CHAPTER EIGHTY ONE. THE GAME OF MONOPOLY-A HOLOGRAPHIC VIEW OF AMERICAN HISTORY

Written by: Rick Staggenborg, MD on Apr 9, 2010 7:02 AM PDT




This essay is dedicated to Theodore Roosevelt, who rose to the Presidency in America despite the intentions of the corporate Puppetmasters of his day, who wanted to put him safely out of the reach of power by making him Vice President. Their intention was to make him subservient to the their Senate Puppet Mark Hannah and the corporatist cabal that the Senate had become with the rise of the Robber Barons after Lincoln was safely dead and his plans for a conciliatory Reconstruction had been forgotten.




It is one of those amazing ironies that the popular corporate tool President McKinley was assassinated by an apparent madman, sweeping Roosevelt into office just as Hannah had feared when he called his colleagues fools for “placing a madman within the heartbeat of the Presidency.” He considered Roosevelt mad for his crazy belief in the democratic ideal of giving all Americans an equal chance to succeed in what had become a ruthless capitalistic system to promote the interests of the wealthy elite over those of the average American. Roosevelt succeeded in holding fascism in America at bay while the People of America once again had the opportunity to become the masters of their own destiny by choosing a leader who understood their interdependence and the nature of democracy. It is a shame that they as quickly forgot it in their newfound relative wealth and the establishment of some of their basic rights. 

In subsequently electing a number of the players of the game of Monopoly, they set the stage for disaster. It seems that they had not understood Roosevelt’s lesson that they could not assume that these rights could be maintained only by their continuing to exercise their right to choose leaders who kept all of their interest in mind in speaking and acting in their name. Instead, they chose to elect players who wanted to resume the game of Monopoly that Roosevelt had rudely interrupted.


Teddy’s cousin Franklin rose to lead the world by following the notion that democracy depended on such opportunity and freedom from the fear of want of basic necessities and the opportunity to succeed without Monopoly players taking it all away in their quest for economic and political dominance over the hoi polloi on whose work the generation of wealth depends. 

Unfortunately, it took the suffering of millions during the Great Depression to awaken the slumbering giant of the American people that this basic right could only be achieved in a just and democratic society. What is worse, it took a World War begun by a subjugated loser in the game of Risk for Americans suddenly conscious of their role in the game of Life. Thus did the United States accomplish the objective of restoring the once again united states to their traditional role of acting as just world leaders in the advance of democracy.


The war had once again forced the people of that proud nation to become one People who took care of one another and were conscious of their responsibility to assure that justice and democracy putting world fascism to bay. Afterward, another President who was a survivor of the First World War of the corporatists in charge of directing the pawns in the game of Risk came to power by the death of Roosevelt. Having risen from the common people, he had learned from his role as a pawn in the game of Risk that the game only has winners and losers when the nations whose people comprise the Armies cooperate and are magnanimous in victory.


This is how one of our generals who had helped win the war take the lead in restoring our battered and defeated foes to vitality in the Marshall Plan. The united states showed their generosity and earned the right to lead the free world only when they shared their newly restored wealth. It worked to accomplish a greater good in creating two new democracies from what once were an Imperialist hereditary dictatorship and a Imperialist corporate state. In so doing, they assured that neither would arise again from the ashes of these ancient peoples who had given up their chance at democracy in becoming players in the game of Risk.


Only by studying the cause of war can the People of the United States understand how the international alliances of the international Masters of the universe caused the horrors that plagued Mankind during the global conflict cynically marketed and sold to the People of the disunited states as the War to End All Wars. Players in the game of Monopoly always seek to gain power over others under cover of war. 

Nationalism surges while these Puppetmasters gleefully engage in the mortal struggle for global dominance that is the game of Risk played out on a game board covering our planet. Instead of allowing our children to become pawns in this evil game, we must remember that we are all in the game together and we choose our own enemies. To quote Walt Kelly and his fictional creation Pogo, “We have met the enemy and he is us” in times of war.


Roosevelt was neither a fool nor a madman. He understood well that democracy cannot survive when government is run by and for the interests of corporations. Having written more books than Bush has ever read, he knew that unregulated capitalism is by its nature anti-democratic. Democracy depends on the principle of every American having equal worth and an equal right to share in the prosperity of the nation built by their collective hands, not by greedy investors never satisfied with the riches they earned from others' sweat.


