Blog Archives
Awake, not Woke
Words have meanings and meanings matter. It makes no sense to allow a privileged group (men) to unilaterally redefine words in order to benefit themselves while simultaneously destroying the fundamental, hard-won human rights of a traditionally disadvantaged group (women), but here we are. This has already happened, in violation of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Most Canadians don’t even know that any male sex offender can walk into any girls locker room in the country, drop his pants, display fully functional male genitals, and if women or girls object, all he has to do is claim to be a “trans woman” to avoid prosecution for voyeurism or indecent exposure.

Nobody asked women if we wanted to legalize voyeurism & indecency in the single-sex female spaces where these crimes do the most harm. Ontario voters never had a say in the decision to let any man, even convicted sex offenders, falsify government documents and claim womanhood without any gatekeeping of any sort. We have a serious problem in that women’s rights have been systematically dismantled by stealth. We have an even bigger problem in that voters are powerless to rectify this heinous abuse of power. Voting only works in a democracy, but before the plutocrats head-hunted her to keep the truth out of the public eye, Chrystia Freeland let the cat out of the bag about who rules in Canada .

Canada is ruled by greedy billionaires who comprise the “donor class” and set the agenda for politicians to follow. Everyone old enough to have voted in a few election cycles will notice the way elections work in Canada and, truth be told, most other Western “democracies.” Promises are made to everyone, but promises made to the poor tend to fall by the wayside, fobbed off as “too expensive,” while benefits for the wealthy sail through parliament without a hitch. This is not a partisan problem of interest only to the left or the right.
The point here is that voting will never be enough to solve any of the serious problems we face. The primary problem that must be solved first – chronologically – is restoring the democratic power that was stolen from voters decades ago. This will require solidarity in the face of the polarizing Divide & Rule tactics of the ruling class. This is why when I point out that “trans women” are men and I’m accused of being a right-winger I don’t just spit out a knee-jerk denial. We won’t be able be able to successfully counter the divisive tactics used against us until we abandon tribalism and embrace single-issue solidarity.

For this reason, it is important for women to gather their courage and speak truth to power at every opportunity. I’ll be on the streets of Toronto next weekend to demand that the government of Canada stop colluding with sex offenders to enable sexual assaults of vulnerable female inmates in Canadian prisons for women. I stand with my incarcerated sisters because, given the way the government has abused peaceful protesters and political prisoners in recent years, there but for the grace of God go I.
It Is Journalism’s Sacred Duty To Manufacture Consent
Not for public consumption. Seriously, don’t share this with the unwashed masses.
Dear fellow “journalists”
The task of reporting is not a simple one. Each and every day, reporters and editors at publications like The Onion make difficult decisions about which issues should receive attention, knowing that their coverage will influence not only how people think, but also how they act. This responsibility is at the core of an ongoing debate over whether news coverage of transgender, non-binary, and gender-nonconforming people is unduly biased against women. As the world’s leading unknown blog publication with a daily readership of dozens, Connect All The Dots is compelled to weigh in. We firmly believe that it is journalism’s sacred duty to lie like a bad rug on an AGP’s shiny bald head.
“Quentin” is a 14-year-old female (observed at birth) who now identifies as “non-binary” because all her friends jumped on the bandwagon when they discovered rainbow alphabet soup TikTok last summer. She loves wearing a binder, because when her dad’s best friend gets drunk and tries to grope her breast now, she can barely feel it. Ha! Take that, Creepy “Uncle” Joe! Quentin has been very depressed lately because she can’t come up with a perfect set of original neo-pronouns that are so ridiculous she and her friends will piss themselves laughing when her teachers are forced to use them. She’s looking forward to the rush she will get by punishing her parents in creative ways for “gendering” her “incorrectly” because that’s what kids with Borderline Personality Disorders do.
Just Kidding. We won’t tell you about our friend’s confused daughters. Instead we’ll blow sunshine up your ass and pretend none of these children grow up and realize they’ve been gaslit and had their bodies sterilized and mutilated by professionals who ought to have known better. Nobody reads ancient novels like Frankenstein anymore, and if they do, they usually don’t even catch on that the real monster was the doctor.
