Reply #18: You have a pretty passive attitude. THAT's what I'm attacking. [View All]

[Peace Patriot]

The system has gotten to you--has demoralized, depressed and disempowered you. You feel fateful, that one thing or another "will fail" and maybe we should "let it fail" (as if it was up to us). I think you need to turn that attitude around and gain a more pro-active outlook. People before us have done so--in even more difficult circumstances: blacks in the South with no rights at all, not even the right to vote; the labor movements of the industrialization era; the down and out poor of the Great Depression who put FDR in office; the Indigenous majority in Bolivia, which recently elected Bolivia's first Indigenous president; the Nicaraguans, who recently put the Sandanistas back in power (the revolutionaries whom the Reaganites tried to smash with the illegal Iran/Contra war); the Haitians slaves who freed themselves (the first democracy revolution in Latin America); the MANY leftist democracy movements in Latin America NOW--in Bolivia, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Ecuador, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Brazil and other countries--there are many many examples!

And I think the Latin American ones, of our era, are the most pertinent, because these very RECENT examples of leftist democratic victories have resulted in a huge, powerful, ECONOMIC revolution for social justice, use of resources like oil to benefit the people, socialist responsibility for everyone, as to education, health care and other bootstrapping of the poor, and the subjection of business interests to the common good.

You need to understand HOW BAD OFF these countries were only a decade ago. They were not just in economic ruin--inflicted mostly by U.S. multinationals in cahoots with the U.S. dominated World Bank/IMF and their own rich fascist elites, but they were oppressed by vicious tyrants supported by the U.S., who tortured and murdered thousands of Leftists. Some of the same Leftists who fought those tyrants--who were imprisoned and tortured--are now the PRESIDENTS of their country. And they and their governments and people are turning things around, dramatically. Venezuela was just designated "the most equal country in Latin America," as to wealth distribution, by the UN Economic Commission. They have cut poverty in half and extreme poverty by more than 70%. All these Leftist countries are all doing well, considering where they started--something you will never see reported in the corpo-fascist press (cuz their billionaire bosses don't want you to know). Socialist controls on capitalism is working--just like it did here during the "New Deal" and for three decades afterward (until Reagan).

Things don't have to fall apart. They don't have to fail. True, we have enormous problems--and some special problems of our own (such as the "military-industrial complex" and its untoward power and looting, and its need for war). But Latin America is demonstrating that big, horrendous problems can be solved and probably the first lesson of their success is TRANSPARENT vote counting. It CAN be done, but we're got to evict the vote rigging machines from our system and restore transparency. Then things are possible. Then things start to change.

Latin Americans have done their civic duty and paid attention to the fundamentals of democracy and it's paying off in a big way. We can elect good leaders. We can recover. But we've got to start with the fundamentals--and there isn't anything more fundamental than our right to vote and to see our votes counted in public.