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progressive record and endorsements laid out like this.
I find a lot of her proposals to be just minor tinkerings with the gawdawful situation we find ourselves, whereby we are ruled by the Church of the Corporation, much like medieval Europe was ruled by the Catholic Church, especially during the period of the Holy Roman Empire, in which the Church--the Pope--actually crowned the emperor. The Church superseded state authority, and was so powerful that few could even imagine a different condition. It was so powerful that it was in many ways invisible. It was just a given. It was the air you breathed. Its claim to authority direct from God was unquestioned. And thus it amassed great wealth, chose kings, crowned emperors, instigated wars, had its own legal system for prosecuting religious "crimes" (the Inquisition), extracted special privileges from all states (land grants, protection of its clerics), and pretty much cornered the market on all education, learning and communication (so that knowledge was greatly restricted, and was limited to what the Church wanted you to know--with 90% of the people unable to read at all), and furthermore dominated the very imaginations of human beings by controlling all artistic imagery.
Truly, the parallels to our Church of the Corporation are...haunting. And this is the perspective from which I view Hillary Clinton's candidacy for president (emperor, really) and the entire spectacle of national politics--this larger perspective of who gets to choose who gets the national spotlight, who sets the parameters of political debate (what is permissible, what is not permissible), who gets sufficient money to be heard, who gets marginalized or demonized and driven out, who controls the imagery, who creates the "saints" and the "devils," who designates the status of persons (monarchs, nobles, knights, tradesmen, serfs, peons--re our glitteratti of multi-millionaires, celebrities, "stars," etc. vs. all the nobodies), who creates the large black holes in the knowledge and political savvy of our citizens, and, ultimately, who gets to crown the emperor.
The "who" who holds all of these powers is not the people. Really, this is Thomas Jefferson's worst nightmare, I think. The semi-visible power holder is the Church of the Corporation--so pervasive in our society that we can barely see it any more--and its popes, cardinals, bishops, clerics (the writers of the narrative) and artists (the makers of the images) (i.e., pundits/'reporters' and P.R. firms). The hierarchy are the CEOs, billionaires, powerful law firms, banks and financial institutions, run by a handful of people, in a very tight-knit, closed society that worships money and power.
The theology of the Church of the Corporation is very narrow and purposeful, and is enforced doctrine (on pain of excommunication)--just like the Medieval Church. The purpose of it--and its general thrust--is to enhance the power of the Corporation (similar to the Church claiming authority from God, and demanding obedience to its narrow, purposeful doctrines on that ground). Core Corporate doctrine includes the "personhood" of corporations and their "rights" as big business groups, say, to own the public airwaves or to copyright human DNA, or create frankenseeds that endanger the human food supply, with impunity, or to pollute with impunity, etc. They think their "rights" include all human and civil rights, and much more. That is part of the Doctrine.
The most outlandish of these "rights" was quite recently asserted, and is their "right" to control the counting of our votes, with electronic voting machines, that the public must pay them billions of dollars for, and that contain 'TRADE SECRET,' PROPRIETARY programming code, that the public has NO right to review. This "right" was recently asserted in a court of law, in Florida, and the judge agreed. Even in a highly questionable election (18,000 Democratic votes for Congress 'disappeared' by the voting machines, in an election decided by only 350 or so votes), the "right" of the corporation--ES&S--to profit from the election system trumps the right of the voters to know how their votes were counted.
This is similar to the Medieval Church's sale of indulgences. Indulgences were tickets to Heaven. They cut years off your stay in Purgatory (where, after death, you are punished for your sins), or helped free loved ones and others from Purgatory before their sentences were up. You paid cash for them, to the Church and its clerics, and purchased your "right"--on the basis of your wealth--to go quickly to Heaven, or send someone else quickly to Heaven.
It is nonsense, in other words. A scam. "TRADE SECRET" vote counting. Har-har. Suckers!
But it is solemnly proclaimed by a judge, and all bow down, and, while some people may think it absurd, it is A RELIGIOUS PRECEPT. Challenge it at your peril. Virtually all the 'Democrats' in Congress have knelt down to it, crossed themselves, and prayed to the God of the Corporation not to punish them for heresy--for perhaps having some stray thoughts that it might not be a good idea.
But back to Hillary. Actually, she voted against 'TRADE SECRET' vote counting, and was one of only two Democratic Senators who did so (her and Schumer)--an interesting fact about Hillary. However, she likely voted against it in the confidence that everyone else was voting for it, to please her New York constituents who are very attached to their old, reliable, and virtually unriggable, lever voting machines. The rest of the country can go to hell. New York rules! It is one of two or three power centers of the Church of the Corporation, with a stranglehold on information and imagery over the rest of the land, and so some area-restricted "liberalism" can be permitted there, as long as the core teachings of the Church are respected. New Yorkers are aware of their vital role, as acolytes of the Church of the Corporation, in choosing and crowning the emperor, and so they play along, as long as THEY have some democratic rights.
Really, that's how it went. Unriggable lever machines for New York. Electronic voting machines, run on 'TRADE SECRET,' PROPRIETARY code, owned and controlled by rightwing Bushite corporations, for the rest of us.