Good journalism is about finding the stories that support the narrative that serves the greedy billionaires who prefer nobody ever notice that voting doesn’t actually work anymore. Well, not unless you’re stinking rich, lol. It’s about asking the tough questions and ignoring the answers you don’t like, then offering misleading evidence in service of preordained editorial conclusions. In our case, destroying women’s rights is the lodestar that shapes our current coverage. Divide & Rule tactics are essential to prevent people from noticing their “democracy” is fake, so let’s keep the kleptocracy charging ahead while women have been sent back to the starting blocks. Roe v. Wade was just the appetizer. Enabling sex offenders to invade all female spaces is the main course that will drive women back to the kitchen to make sammiches. It could take decades for them to escape if we can keep the lid on this, and by then society should be absolutely atomized so working class solidarity will be impossible. Shame that BLM race war didn’t catch on, that would have been great for our bosses. If it all goes sideways, defense contractors can easily engineer an alien invasion, so the 99% will be too distracted to build guillotines or put the 0.01% through a wood chipper feet first.
We stand behind our recent obsessed-seeming torrent of articles and essays on terfs, aka “anti-trans activists,” which we want the public to believe faithfully depicts their lived experiences as hateful bigots who want to literally murder all trans people. Our bosses insist we remain dedicated to finding the angles that best frame the basic human rights of women and girls as antiquated bigotry, and we will chant nonsense like “transwomen are women” over and over again in hopes that repetition of this obvious lie hypnotizes people as effectively as sissy hypno porn does. As journalists, it is our obligation to entertain any and all pseudoscience that gives the sterilization of children an intellectual veneer. We must be diligent in laundering our vitriol through the posture of journalistic inquiry, and we must be allowed to take full advantage of women’s natural propensity to give people the benefit of the doubt, and the fact most of them are too damn busy working 3 bloody jobs just to keep the lights on.
Much of the recent debate concerns medical procedures, particularly in children, and whether things like hormone replacement therapy or gender-affirming surgeries are safe and appropriate. Indeed, there are critical questions to be asked about the social complexities of gender, as well as medical ethics in a profit-driven healthcare system. We are simply not interested in any of that. Instead, we will use flawed data and spurious logic to repeatedly write the same hand-wringing emotional blackmail & hit pieces until the science makes it clear we’ve mutilated thousands of children unnecessarily and then we will never speak of it again. We may pine for the fantasy of journalistic integrity, but let’s not kid ourselves, that was never really a thing, and we have bills to pay. Detransitioners must continue to be unpersoned just like the vaccine-injured. (This broadcast brought to you by Pfizer. lol.)
Naturally, courageous reporting like ours has its detractors. Our critics accuse us of homophobia, misogyny & grooming just because we destroyed the lesbian social world & women’s sports, put male rapists into women’s prisons, and force children to call men “she”: which trains them to let their guard down for the AGPs and drag queens who need to get the important message through their little heads that boys can be girls, even though we know that’s a lie. We will never speak of the reason doctors don’t call it a “sex change operation” anymore.
We must continue to “no-platform” and silence women who speak the truth about sex change being impossible because, well, we don’t have an actual argument. All we have is contradiction and that makes a fun Monty Python sketch, but hasn’t worked as well where public policy has actually been debated. Free speech is a serious threat to the narrative our employers are paying for, so lets follow the CBC’s lead and demonize words like “freedom” & “women’s rights” and use every trick in the book to make people afraid they’ll be fired or jailed if they step out of line. That should help keep things chill, while defense contractors shoot down some more weather balloons to “prime the pump” for the 24/7 fire hose of fear porn about a possible “alien invasion” the bosses can roll out when the time is right. I expect that plan will unfold right around the time criminal investigations of the pandemic response begin to bear fruit.