Roosevelt understood that Life is a game that is quite different from the game of Monopoly. The purpose of Life is to get a job, raise a family and send ourselves and our children to school so that each of us may enjoy a better life. This was a very popular game in the early 60s, when I was growing up and it was generally understood that educated citizens need to understand the basic requirements to maintain democracy. 

The importance of an educated citizenry was not lost on Roosevelt, who surely knew that Jefferson had asked that his only accomplishment listed on his tombstone be “The founder and first President of the University of Virginia.” Jefferson and Roosevelt were Teachers who Trained us to be the Ones Who Would Change the World “ so that the last, best hope for freedom shall not perish from the Earth,” in the words of Lincoln.


Monopoly is a game in which it quickly becomes clear that someone has gained enough advantage that the others are merely in the game to provide the funds that will make one of them the most rich and powerful player. It seems to me that the sole purpose of Monopoly is to teach our children that the single minded pursuit of money and property is a crashing bore, or so I always found it. Unfortunately, it seems more the case that it teaches our undereducated children, to believe that they can have whatever they want if they try. Living in a society now dominated by a TV version of a “reality” where everyone has the opportunity to possess whatever they want, it becomes a tough chore to teach them that in today’s society, it is privilege of birth that is the greatest determinant.


Roosevelt survived an assassin’s bullet to continue to fight for the common man over the corporate oligarchy when his friend and successor William Howard Taft seemed too ready to accommodate the counter-Revolutionaries who appeared close to wiping out the gains of the Revolution by 1912. He had begun to hand back power to the very corporatist Robber Barons who had unfairly amassed their power and wealth at the expense of the People. 

Taft had apparently been dozing when the railroad-controlled Supreme Court had invented the corporatist doctrine that the artificial “persons” who are corporations have all of the rights guaranteed under the Constitution to living, breathing, voting Americans and those who fell under its rule of law. Roosevelt understood this and understood that the game of Monopoly could lead to the swift end of the American experiment in democracy.


Was Lincoln’s assassination, like Roosevelt’s ascendance to the Presidency, mere historical happenstance? Was the Commander in Chief left unguarded by a tippling veteran of a recent bloody war on the same night that Booth had planned to assassinate him by chance or by design? Why would an NCO who was also a veteran of this war have put such a man on guard of the new hero of the nation when there were assassination plots revealed before, throughout and after the war? Lincoln had been guarded by Pinkerton’s boys on his trip to the inauguration in 1861. 

These goons may already have been off to become the corporate hit squad they were in Theodore Roosevelt’s day. Lured by the stench of the cheese set out by the corporate Puppetmasters of the Senate, this private mercenary Army served in the bloody police riots as a sort of Blackwater of the early days of the 20th century in the United States. They thus dutifully served the interests of the nation’s oligarchy of corporatists in a war of against the people instead of protecting the right of the People. Among these was the right to own and direct their own government that was created to serve their interests rather than the players of the game of Monopoly.


Lincoln’s murder may only have been the result of fickle fate, as perhaps was the seemingly miraculous escape of Washington’s Continental Army from Haarlem Heights under an unexpected cover of fog. The Army had been devastated in the inexperienced commander’s ill planned New York campaign and would have been wiped out but for the intervention of either fate or Providence. 

How we view the meaning of these signal events depends on our perspective. Regardless of whether one believes in Divine intercession, the fact is that had the Army been captured the Revolution would have died in its infancy. Had Lincoln not been murdered, the rise of the corporatocracy might have been forestalled. If God is on the side of democracy, it is still leaving us to decide how to interpret events then and now and leaving it to us to decide if continuing the battle for freedom, democracy and peace is worth the fight. History will judge us according to our collective choices.


The thinking man has to wonder why someone has risen to meet every challenge to representative democracy from the Revolution to the Civil War to Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal. Is it that the urgency of the moment awakens America to listen to the voice of the true patriot? Perhaps at such moments people are more open to receiving the truth, whether it be from an aristocrat from New York or Virginia or from a plainspoken man from the backwoods of the West. Lincoln had known depression and despair, yet by humor and faith drove himself to deliver his message to the People. He may have simply been the one who first saw the change that was coming and had faith that the People now ready to listen to the truth as the nation threatened to tear itself apart over the issue of human bondage. However, those who respect Lincoln and his accomplishments would honor him by remembering that he gave all the credit to the will of Providence.


