AMERICA'S RAW STORY
June 17, 2017
Two-Fisted Democracy Power Revisited
By Gary Brumback
Slightly over a year ago I went
on record claiming that America
was an “endangering and endangered ruination” with ruinous domestic conditions
and destructive and deadly international interventions all stemming from her
“corpocracy,” the “Devil’s Marriage” between big corporations and government.
[1]
Gnashing our teeth and thinking
matters have to get worse before they can get better is inviting doomsday. At
the same time, repeating the kinds of initiatives at changing the status quo that
always fall far short are definitely not the answer. They fall short for one or
more of these reasons; they are divided rather than united with a unity of
purpose and effort; they address single issues and symptoms rather than the
underlying cause, America’s corpocracy; they are not organized sufficiently; they
are not guided by a comprehensive strategic plan with objectives and a means
for monitoring progress; they do not have sufficient public support; and/or they
lack sufficient funding.
As I am writing this article
announcements were made about three major events aimed at changing various
aspects of the corpocracy. One event is the second annual People’s Summit attended by some
4000 progressives. [3] The second is a conference of workshops on “stopping the
wars at home and abroad” to beheld June 16-18, 2017 at the Greater Richmond
Convention Center in Richmond ,
Virginia . [4] The third is the
third annual meeting of the Democracy Convention to be held August 2-6, 2017 in
Minneapolis .
[5]
Each event by itself represents a
major undertaking sponsored by many NGOs and involving overall thousands of
participants. I cite the three here because none of them alone or collectively
meet the prerequisites I just mentioned and undoubtedly were not intended to
meet all of them. For example, the events have different sponsors, organizers,
and agendas. In the future the organizers and sponsors should consider adopting
an approach that does seek to meet those prerequisites. Such an approach is the
subject of the remainder of this article.
Round One of Two-Fisted
Democracy Power Briefly Reviewed
“Two-fisted democracy power” is
an idea and initiative I conceived and started several years ago. [6] It involved
a comprehensive strategy to end the corpocracy and build a new America .
The “fists” are a metaphor, not a call for physical and violent confrontations.
One fist was a U.S. Chamber of Democracy (USCD), an Internet connected
organization to plan and carry out a host of strategic initiatives, coupled
with the second fist, the “People’s Reignbow Coalition,” a unified and massive
movement of activists that would apply enough pressure on the corpocracy to
nullify its resistance to the reforms being pursued by the USCD.
I spent several years trying to
implement the idea in its entirety. It failed partly because of lack of
funding. For example, many wealthy foundations declined to fund the USCD. One
in particular stands out, the Peace and Security Funders Group, a large network
of extremely wealthy public, private and family foundations, and individual
philanthropists that is “committed to promoting international peace and
security. [7] Balderdash!! I did not get a dime from them. What the “ultra
rich” generally seem to be doing instead, one study of them concluded “---is
undermining global democracy.” [8] No kidding! I had learned the hard way years
earlier how NGOs and foundations are co-opted by the corpocracy. [9]
Round Two?
Despite its abject failure the
first time around, I believe two-fisted democracy power is an idea whose time
has come and is desperately needed for the sake of the future. A round two
version needs to be launched. An outline and possibilities for a second round are
discussed next.
The USCD Outline: An Internet
Organization
The U.S. Chamber of Democracy
is NOT
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce
Our core
mission is to fight
for business
help America
shed her corpocracy
and become a true democracy.
www.uscdnotthere.yet
The USCC is a “brick and mortars”
organization located in the Nation’s Capitol that spends large amounts of
corporate money lobbying for corporate interests on Capitol Hill. Obviously its
antithesis, the USCD, has no postal address and no building.
