Democracy: The Lamb for Wolves
“Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch.” - Ben Franklin
“Apparently, a democracy is a place where numerous elections are held at great cost without issues and with interchangeable candidates.” – Gore Vidal
The war most of us are fighting isn’t the real one.
We may not realise we’re in a war, but every time we choose a political party over morality, justifying crimes according to which party we hate, we choose a side and become a citizen-soldier for the DA, ANC or another acronym.
Giving up our own thought for another’s may be tragic, but not so much as when we try to justify it with shouting instead of logic, thus becoming part of the religious insanity that’s politics.
The consequence of our thoughtless action is subversion of truth and consolidation of sheep mentality, in a slaughterhouse that doesn’t benefit us at all, proverbial lambs to the sheep politicians in wolves clothing who are voting on which of us is for for dinner.
It’s a Cold War, filled with propaganda and skirmishes, pushing and shoving for power and wealth, with none of them getting hurt. They use proxies, by that I mean us, and we’re always scheduled for pain.
The situation is as ludicrous as it is in much of the world, whether it be the Republicans and Democrats in the US, the Tories and Labour in the UK, or buy-a-dictator in the Middle East. The powers-that-be are not looking out for you and me. They will call for peace whilst selling weapons.
It’s self-service, not public service. The rulers and their political opposition are generally on the same side against us.
Here, in South Africa, the even uglier side is when party loyalty is often based on the colour of our skin. Difference is used to divide and conquer.
Few would disagree when told that there are good and bad blacks, whites, coloureds, Christians, Muslims, Jews and Hindi. But common sense is forsaken when having an opinion about the state of our towns; tourism, economics, crime, politics etc. Everyone has opinions. Few substantiate them. It’s mostly a destructive affair between skin colours, apartheid and reverse-apartheid, have money versus wanting money, and corruption competing with another’s corruption.
As much to blame is the our apathy towards educating ourselves into honourable opinion. We must kill our willful ignorance which hurts everyone.
If we vote, then we must choose a party whose policies are always aimed at morals that haven’t changed. We mustn’t be suckers for the latest gravy pouring over us.
What should count is the heart of a person, and if they follow it with action. That adds up for us and the politician we support - belief without action isn’t belief at all.
POWERFUL QUOTES
I share these American quotes as they’re wisdom derived from a country of bad habits that our youth dream to own:
“We now live in a nation where doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, governments destroy freedom, the press destroys information, religion destroys morals and our banks destroy the economy.” – Chris Hedges
“The assumption that man is a rational animal is incorrect. He and she are emotional creatures, not Dr. Spock of Star Trek. Humans are brainwashed by enculturation and indoctrination. Patriots respond with hostility toward criticisms of their governments, their countries, their hopes and their delusions. Their emotions throttle facts, should any reach them. Aspirations and delusions prevail over truth. Most people want to be told what they want to hear. Consequently, they are always gullible and their illusions and self-delusions make them easy victims of propaganda. This is true of all levels of societies and of the leaders themselves.” – Paul Craig Roberts
“There’s a reason education SUCKS, and it’s the same reason that it will never, ever, ever be fixed. It’s never going to get any better, don’t look for it, be happy with what you’ve got.
Because the owners of this country don’t want that. I’m talking about the REAL owners, now. The REAL owners, the BIG WEALTHY business interests that control things and make all the important decisions — forget the politicians.
The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. YOU DON’T. You have no choice. You have OWNERS. They OWN YOU. They own EVERYTHING. They own all the important land, they own and control the corporations; they’ve long since bought and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the State houses, the City Halls; they’ve got the judges in their back pockets, and they own all the big media companies so they control just about all the news and information you get to hear.
They gotcha by the BALLS.
They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying — lobbying to get what they want. Well, we know what they want — they want MORE for themselves and less for everybody else. But I’ll tell you what they don’t want. They DON’T want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don’t want well-informed, well-educated people capable of critical thinking. They’re not interested in that, that doesn’t help them. That’s against their interests. That’s right. They don’t want people who are smart enough to sit around the kitchen table and figure out how badly they’re getting FUCKED by system that threw them overboard 30 fuckin’ years ago. They don’t want that.
You know what they want? They want OBEDIENT WORKERS. OBEDIENT WORKERS. People who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork, and just dumb enough to passably accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime, and the vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it. And now they’re comin’ for your SOCIAL SECURITY MONEY. They want your fuckin’ retirement money. They want it BACK. So they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street. And you know something? They’ll get it. They’ll get it ALL from you sooner or later — ‘cuz they OWN this fuckin’ place.
It’s a big CLUB. And YOU AIN’T IN IT. You and I are NOT IN the big club.
By the way, it’s the same big club they use to beat you over the head with all day long when they tell you what to believe. All day long, beating you over the in their media telling you what to believe — what to think — and what to buy. The table is tilted, folks. The game is rigged. And nobody seems to notice. Nobody seems to care. Good honest hard-workin people — white collar, blue collar — doesn’t matter what color shirt you have on. Good honest hard-workin people CONTINUE — these are people of modest means — continue to elect these RICH COCKSUCKERS who don’t GIVE a fuck about them. They don’t give a fuck about you, they don’t GIVE A FUCK ABOUT YOU. THEY DON’T CARE ABOUT YOU — AT ALL. AT ALL. AT ALL. You know?
And nobody seems to notice, nobody seems to care … that’s what the owners count on, the fact that Americans will probably remain willfully ignorant of the big red, white and blue dick that’s being jammed up their assholes every day. Because the owners of this country know the truth — it’s called the American Dream … ‘cuz you have to be asleep to believe it.” – George Carlin
I probably wrote this more than a decade ago. Didn’t have to dust it much BECAUSE NOTHING’S CHANGED!
James Baldwin: “A civilization is not destroyed by wicked people; it is not necessary that people be wicked but only that they be spineless”- The Fire Next Time.
“The people who settled the country had a fatal flaw. They could recognize a man when they saw one. They knew he wasn’t…anything else but a man; but since they were Christian, and since they had already decided that they came here to establish a free country, the only way to justify the role this chattel was playing in one’s life was to say that he was not a man. For if he wasn’t, then no crime had been committed. That lie is the basis of our present trouble.” From “The White Problem,” published in Robert A. Goodwin’s edited volume 100 Years of Emancipation.
And one more Mencken classic: "The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."