For more evidence of our time-honored journalistic commitment to Manufacturing Consent, please see our previous coverage of 9/11 truthers, WMDs, Defund the Police, “our democracy” and every bit of election coverage ever.
Institutions with massive platforms like ours must be open to different ways of erasing women and mutilating children. We must never, ever admit the truth that humans cannot change sex. We must conflate and confuse sex and gender, especially in messaging to children, but we must not reveal what children are being taught about gender in school. Parents tend to be horrified when they find out, but we can frame their response to make them seem like a bunch of dangerous rednecks. The exception to conflation is used whenever someone points out the obvious scientific fact that humans can’t change sex and we can fire back with “its gender, stupid, don’t you know the difference?” No need to reinvent the wheel here, all we need to do is grab the whole bag of misogyny that is the Men’s Rights movement and slap a rainbow sticker on it.
All great journalists, and even those lesser journalists who don’t work for The Onion, eventually ponder why we do what we do. Is the point of reporting to ensure voters in a “democracy” are well informed? Is it to say what we’re paid to say by greedy billionaires who have been fisting the 99% for decades? We know where we stand, proudly sucking billionaire teat, knowing that fist will be up someone else’s arse.
Research shows that men who undergo medical “transition” are no less a threat to the safety of women and girls than other men. Crime stats tell us that almost all sexual predators are men who, by definition, have multiple victims. This probably explains why all women have learned how it feels to be prey long before they reach adulthood. Let’s not talk about the potential connection between the growing numbers of girls who don’t want to be female, and a reported increase in the number of girls who are sexually assaulted every year, which is about one in five now. We salute our colleagues across the media who are working tirelessly to make that number even higher.
—The Onion Editorial Board, among themselves, probably.
The Big Lie Part 4: Cancel Plutocracy
One of the malevolent subsidiaries of the Big Lie is that “there’s nothing we can do about it anyway.” It is true that you can’t just ‘vote’ your way out of an oligarchy, but a variety of alternative tactics will be required to rebuild democracy. Some may march in the street with symbolic pitchforks and be mauled by militarized police, but that spectacle may not be necessary just yet. There are still ways to get the job done without risking tear gas & rubber bullets. Hope is not dead, but this window of opportunity is shrinking fast.
There are several grassroots initiatives undermining the oligarchy/plutocracy and the smartest ones frame our common enemy as “corruption” instead of “capitalism” or “billionaires” because neither the liberals nor conservatives can win this battle without help and trying to restore democratic power only for “my side” is obviously a non-starter. The only way to restore power to all the people from whom it was stolen is to strive for unity in a non-partisan anti-corruption movement.
Expect the plutocrats to fight this every step of the way. Edward Snowden and the subsequent Cambridge Analytica scandal revealed the underhanded information warfare tactics already used successfully to divide & rule us. The billionaires’ lackeys will drive wedges into any anti-corruption movement along as many fault lines as possible. Divide & rule has always been the plutocracy’s strongest defence and it is clear how they have weaponized identity politics to this end.
Those of us who have the patience and tact to use “mental ju-jitsu” skills to de-escalate polarized conversations might train others how to do it. We need to get in touch with the fundamental humanity of people who are literally being framed as our enemies. Setting up our fellow citizens to be attacked by others is criminal and the deep state and/or private contractors engaged in psychological and information warfare ought to be held accountable.
Although corruption is often framed as a monster, huge beyond our reach, there are many ways to hack tentacles off this beast. Some suggest overturning Citizens United would require a constitutional convention, but the Koch network have clear intentions to hijack such an event for their own benefit. Grassroots groups all over the country have already used initiatives in state & local races to enact anti-corruption laws. When enough states clean up their own backyards, we’ll hit a tipping point and the American Anti-Corruption Act can be implemented at the federal level.
Once that happens, parties and candidates not beholden to the wealthy will be easier to elect and it when they reach a critical mass in both houses, it will be possible to mend shredded infrastructure and the social safety net. Eventually, deeper forms of corruption can be addressed, like regulatory capture. It’s time for the trust-busting that finally cut the robber barons down to size to make a comeback. Perhaps one day robust independent oversight of the alphabet agencies can be developed to protect civil and privacy rights and bring the military-industrial-complex to heel.