This is the moment to decide whether to fight for the freedom of all men and women to live without fear of war, poverty, hunger and ignorance. All it takes for evil to succeed is for good men and women to do nothing. I do not believe for a moment that Jesus is going to come down on a white horse and save us for the consequences of our own decisions. The man who taught his followers “Judge not, lest ye be judged” is not going to sort out the “good” from the “bad.” To choose to divide one’s self from others by judging them unworthy of respect is to make a decision that I believe Jesus would clearly disapprove of. His message, like that of Mohammed, was one of universal equality and respect. Only by working together to break down the artificial distinctions that divide us can we hope to prevail over the self-appointed Masters of the Universe who would enslave us all.




In the immortal words of John Lennon and Paul McCartney:


Love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love.


There's nothing you can do that can't be done.
Nothing you can sing that can't be sung.
Nothing you can say but you can learn how to play the game
It's easy.


There's nothing you can make that can't be made.
No one you can save that can't be saved.
Nothing you can do but you can learn how to be you
in time - It's easy.


All you need is love, all you need is love,
All you need is love, love, love is all you need.


Love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love.
All you need is love, all you need is love,
All you need is love, love, love is all you need.


There's nothing you can know that isn't known.
Nothing you can see that isn't shown.
Nowhere you can be that isn't where you're meant to be.
It's easy.


All you need is love, all you need is love,
All you need is love, love, love is all you need.
All you need is love (all together now)
All you need is love (everybody)
All you need is love, love, love is all you need.








Rick Staggenborg, MD


Roseburg, Oregon

CHAPTER NINETY SIX. MOTOR CITY MADHOUSE

Written by: Rick Staggenborg, MD on Jun 27, 2010 4:00 AM PDT

This chapter is dedicated to Henry Ford, the Detroit industrialist who had the good sense to listen to his wife when she explained to him that he was cutting his own business by paying his workers wages insufficient to allow them to buy the cars they manufactured. He agreed, whether through common sense or the threat of her withholding her affections. This led to the development of a thriving industry and contributed to the rise of a thriving middle class after WWII.

In Ford’s day, people were beginning to understood the value to the economy of a strong middle class, where one worker could earn enough money to raise a family comfortably, own a home, educate the family’s children and pay for access to health care. This was the exception to the rule in this time of the rise of the trusts who threatened to take over the US government at the turn of the century. Fortunately, an assassin’s bullet miraculously catapulted to the Presidency the one man prepared and willing to fight back against the corporate coup.

Theodore Roosevelt enforced the Sherman Anti-Trust Act of 1890 for the first time since it had been introduced. It seems to have been passed to placate the angry masses who were beginning to organize the worldwide labor movement. In an attempt to take the wind out of the sails of the growing labor movement, the US Congress had passed this bill with no intent of enforcing its provisions It requiring the government to investigate and pursue evidence of illegal collusion between corporations engaged in monopolistic practices.

Roosevelt knew that the government has the responsibility to secure for American workers the right to a fair share of the wealth that they created by the sweat of their brows. His Imperialist aims notwithstanding, he was the greatest American President since Lincoln and rightly deserving of his place of honor on Mount Rushmore. He led the Progressive effort to unseat Taft when Taft proved unworthy of Roosevelt’s support by compromising with a Republican leadership intent on undoing the progress of the Square Deal. He survived a would-be assassin’s bullet to deliver a speech in New York, thereby earning for himself the title of leaders of the Bull Moose Party.

America does need the man from Illinois to be another Lincoln and end the Uncivil War, but as importantly President Obama must also channel the spirits of Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt to take on the international corporate Puppetmasters who now control the Senate. Democracy itself is at stake not only in the United States but worldwide, should we fail in our mission to abolish corporate personhood.

The US Social Forum is a gathering of social justice advocates from around the world. Whether their passions are health care, preventing environmental devastation, feeding, housing and clothing the poor; establishing safe foods grown locally in a localized economy, giving green power to the people, opting out of the globalized economy or ending war, they were all Soldiers For Peace from all over the world. It was fitting that the 2010 Forum was held in Detroit, the birthplace of the middle class that now struggles for its very existence in a world of capitalism gone mad. The corporate grip on the mainstream media continues to brainwash enough Americans that challenging the Puppets in the Senate remains a formidable task. I was heartened by the degree of awareness shown by these activists, who are increasingly aware that the abolition of corporate personhood is the key to advancing the entire progressive agenda that America and the world desperately need.

