention has one merit, however. It is a way to get students, union members and others who understand the threat to democracy posed by corporate personhood involved in the grassroots educational movement needed to convince our legislators that they have no real choice but to support the amendment if they wish to keep their privileged positions. With tens of thousands of students and union activists on the streets, going door to door and speaking to groups and individuals about the idea of a constitutional convention, the level of public understanding of the need for an amendment could grow exponentially.

There are members of Congress who have shown that they are passionately committed to democracy and to addressing the many critical needs of the nation that their less idealistic colleagues seem willing to ignore or to treat with half-solutions that always seem to benefit their corporate patrons. It is our job to convince them that the only path forward is to challenge their colleagues to choose between the people of the United States and the corporate plutocracy on which both major parties have come to depend for campaign cash.   
 

Bernie Sanders and Jeff Merkley are two senators who clearly understand the problem. If they were to convince a few other senators and House members to work with Congressmen like Kucinich and Paul that they can break the grip of corporate power over Congress, they could get a bipartisan coalition to introduce the amendment. Working as a group to jointly introduce the amendment would not only make them less easily targeted by corporate-funded attack ads but would demonstrate to voters that this is not a partisan issue but the one problem that needs to for Americans to move forward together. All it would take to succeed is for these members of Congress to have the political courage to put into motion a process that would cost the careers of many of their colleagues who are unwilling to stand up for the people in challenging their corporate patrons.

The problem of course is that even these stalwarts of democracy might balk at the idea of making themselves targets of corporate-funded groups that would surely pour millions into targeted campaigns to defeat them when they run for re-election. That is where the growing coalition of Move to Amend and others trying to get corporate cash out of politics come in. It is the job of these organizations to work together to educate voters that not only is corporate personhood the problem, but that there is a realistic way to end it through the electoral process. It is my hope that if the proposal is approved, Alliance for Democracy will take the next step toward getting an amendment on the floor of Congress by presenting the campaign to the Executive Committee of Move to Amend for their support.

If Move to Amend decides to adopt the strategy, the idea of abolition supporters lobbying Congress should gain widespread traction nationally. They are a coalition of groups championing causes ranging from ending war to establishing environmental and health care justice. The common thread is that each recognizes that the only way to advance the people’s agenda is to end corporate control of government by a constitutional amendment that would end all corporate privileges. All privileges aside from limited liability have been granted by activist Supreme Courts that have consistently favored the interests of corporate power over the needs and desires of the American public. The groups in the coalition know that only way to overrule the Supreme Court is by constitutional amendment.

The differences between the coalition of Move to Amend, which wants to abolish corporate “rights” entirely and groups like Public Citizen which are focusing solely on corporate money in elections are insignificant and in the end irrelevant. It is Congress that will decide the form any amendment takes. If we succeed at forcing the issue, at that point these groups can lobby for whichever type of amendment they favor. By working together these groups and coalitions can raise awareness that this is not just another issue but the only issue on which the people have a fighting chance of being heard.

We are reaching a tipping point where our congressional representatives will have to realize that citizens of the United States are going to hold them accountable for their acquiescence to corporate control of our government. Those who fail to heed the warning will suffer the consequences at the polls.  If progressives and conservatives can work together on the common cause of restoring democracy to America, there is a real chance that we can remove the corporate puppets from Congress. It might just be the first step to ending the partisan politics that masks the fact that both major parties have become corrupted by corporate money.

The coup de grace for corporate rule would be to co-opt the Tea Party by convincing these angry voters that they should be focusing their wrath on corporate control of Congress and not on the illusory “socialist” government they have been trained to fear.   When the issue of what has gone wrong in government is phrased as “corporate welfare” it is possible to persuade those who are looking for real solutions that they have simply misidentified the problem. A unified Right and Left speaking as one on this issue could launch the new American Revolution and end the threat of fascism in the United States once and for all.