CHAPTER 7. BREAKING THE HABITS
This chapter is sort of a “How-to-manual.” It is not an AA 12-Step program. It’s an AA 7-Step program, where AA stands for Alter America. Let me give you a little backgrounder on my AA.
In the Afterword of The Devil’s Marriage I envisioned a model of a rebuilt America. I called the model “Alter America.” [1] Its characteristics would be remarkably different from the real America in four ways.
First, America would be a peace making and internationally law abiding nation, not the warring and spying scofflaw it has always been.
This chapter is sort of a “How-to-manual.” It is not an AA 12-Step program. It’s an AA 7-Step program, where AA stands for Alter America. Let me give you a little backgrounder on my AA.
In the Afterword of The Devil’s Marriage I envisioned a model of a rebuilt America. I called the model “Alter America.” [1] Its characteristics would be remarkably different from the real America in four ways.
First, America would be a peace making and internationally law abiding nation, not the warring and spying scofflaw it has always been.
Second, America would be an
egalitarian or partnership society, not a male dominated society that it has
always been. Remember, it was the
Founding “Fathers.” America has always had male warriors-in chiefs, male
dominated legislatures and judiciaries, and almost totally imperialistic male
CEOs and financiers. Males on top throughout a society produces a “dominator
society,” says Riane Eisler, a best-selling author, who has studied this
prevailing mode of social and economic structures and cultures throughout the
history of the world. The dominator society, she says, “has four core elements:
rigid top-down control; intense abuse and violence” manifested (my pun
intended) in “child and wife beating; chronic warfare;” “the rigid ranking” of
men over women; and a culture of stories, beliefs, and the like that “justify
domination and violence as inevitable, even moral.”[2] In contrast, Eisler
calls the ideal model the “partnership” society. Few societies, one of them
being Finland she says, come close to this model, that of a democratic,
egalitarian, and non-violent family and social structure.
Third, America’s economic system would depend on the production of socially beneficial products and services and not on using other peoples’ money to make money.
Third, America’s economic system would depend on the production of socially beneficial products and services and not on using other peoples’ money to make money.
Fourth, there would be no more
government handouts to corporations, and as a result corporations would have to
organize and be run much differently or fail. [3]
Fifth, America would be a just society that respects citizens’ rights and
holds them, government, and all business and finance organizations accountable
for how they discharge their responsibilities.
There you have my vision of an Alter America. Envisioning it was easy.
Achieving it is a totally different matter and just may be an impossible dream,
as impossible to realize as one or more of the five scenarios described in the
last chapter may be possible if America doesn’t reverse course.
In the Devil’s Marriage I presented a comprehensive plan that included
over 400 initiatives for achieving political, judicial, economic, and social
reforms that would be necessary for ending the corpocracy and creating an Alter
America. The initiatives for breaking America’s two habits were just a small
piece of the overall strategy.
I am not going to repeat here the whole plan to end the entire corpocracy. Instead, I am going to concentrate exclusively and freshly on how the two habits can be broken. Breaking them will not end the corpocracy completely but would achieve the miraculous outcome of an America at peace with the world, which is undoubtedly the most important characteristic of Alter America, undoubtedly the most important outcome for the world, and undoubtedly the most difficult reform goal.
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