Opinions differ on which of the many crises we face is the worst one but logic keeps leading back to a singular, fundamental truth. Undermining the plutocracy must come first – chronologically – because voters can’t solve any other problems until they have the power to do so. The Big Lie of “democracy” deliberately blinds voters to the fundamental problem that needs to be solved before all others, so let’s hold the corporate media accountable for malpractice and get to work on solving the core problem.
This post is part of a 4-part series.
The Big Lie Part 1: “Democracy” (The U.S. is not a republic)
Part 2: Duopoly = Oligarchy = Plutocracy (How they get away with it)
Part 3: Plutocrats = Looters (Why we need to fix this)
Part 4: Cancel Plutocracy (How to solve the problem)
The Big Lie Part 3: Plutocrats = Looters
The first two essays in this series laid out the Big Lie of “U.S. democracy” and why it is so hard for the truth about oligarchy/plutocracy to get any traction in the media.
Corporate plutocracy in the U.S.. deprives people of their democratic power, but it does not exist to seek power alone. Incomprehensible volumes of wealth and income have been sucked from the pockets of the poor and working class by the ultra-rich, and this cash vacuum has been turbocharged by the pandemic response.
About a month before the Gilens & Page study was published, billionaire venture capitalist Nick Hanauer gave a TEDtalk in which he warned his peers:
“I have a message for my fellow plutocrats and zillionaires and for anyone who lives in a gated bubble world: Wake up. Wake up. It cannot last. Because if we do not do something to fix the glaring economic inequities in our society, the pitchforks will come for us, for no free and open society can long sustain this kind of rising economic inequality. It has never happened. There are no examples. You show me a highly unequal society, and I will show you a police state or an uprising. The pitchforks will come for us if we do not address this. It’s not a matter of if, it’s when.”
The apparent response of the ruling class has been something akin to “Alrighty then, a police state it is!” Whether the uprising Hanauer warned of can be avoided or merely delayed remains to be seen. Anyone who has read history ought to know it’s a bad idea to create a massive demographic of angry people who have literally nothing to lose. The corporate Democrats seem as oblivious as the French aristocracy before their heads began to roll.
One might expect the plutocrats to throw us a bone like Medicare for all out of consideration for their own self interest, if not the suffering poor, but despite the massive financial hardship caused by the pandemic, very little is being done to alleviate the acute suffering of tens of millions of people. With massive ongoing protests in many cities and calls for a General Strike, this callous disregard for human suffering may seem remarkably shortsighted, but the oligarchs see things from a higher perch than the rest of us.
The plutocracy stays on top by the effective use of Divide & Rule tactics. They hide in the shadows while encouraging voters on the left and right to see one another as enemies. They play a Polarization Game of their own design in which they are the only possible victors. None of us can “win” such a game by taking sides. On the contrary the only way the rest of us can beat the plutocrats at their own game is to refuse to be played. We win when we recognize those who vote differently as people and acknowledge our shared humanity.
Instead of getting stoked against the enemies we’re told it’s OK to hate, we all need to burst our Orwellian filter bubbles and develop our awareness of the way propaganda is being used to dehumanize us all. We need to recognize that the horrors we’ve been told will be visited upon us if ‘the other side’ wins are falsehoods that pale in comparison to what dystopian nightmares our lives may become if the current corporate technocracy is not brought under human and humane, democratic control, and soon.
Continued in Part 4
This post is part of a 4-part series.
The Big Lie Part 1: “Democracy” (The U.S. is not a republic)
Part 2: Duopoly = Oligarchy = Plutocracy (How they get away with it)
Part 3: Plutocrats = Looters (Why we need to fix this)
Part 4: Cancel Plutocracy (How to solve the problem)
The Big Lie Part 2: Duopoly = Oligarchy = Plutocracy
Oligarchy means rule by the few, but Plutocracy, which means rule by the wealthy, may be a more accurate term to describe U.S. governance. However, plutocracy and oligarchy can be used interchangeably not just because the few who rule also happen to be rich, but because of the other feature both systems have in common: the average citizen has no say in public policy, so the ruling class does not have the consent of the governed.