Workers in the auto industry were the leader in fighting for fair wages and benefits when unions had real influence in the US. The rest of the American middle class benefited from its success and enjoyed a rising standard of living from WWII until the rise of crony capitalism under Reagan. This icon of the Right ran up a huge deficit trying to economically outlast Russia, which he failed to realize was a dying empire already due to its inherent economic weaknesses and maldistribution of wealth. Brought to power by acts of treason which Colonel Ollie North and Admiral Poindexter proudly proclaimed to the world on TV broadcast from the halls of Congress, Reagan blithely slept through cabinet meetings where the fate of the free world was decided. Perhaps he was dreaming of that shining city on the hill that he led us directly away from. I guess it was Bedtime for Bozo.

Detroit has come a long way from the riots of the late 60s. At that time, violence erupted when an enraged Black population said “No mas!” to segregation, exploitation and a vicious double standard that had kept them subjugated since the advent of Jim Crow. The modern Detroit has thrived under the institution of community programs that have brought the people of Detroit together in a Rainbow coalition symbolized by the Heidelberg Project. This is an internationally famous project that is the result of the vision of one man who saw that the people could rise together to create a better world for ourselves and our progeny.

Tyree Guyton, with the help of his grandfather, created this art garden of symbols of peace, hope, racial unity and love of all of Mankind. Neighbors at first did not understand and got the city to destroy the artwork, which he patiently replaced. The “garden” now runs more than a city block and the neighbors are part of the project, allowing their houses, yards and street to become a part of the mural depicting a more hopeful New World Order of peace, justice, love and hope.

I was honored to take part in an action of Code Pink at the Heidelberg Project on the closing day of the Forum, in which we memorialized a fallen Hummer they had half-buried and painted pink as a symbol of the impending death of a war-based economy run be the selfish. These are the oil barons, the international financiers and other war profiteers will never be content with too much. These are the counter-Revolutionaries who have been working to subvert the Revolution since Lincoln was assassinated under very suspicious circumstances. The fledgling Republican Party was taken over by corporatists who tore up his Reconstruction plans and subjugated the people of the vanquished South until they too rose up and cried “No mas!”

Democrats in the South fought the rise of the Republican Party and its promises to limit slavery. They remained loyal to the Party of Jim Crow until Lyndon Johnson, one of their own, fought for the passage of the Civil Rights Act. In retaliation for this challenge of the right of states to persecute members of their own citizenry they converted en masse to the newly ascendent Republican Party, which cynically used the rascism of Southerners at the time to benefit from the Southern strategy that welcomed these unrepentant racists with open arms. In the end, the result was the rise of a Republican Party bent on stripping the economic rights of the poor, who were and are to be found disproportionately in the South.

Thus do politicians utilize the politics of division to further the ambitions of the already wealthy and powerful Puppetmasters of the Senate and the fascists who they represent. In protesting the freeing of the slaves and the enforcement of the Fourteenth amendment, in their blind anger they gave the racist party the power to place fellow fascists on the Supreme Court who abused the amendment designed to free the slaves to make economic slaves of us all. Those toiling in Southern automobile factories are enjoying the fruits of their fellow Southerner's labor, substandard wages and benefits for those lucky to get a job from the foreign automakers who have invaded the South.

Viva la Revoluccion!

In the words of Paul Stanley:

I feel uptight on a Saturday night.

Nine o'clock, the radio's the only light.

I hear my song and it pulls me through

Comes on strong, tells me what I got to do, I got to.

Get up, everybody's gonna move their feet.

Get down, everybody's gonna leave their seat.

You gotta lose your mind in Detroit rock city.

Get up, everybody's gonna move their feet.

Get down, everybody's gonna leave their seat.

Getting late,

I just can't wait.

Ten o'clock and I know I gotta hit the road.

First I drink, then I smoke.

Start up the car, and I try to make the midnight show.

Get up, everybody's gonna move their feet.

Get down, everybody's gonna leave their seat.

Movin' fast, doin' 95.

Hit top speed but I'm still movin' much too slow.

I feel so good, I'm so alive.

I hear my song playin' on the radio, it goes.

Get up, everybody's gonna move their feet.

Get down, everybody's gonna leave their seat.

Twelve o'clock, I gotta rock.

There's a truck ahead, lights starin' at my eyes.

Oh my God, no time to turn.

I got to laugh 'cause I know I'm gonna die, why.

Get up, everybody's gonna move their feet.

Get up, everybody's gonna leave their seat.

Rick Staggenborg, MD

From Detroit, Michigan, Host City of the 2010 US Social Forum