Pardon me for being cynical about New Yorkers.
MAYBE Hillary can be lobbied on this matter, to restore democracy throughout the land. We don't have a democracy any more--not with this 'coup de grace' of 'TRADE SECRET' vote counting. It is rather like the Medieval Church's power to consign you to Hell--and then they offer you a deal where you can pay to get out. The whole thing is so corrupt as to be beyond belief. We need a Reformation!
Oh, and did I mention that the Medieval Church was an international institution? (No, I did not.) Global church--the one, true, universal Roman Catholic Church, sans borders, immune from national laws, speaking its own universal language (Latin--that the vast population of peons didn't know), acquiring and owning vast properties in many lands, extorting privileges and dominance everywhere it went, requiring kings and nobles to pay up, and to build great churches and monasteries, and to mount bloody Crusades to the "Holy Land," to get themselves to Heaven. It was quite a racket--much like corporate globalisation today, which, through agencies like the World Bank, the WTO and the G-8, assaults labor and environmental protections that nations dare to pass as laws, bribes and bullies national leaders with promises of wealth and jobs, undermines and destroys the sovereignty and power of the people, and, in the case of the U.S., actually hijacked our military for corporate resource wars.
The Iraq War, as we know, has nothing to do with our national security--or with our sovereignty or patriotism--and everything to do with corporate power: The power to drain our treasury dry, and indebt us for the rest of the century, to pour trillions of dollars into the pockets of the warmakers--international corporations like Halliburton, Blackwater and Bechtel--and to slaughter a million innocent people to get their oil.
The Bush Junta has been like the rule of Pope Innocent III, who rallied kings and nobles to go slaughter 20,000 French "heretics," who dared to adhere to the old and original Christian religion (Gnosticism). That horror within the confines of the Christian European community--not even against the Arabs--is similar to what the Bush Junta has done to our democracy. It placed a prison around the human mind. It brutally enforced One Doctrine--which, lamentably, had been cemented with state power way back in the 5th century, but had never been so bloodily imposed, internally, on such a large scale.
Militarism in defense of Corporate interests is the One Doctrine now. It has been forced upon us. It has raped and imprisoned our minds. We are the Cathars. We are the dissenters. We, the people--the 70% of the American people who are peace-loving, and justice-loving, and who hate war. And we have been crushed--out of sight, out of mind, in the national political dialogue--just like the Cathars. They have not slain us yet, but they might as well have.
And the Bush Junta is also, of course, similar to the Pope-instigated wars against the Arabs and Persians in the Middle East, in the bloody Crusades that went raping and torturing and killing across Europe to the land of gentle Jesus.
Hillary will not challenge corporate rule. She will not challenge the war industry. She will not question this Church's doctrines, or its absurd assertions of its "rights." She will serve the the popes, cardinals and bishops of the Church of the Corporation, who crown her as empress. That is the office that she seeks, which is not conferred by the people; it is conferred by the Church. The clerics, preachers and image-makers of this Church propagandize the people to accept whomever is chosen to rule over them, as their only option, and convince them that this is THEIR choice--but the American people are merely like the cheering mobs that come out into the street to hail the emperor who promises to bring them "peace in our time" and bread on their tables. There might be some truth to it, or, more often it is giant scam, which will result in the poor being used as cannon fodder and slave labor, and becoming MORE poor, as the kings and nobles and Holy Roman Catholic Church suck up all the wealth.
Which do you think it will be--reading the entrails, as we are forced to do, as our only clues to what these candidates for emperor will actually do in office?
She reminds me of LBJ, to some extent. Back when we had real elections (controlled by money, but at least not with 'TRADE SECRET' voting machines), after JFK was assassinated, his VP, LBJ, ran for president on a populist platform--including the "war on poverty," strengthening of the New Deal, and civil rights and voting rights proposals (re racial segregation and bigotry). He also portrayed himself as the "peace candidate," and painted his opponent, Goldwater, as a warmonger. Once in office, LBJ proceeded with the populist program, but also escalated the war on Vietnam, which continued to be escalated in his next years in office, and ultimately claimed two million lives in Southeast Asia, and the lives of over 55,000 U.S. soldiers. The narrative of the justification for this war was "anti-communism," but its main and overriding purpose was to lard the war industry with more and more taxpayer money--an enormous corporate welfare scam. MORE wars were needed, to justify that industry, which should have been de-mobilized after WW II, and was not.
Much like the original Crusades--numerous looting and rapine expeditions, to vastly enrich the Church and its compliant kings and nobles.
I suspect that some such "devil's bargain" will control policy in a Hillary regime--and I really don't think any of the others will be different (except Kucinich--and possibly Edwards, who has shown some independence from the Corporate Church). Obama, Dodd, Richardson, Biden--all acolytes. Dodd, a particularly deceptive one. (He engineered 'TRADE SECRET' vote counting controlled by rightwing Bushite corporation.)
One of these acolytes will be "chosen." There are a lot of signs that Hillary is the "made" candidate. But they may have more illusory drama to play out, for our edification, before the Church crowns its emperor. I doubt that a Republican will be anointed. They need to go to Act II, or the ticket-payers may get restless.