The Big Lie that the U.S. is a “democracy” has been stubbornly persistent for a number of reasons, including cultural saturation and cognitive dissonance, but there’s another factor that may contribute to maintaining the illusion of choice. The Gilens & Page study (2014) that exposed the U.S. Oligarchy notes that the probability of a law passing is about 30% no matter what percentage of average voters approve of it. This figure may have a unique significance with respect the way our brains are wired. Adolescent rats love to wrestle, and Panksepp discovered that if one rat is at least 10% bigger than another, it will trounce the smaller rat every time. However, if the big rat doesn’t let the little rat win 30% of the time, the little rat won’t play. If the little rat doesn’t play, the big rat can’t have fun.
Of course, correlation is not causation, but perhaps this is the reason the average voter’s influence on public policy flatlines at 30% rather than 25%, or ten. Perhaps the big rats – the oligarchs – let voters win 30% of the time so we’ll continue to cling to the illusion of democracy, even though the little rats only ever win when the big rats let them. Perhaps the only reason voters get even 30% of what they want is to prevent them from building guillotines.
It is also instructive to consider the specific policies which have caused the most severe economic harm to the poor and working class, like NAFTA. In Canada, another pseudo-democracy, nobody has replicated Gilens & Page yet and I don’t think any political science student who wants to do so should expect encouragement from the academic establishment because I am certain the same results would emerge.
A typical Canadian election involves turfing out a party who failed to deliver on their promises. In Canada’s 1988 single-issue federal election, a majority of the electorate voted for parties that promised to reject the North American Free Trade Agreement, but their jobs were sent to Mexico anyway and did not return even after the “false majority” government responsible was kicked to the curb in the next election. Canada’s new Finance Minister, Chrystia Freeland called out the Plutocrats in 2013, and was offered a seat at their table for her trouble, so now she’s too busy to say anything more on the topic.
Although the victory of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez could be trotted out as rare example of the people actually getting who, if not what, they voted for, there is no certainty voters will ever see her platform come to fruition because the vast majority of both houses is beholden to the oligarchy. AOC was never expected to win her primary against an establishment incumbent, and may not have succeeded if the Democratic Party had recognized the threat she posed to their power before it was too late.
In Democratic primaries, candidates can legally be selected in ‘smoke-filled rooms‘ rather than elected. The judge who dismissed the DNC cheating lawsuit in 2017 said that while it was clear the DNC rigged the primary to deprive Bernie Sanders of the nomination, cheating his supporters out of the millions of dollars they had donated wasn’t illegal. Many of the same signs of cheating discovered in the 2016 Democratic primaries have been repeated in the current race, not that Republicans are above similar shady tactics.
There is abundant evidence, for those who trouble themselves to seek it out, that Noam Chomsky’s assessment of the duopoly was correct:
“In the US, there is basically one party – the Business Party. It has two factions, called Democrats and Republicans, which are somewhat different but carry out variations on the same policies. By and large, I am opposed to those policies, as is most of the population.”
George Carlin illuminated this as well, and we laughed, but now when we read his rants it’s clear he was more than just a comedian and his brilliant work pointed to a hard truth. Instead of trotting out a Carlin quote here, I’ll give the last word to the late Bill Hicks:
I’ll show you politics in America, here it is:
“I think the puppet on the right shares my beliefs”
“I think the puppet on the left is more to my liking”
“Hey, wait a minute, there’s one guy holding both puppets.”
Continued in Part 3
This post is part of a 4-part series.