A. Steering Council.
Twelve or so very knowledgeable
activists from the different regions of America to develop a strategic plan,
purpose and vision; pick self-managed teams to carry out the reform work;
secure sufficient funding; and to steer the entire endeavor’s course to its
final goal of ending the corpocracy and the building of a shared and
operationally defined new America (e.g., an America with a military budget
slashed in half, no membership in militaristic partnerships like NATO, no
military bases in other countries, and the like)
B. Illustrative Self Managed
Teams to Carry Out the Strategically Guided Initiatives
1. Think Tank. a. to propose a
vision consistent with the goal and a strategic plan to achieve it; and b. to
research and incorporate where appropriate all other existing reform ideas and
initiatives. An innovative idea, for example, that definitely should be part of
an overall strategy is John Rachel’s no-contract/no vote proposal. [10] If it
were to be adopted nation-wide political reforms ought to follow quickly.
2. Government Reform Team. a. to
disenable government’s enabling of widespread corporate wrongdoing by
eliminating all hand outs to and all hands-off treatment of corporations,
including the two inseparable financial and war industries.
3. Economic and Business Reform
Team. a. to set the stage for creating a socially responsible capitalism; b. to
end privatization; c. to promote non-corporate forms of business; and d. to
persuade corporations to adopt new models of organizing and managing their
businesses. [11]
4. Health Care Reform Team. a. to
make universal, single payer insurance the law of the land; and b. to
responsibly regulate the health care industries to protect the health and
safety of the insured.
5. Social Justice Reform Team a.
to end all artificial forms of individual and group discrimination; b. to
ensure civil liberties and rights to everyone; and c. to end militarized and
racially biased policing.
6. Education Reform Team. a. to
end charter schools; b. to end teaching to the test; c. to end propagandized
curricula and teaching; and d. to emphasize the teaching of critical thinking
skills.
7. Communications Reform Team. a.
to return the airwaves to the public; and b. to responsibly regulate corporate
media.
8. Political Reform Team. a. to
end the Electoral College; b. to require ranked voting; c. to remove all
illegitimate voting hurdles; d. to replace the Constitution reserved as it is
for the power elite to a Constitution guaranteeing the just and equal rights of
all citizens; e. to strengthen gun control, and f. to support the other teams’
initiatives.
9. Coalition Building
Team. a. to establish the Reignbow Coalition; and b. to persuade existing
protest movements to join the coalition.
10. Tracking Team. a. to track
the progress of all initiatives; and b. to spot ongoing opportunities for other
teams to exploit for achieving interim successes.
The Reignbow Coalition
At any given moment there must be
dozens of small to large movements each with their own specific protests. Common
to them all is their underlying cause, America ’s corpocracy. Leaders of
such movements need to be persuaded to “connect the dots” and include their
movements under an umbrella coalition of movements, the “Reignbow Coalition,”
or whatever might end up being its name (the “Reign” is meant to connote reign
by the people, not by the corpocracy and its power elite). An umbrella movement
of 25 or so million disaffected Americans all demanding, perhaps via Rachel’s
clever no contract-no vote condition that political candidates support the
USCD’s reform initiatives or else, ought to be able to put honest politicians
into office who would be real public servants for once.
Peopling Round Two
The first go around I was the
chef; chief bottle washer and server spending several years doing so. An
octogenarian now with waning energy I can not do that again. I need to pass the
idea and any second round implementation of it onto people who might be willing
to succeed me and take the lead in trying to kick start some version of
two-fisted democracy power. After this article is published I will start
seeking one or more successors who share my conviction about the potential of
my idea, have the time to nurture it along, have organized or played a
significant role in a major reform initiative, are well known, and have
connections to some funding sources. [12]
As for recruiting people to serve
on the Steering Council and teams there are several possible sources to draw upon
for prospective members. One is the U.S. Democracy Corps that I originated
several years ago. Its several hundred members are, figuratively speaking,
ambassadors for democracy who have in their own ways been promoting peaceful
and lawful means of reclaiming social and economic justice in America and
establishing peaceful relations with other nations. [13] Other possible sources
include all the people who have read and commented on my work and who also have
been very active themselves in their own work; and the few NGOs that actually endorsed
the first round of two-fisted democracy power. [14]
Funding Round Two
If rescuing America ’s future is worth the
effort it is worth the cost. And the cost would be monumental, amounting to
millions of dollars over a period of years, to start up and operate two-fisted
democracy power until all its strategic initiatives succeeded and the main goal
was reached..
