Tag: Power

I mean it. Can we simply talk about this? There are so many things to consider and ponder. We have a responsibility as US citizens and fellow human beings to those whom we might hurt, to be uncomfortable while we determine whether military action on our part is the right thing to do. It is also incumbent upon us to consider whether there are other things we might do. So, can we dig in and look at all that we know and enumerate all that we don’t know and speculate on all the possibilities which might explain both the current realities and the impacts of possible courses of action? Can we do this without being upset with each other for seeing things differently? Can we allow ourselves to remain open and to let more in than what we think we know or feel?

I challenge us all to hear out those who have a very different perspective, whether you think it’s a neoconservative tyranny or a manipulated scenario. We’re talking about bombing people. Certainly, we can afford the innocuous process of allowing ourselves to mentally wend our way down the myriad possibilities before we kill people, right? We have nothing to lose and they have everything to lose. If some country was threatening to bomb us and we learned that they weren’t willing to have a discussion about all the alternative assessments about what’s going on here and all the alternative action possibilities, we’d feel pretty worthless. Syria isn’t another target. It’s a country full of people. Give them the courtesy of considering every reason why we might not want to bomb them.

I’m going to outline some talking points for conversation starters below. I don’t claim to be an expert, in any way shape or form. I’m another Citizen Jane of a super-power wielding nation and I have tons of questions. I also have principles from which I approach things and, for the sake of disclosure, I’ll make those known as I pose the questions.  

Glen Ford writing at Black Agenda Report said on Wednesday “We Are Cornered: There’s No Way Out Without A Fight”: “Obama and his Democratic legislative allies have successfully shielded their Wall Street masters from anything worthy of the name financial reform.”, and “The pace of finance capital deterioration quickens, accelerating the timetable of the Right’s offensive. As the hunger grows, Wall Street’s servants become more aggressive and demanding, and there is nothing in the Democratic Party, as presently constituted, to stop them.”

Ford closed his essay with: “One truth remains: only a massed people can defeat massed capital. If the American Left is capable of bearing that in mind in the critical times ahead, it might just escape the cul-de-sac and make some modest contribution to the world.”

Robert Scheer noted on Tuesday:

It is Obama’s continued deference to the sensibilities of the financiers and his relative indifference to the suffering of ordinary people that threaten his legacy, not to mention the nation’s economic well-being. There have been more than 300,000 foreclosure filings every single month that Obama has been president, and as The New York Times editorialized, “Unfortunately, there is no evidence that the Obama administration’s efforts to address the foreclosure problem will make an appreciable dent.”

The ugly reality that only 398,198 mortgages have been modified to make the payments more reasonable can be traced to the program being based on the hope that the banks would do the right thing. While Obama continued the Bush practice of showering the banks with bailout money, he did not demand a moratorium on foreclosures or call for increasing the power of bankruptcy courts to force the banks, which created the problem, to now help distressed homeowners.

…foreclosures are behind Tuesday’s news that U.S. home sales reached their lowest point in 15 years and that there is unlikely to be an economic recovery without a dramatic turnabout in the housing market. The stock market tanked Tuesday on reports that U.S. home sales had dropped 25.5 percent below the year-ago level.

— Foreclosure

Ford is right about many things, but Ford is wrong about one thing.

There is more than one truth.