The Big Lie Part 1: “Democracy” (The U.S. is not a republic)
Part 2: Duopoly = Oligarchy = Plutocracy (How they get away with it)
Part 3: Plutocrats = Looters (Why we need to fix this)
Part 4: Cancel Plutocracy (How to solve the problem)
The Big Lie Part 1: “Democracy”
It’s time to stop calling the U.S. a democracy not only because there is insufficient evidence for it but also because failure to challenge the Big Lie perpetuates the core problem it seeks to obscure. There is abundant evidence the U.S. is an oligarchy or, perhaps more accurately, a plutocracy.
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.” — Joseph Goebbels
School teachers who told us about Hitler also taught us that the U.S.A. was a “democracy” and perhaps in 1975 it was still true, but any reporter who continues to refer to the U.S. as a democracy today, without qualifying the term, is committing journalistic malpractice. Sadly, the Big Lie is buried among so many others it tends to go unnoticed.
According to the Economist Intelligence Unit democracy index 2020, the U.S. is a “flawed democracy” but it would be more accurate to call it a “pseudo-democracy” or a “former democracy” particularly at the federal level, because there are serious weaknesses in the way this index is measured. The methodology is not transparent, relies largely on “experts’ assessments” and the survey used ignores the crucial question of whether the average voters’ preferences are actually reflected in public policy.
Our own experience tells us that no matter what the majority of us vote for, what we invariably get is what the economic elite want or are willing to allow. In 2014 an academic paper by Gilens & Page confirmed what the average voter already suspected, based on data from 1981 to 2002. In a nutshell:
“When the preferences of economic elites and the stands of organized interest groups are controlled for, the preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.”
I don’t have concrete evidence upon which to draw conclusions about the health of democracy prior to 1981, but we do know Reagan’s election marked neoliberalism’s shift into high gear. The efforts of the Chamber of Commerce, outlined in the infamous Powell Memo, culminated in what Chris Hedges called a corporate coup d’état turning a once-proud Republic into a covert plutocracy.
Naturally, the corporate media propagates the Big Lie that the U.S. is a democracy or constitutional republic for self-serving reasons. Those who do speak the truth have gone unheeded, although this now appears to be shifting as the consequences of plutocracy become harder to hide. The process of Manufacturing Consent is breaking down because the mainstream media is losing it’s grip on the public mind and social media censorship hasn’t replaced it… yet.
Most mainstream media outlets ignored ‘the Princeton study‘ and its disturbing conclusions. MSNBC did a segment on the findings, and another outlet attacked it, but few even mentioned it before the story disappeared from public view. Critics of Gilens & Page argued over the extent to which the wishes of voters aligned with those of the economic elite without taking into account the extent to which public opinion is shaped by the media. One criticism of the study – I kid you not – is that governance is so darned complicated that we’re better off leaving it to the “experts.” Events since 1980 make it clear we are not ruled by benign philosopher kings, but looters making off with everything that isn’t nailed down.
Setting the truth before the public, though, is not sufficient for them to accept it. Because we took in the Big Lie at an early age, it is harder to dislodge than more recently acquired knowledge. The psychological phenomenon of “cognitive dissonance” makes it very difficult to convince people that U.S. Democracy is, in fact, a lie. Like a red pill covered in barbed spikes, it does not go down easily, not even for me.
The widely held misconception that we can make the world a better place by “voting” blinds voters to the reality that other methods will be needed to overturn oligarchy. If we hope to rebuild representative democracy we must first admit that we’ve lost it. We all need to open our eyes now, even if it hurts, and insist on honesty about oligarchy/plutocracy while there is still hope to overturn it.
Note: Prior to 2020/08/21, this piece was much longer, but it has now been split it into a 4-part series.
The Big Lie Part 1: “Democracy” (The U.S. is not a republic)
Part 2: Duopoly = Oligarchy = Plutocracy (How they get away with it)
Part 3: Plutocrats = Looters (Why we need to fix this)
Part 4: Cancel Plutocracy (How to solve the problem)
Cognitive Dissonance is a Killer
Middle-aged white guys are killing themselves at alarming rates and the experts don’t know why. The suicide rate for men in their 50s increased 49% in the decade ending 2010. According to the CBC;
A recent study, co-authored by this year’s winner of the Nobel Prize for economics, Angus Deaton, found that a long-term decline in death rates changed direction in 1999 for middle-aged, non-Hispanic white Americans, especially for the segment of that population with only a high school degree or less.