Hillary will not restore our shredded Constitution, or our rights as citizens. Nor will she disavow their latest brutalities--such as torture and detention without trial. She may not use them as brutally as the Bush Junta, but she will hold them in reserve (to be used against us, if necessary). The same with NSA/corporate domestic spying, other police state measures, corporate looting and corporate war. She may temper them a bit, "sell" them better, and provide some little alleviations of the sufferings of the poor--mostly illusory, such a hike in the minimum wage that is then eaten up by corporate gas gouging. She might even make a show of some corporate regulation and slightly better taxation policy (from brutally pro-rich to not quite so brutally pro-rich). But, in an era that cries out for a Reformation, she will act as the Church's apologist. She will be a Thomas More, when what is desperately needed is a Martin Luther--a break from the past, to clean out all this putrid corruption that the Church of the Corporation hath wrought.
We need to completely re-think and restructure our universe. The U.S. is no longer the planet around which the sun revolves. Galileo's truth can be glimpsed in the distance. After what the Bush Junta has done to us--much like the Catholic Church did to Europe, with its Crusades, and Inquisitions, and costly "indulgences"--change is coming, and must come, and it is not going to be an easy time. The Church of the Corporation has looted us, and betrayed us. We spawned this monster, as an engine of prosperity, and it has now turned on us--moving its headquarters, funds and jobs to China and India and Dubai and Singapore. It first trashed us, and our laws and our democracy, and our attempts to control it, then sneered at us with contempt as it stole our elections and drained our treasury, and hijacked our military for its nefarious purposes, and even created its own mercenary army with our money.
There are a few more things to loot, but we are mostly tapped out. And we are about to have imposed upon us an image--a mostly illusory being, called "our president"--who will consolidate the enormous gains of corporate power under the Bush Junta, prevent any serious rebellion against the Church, let them accomplish what they will, by further looting, warmaking or other policy (such as the "war on drugs"--another war industry boondoggle), and will of course mount no serious defense of the people against our mind-bogglingly greedy and conscienceless oppressors. On our backs, they built a Global Corporate Church--a stateless and lawless entity with no loyalty or patriotism, intent upon dominating the world.
To create this illusion of a president as a woman will be damned clever of them. They do have to worry about "the mobs in the streets" and what they might do, once they figure all of this out. Threatening women's rights, then offering them a female "candidate," whom many women will approve of, thinking she will protect their rights, is positively machiavellian. Abortion rights is only one tiny part of the picture of the oppression of women. Poverty is a much bigger factor in the freedom/enslavement of women. The Church of the Corporation will concede abortion rights, as long as it can keep looting, at home and around the globe. What do they care? They have no values of any kind, except greed and power. Women who fall for this one are fools--but I can't blame them. I fell for LBJ as the "peace candidate." In 1964, that was my main concern. And what did I get? A crazy, senseless, horrible bloodbath that went on for a decade.
We need RADICAL change and reform. We need to address 50 years of immense war profiteering. We need to bust corporate monopolies, and, in some cases, pull their corporate charters, dismantle them, and seize their assets for the common good. We need to cut the war budget by 90%, down to a true defensive posture (no more wars of choice!). We need to restore our Constitution and our right to vote. We need to attack this monstrous Church of the Corporation in every way, and bring it down. We need to re-assert our strength as a progressive people, and join with other peoples around the world--with the Bolvarians in South America, for instance--to get this done. The survival of our planet, and of the human race itself, depends on it.
Pandering to the corporations on health care, war, global warming, and other vital matters--to get dribbles from the global corporate banquet table--is just not enough. It is not enough for our democracy. It is not enough to save our planet. But, of course, this is why these pale, illusory compromisers, and flip-floppers, and ambitious tweedle-dums, and apologists for the Church and its war industry, are presented to us as our "candidates," from which the Church will choose its emperor. As in the Middle Ages, the tyranny over our minds is the most important tyranny. They would like to create a successful illusion--one whom the "mobs in the streets" will cheer. They work at it, they do. The Catholic Church worked very hard on its illusions, day and night, non-stop, over decades and centuries. The illusion IS the oppression--pretty much. They failed with Bush, in the end--not for lack of trying. People didn't buy it, and are growing quite restless. They would rather have an illusion that people buy. It saves them a lot of trouble, as to bloody repression. (This was the "mistake" the Cathars made--the French "heretics"--providing a popular example of real Christianity in the midst of a vastly corrupt empire of the Roman Church. I'm reminded of the Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and Argentina--real democracy at work--which our Corporate popes lust to extinguish.)
So, what are Hillary's policies? And what will she do, if she is...ahem...elected? Does it really matter? She is the "image" being sold, as the front for an oppressive and ruinous ideology. All we can do is hope for the best--hope that it won't be too bad--hope that we can make some tiny inroads for the poor, for our rights--in the context of the Church of the Corporation and its Doctrine and its overweaning power. And hit the ground--as the Bolivarians have done--with massive, intense, grass roots organization to rebuild our democratic institutions--first priority, transparent vote counting.
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