There are over one million
multimillionaires in America .
Surely there must be a few thousand not entrenched in the corpocracy. Finding
them is the trick, of course. Ralph Nader claims that only the “enlightened
super wealthy” can save the world. [15] A few years ago I sent him through his
personal assistant a copy of my book, The Devil’s Marriage, which I had
dedicated to him. I think I will see if he would be willing to contact some of
those 17 real super wealthy people he fictionalized in his book and ask them to
fund the two-fisted democracy power initiative.
In Closing
Continuing the Quest
for a
New and Better America Must
Continue or Else
No Matter How
Hopeless
No Matter How Far---
---Cervantes/Don Quixote, Man of La Mancha
paraphrased
Time is running out on the
survival of America
and the rest of the world’s inhabitants. While two-fisted democracy power may
never be launched, failing to continue the quest for ways to protect the future
even if it is an impossible dream should not be acceptable.
Endnotes
1. Brumback, GB. Real America ,
an Endangering and Endangered Ruination. Dissident Voice, March 28; OpEdNews,
March 29; PopularResistance.Org Daily Digest, March 31; Greenville Post, April
2; Transmedia Service, April 6; Uncommon Thought Journal, April 8; 2016.
2. See, e.g., Boyle, FA. American
Militarism Threatening To Set Off World War III. OpEdNews, December, 12, 2012; Chossudovsky,
M. Towards a World War III Scenario: The Dangers of Nuclear War. E-Book Series
No. 1.0, Global Research Publishers, 2011; Noble, S. Anarchy and Near Term
Extinction. Dissident Voice, June 18,
2014; and Roberts, P.C. Is That
Armageddon Over The Horizon? Institute for Political Economy, April 12, 2017.
3. Kall, R. People's Summit : It Always Seems
Impossible Until it is Done.
OpEdNews, June 11, 2017. See
also, Geery, D. A Critical Look at the People’s Summit . OpEdNews, June, 11, 2017.
4.Swanson, D. Invitation to the
national "Stop the Wars at Home & Abroad!" Conference. E-mail,
May 30, 2017.
5. Democracy Convention III:
August 2-6, 2017, Minneapolis .
Democracyconvention.org
6. Brumback, GB. The Devil’s
Marriage: Break Up the Marriage or Leave Democracy in the Lurch. Author House,
2011. Chapter 4, pp. 43-66.
7. Peace and Security Funders
Group. http://peaceandsecurity.org/
8. Lazare, S. Ultra-Rich
‘Philanthrocapitalist’ Class Undermining Global Democracy, Study Says. Common
Dreams, January 17, 2016.
9. Brumback, G.B. Tyranny's Hush
Money. OpEdNews, September 28, 2013, and The Greanville Post, September 29,
2013.
10. Rachel, J. No Candidate
Contract No Vote OpEdNews, June 12, 2017.
11. See, e.g., Brumback, Op. Cit.
2011. Chapter 10. Ending Undemocratic Capitalism, pp. 149-180., Appendix C.
Creative Economic Thinking from A to Z minus E for Economists, pp. 203-213; Brumback,
GB. See also; Corporate Reckoning Ahead. Create Space Independent Publishing Platform. 2015. Part Two.
Corporate Self Reform, pp. 31-115; Chapter 11. Some Alternatives to
Corporations, pp. 117-123; and Chapter 12. Socially Responsible Capitalism, Not
Socialism, pp. 124-136.
12. Readers of this article are
also encouraged to suggest themselves or others. One way readers can contact me
is through my twitter address, #LibertyQuotient.
13. See the list of members of
the U.S. Democracy Corps posted October 4, 2014 on my blog site,
http://democracyorcorpocracy.blogspot.com/
14. The many people who have
endorsed my books and commented on my work, and these NGOs: Citizens Works; Code Pink: Women for Peace; Fellowship of Reconciliation;
and Just Foreign Policy are encouraged to promote the idea of two-fisted
democracy power.
15. Nader, R. Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us! Seven Stories
Press, 2011.
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