I don’t think the trend is surprising nor the reasons mysterious and, despite what the “men’s rights” windbags contend, it is not the fault of women or feminism. These men who are failing to thrive were brought up in a kinder, gentler world, where income inequality was considerably less. When they were growing up, the middle class was booming and every generation seemed to be better off than the one before. That is clearly no longer the case. Working class Joe did what society expected him to do, but the rewards that were promised have not been not forthcoming.
The new reality of low economic mobility coupled with extreme income inequality grinds against the deeply entrenched, but now mostly false, belief that the “American Dream” is possible. Millions of Americans have been shoved out of the middle class into poverty, and the depth of that poverty is getting worse. In short, the working class white guy has finally figured out that he’s been lied to, and he feels duped and powerless. He didn’t see it coming, so he feels he’s failed to protect and provide for his family. That is a heavy burden to carry alone, and traditionally, men have been socialized to be stoic and not reach out for help, so they suffer in silence until it becomes too much for some of them to bear.
In psychology, cognitive dissonance is the mental stress or discomfort experienced by an individual who holds two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values at the same time, or is confronted by new information that conflicts with existing beliefs, ideas, or values. – Wikipedia
If we’ve been lied to all these years about the American Dream, what other core beliefs are just delusions? Here’s a hard one to swallow: America is no longer a democracy. Let that sink in. The ideal that Lincoln put forth in the Gettysburg Address of government of the people, by the people, for the people has indeed perished in the United States of America. The government is now more accurately described as a corporate-controlled Oligarchy. An academic study done by experts at Princeton and Northwestern concluded in September 2014 that policy decisions are driven by the economic elite and the average voter has a level of influence on public policy that is “near zero.” That’s right, the average voter has no power, no influence on the legislative process. Let. that. sink. in. This is a really tough truth to absorb. That uncomfortable feeling – a painful sense of betrayal – is called cognitive dissonance.
It not news that money is power and power is money. What many failed to notice is that there has been a massive transfer of wealth into the pockets of the 1% from the rest of us. The ultra-rich are hoarding vast amounts of capital and passing it down to their children, so the oligarchs at the top of the pyramid are using and abusing inherited wealth to buy influence and control politicians and policy. The game is rigged. The concentration of media ownership means that mainstream media does not distribute truth, but propaganda that shapes public opinion to keep people distracted from the fundamental shift of power into the hands of the economic elite. We could solve the energy crisis by hooking up a generator to George Orwell spinning in his grave.
Middle-aged, working class white guys are now on a level playing field for the first time with millions of others from marginalized groups who can’t help but think “karma’s a bitch, ain’t it?” The powers that be have always used our differences to divide us with the political weapons of fear and anger. Even the poorest white people considered themselves better off (or just ‘better’) than their black neighbours. There is certainly a tradition of dis-empowered men building up their own egos at their wives’ expense. If even the formerly privileged white guy finally realizes he’s just as screwed as everyone else, what is left to divide us with? Many men still cling to the idea that competition is better than cooperation. When a critical mass of people understand that compassion is more likely to lead to happiness, we may see a shift in consciousness that leads to greater social justice, reduced inequality, and greater prosperity for the 99%. However, that isn’t going to happen in an Oligarchy.
The way out of this mess isn’t rocket science. The same forces at play in the U.S. have been at work in Canada, where we finally kicked out a right-wing Prime Minister in favour of one who promises to reform the electoral system to make it more fair to voters. Electoral reform is the key to taking democracy back. In Canada it means getting rid of first-past-the-post so our votes aren’t wasted. In the U.S. the biggest issue is campaign finance. Now that Americans are learning that they don’t live in a democracy anymore, what are they going to do about it?
Edit: Bernie Sanders could have done amazing things. Perhaps people will wake up by 2018.
Here are some links to some other interesting ideas;
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/nov/03/financial-crisis-corporate-power-george-monbiot
Some Problems GMOs Won’t Solve, and Some that it Will.
The latest article widely shared by the ‘anti-label’ community seeks to simplify the debate and steer it away from the real issue. The one key issue that GMO labels will absolutely address is transparency. There is a reason food producers are obliged to list ingredients and nutrition information on packaging. The consumer needs this information in order to make informed choices, if that is what they wish. Of course, there are plenty of shoppers who look at price tags and ignore ingredients, and they will likely continue to do so. The principle of “Informed Consent” means that withholding information is wrong, even if you believe on the available (however limited) evidence that there is probably no harm in long-term human consumption of a diet high in genetically engineered foods.
The safety issue is a red herring. The pro-GMO lobby often try to trip people up by saying there is no proof of harm when in truth, the types of research that would answer questions of safety with respect to long-term human consumption have not been undertaken. Nor does anyone expect that sort of study to be undertaken by the GMO promoters, as they have nothing to gain by it, but everything to lose in a simple cost/benefit analysis. With respect to the four arguments raised by Nathanael Johnson in Grist;
1. Too much technology in my food
The author correctly raises questions about the process of mutagenesis, in which chemicals or radiation is used to trigger mutations in the target organism. Changes to the genome that emerge from this process are unpredictable and may affect any part of the genome, so why isn’t mutagenesis among the genetic engineering processes that we demand labels for? Good question, and I thank Kevin Folta at the University of Florida who first brought this issue to my attention.
In my opinion, telling us whether or not our food should be labelled is not the job of science. The role of scientists should properly be to help inform policymakers and the public of the differences between various types of genetic engineering and to be clear about what existing research does and does not tell us about the possible repercussions with respect to human health. When considering a hundred billion cows that ate GMO feed for 90-120 days and were still healthy at the end of that period, just before they were slaughtered for food, we cannot draw the conclusion that feeding RoundupReady or BT corn and soy to human children year after year will have no affect on their health. Thus recent headlines asserting that the “GMO Debate is Over” were demonstrably false, and Forbes and/or Jon Entine should have changed that article’s title accordingly. Even if labels don’t reduce the amount of ‘technology’ in the food supply they are essential to uphold the principle of “informed consent” that underlies existing labelling laws.
2. Pesticides
I’m not wading into the whole complex pesticide issue except to say this. I think it would be awesome to know what chemicals are applied to the food in the produce aisle and/or what chemical residues remain on/in the food and in what concentrations. A girl can dream. Even though problems associated with pesticide use won’t be solved by labels, labels are still a good idea.
3. Corporate Control
The premise that this problem won’t be solved by labels is not a valid argument against labeling. The problem of corporate control of food is somewhat overshadowed by corporate control of everything else on this planet including our post-democratic governments. People who came out in droves to protest inaction on climate change are starting to catch on that the solution involves taking back control of the government and regulatory agencies from the corporations that successfully bought them. The revolving door between regulatory agencies and industry needs to be policed to curtail corruption. Regulatory capture has accelerated the capitalist processes of deregulation that have been gathering steam since the 80’s and this trend needs to be reversed. Even though they won’t solve the problem of corporate control, labels are still a good idea.
4. Patents
I can’t think of any impact food labels will have on any issues around patents. If I’m missing something, I’m sure somebody will tell me in the comments, but once again, no matter what you think of patents on GE technology, indicating the use of such technology in the food we buy is still a good idea.
The conclusion Nathanael Johnson reaches is this:
I don’t buy the idea that if we throw lots of information — in the form of labels — on our products, we’ll be able to shop our way out of our problems. Rather than banking on this tenuous market solution, we could be addressing these issues directly.
This is true. Fortunately we are not forced into an either/or situation. The idea that “every problem has a solution” is a truism, but it may be more helpful to notice that most problems have several possible solutions and that we don’t have to pick just one. Labels can’t solve all the problems, but they are still a really good idea.

