What Flavour of S**** Will Voters Select?

 

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As America decides upon a new leader is it not bizarre to find ourselves debating whether a narcissistic psychopath, with no political experience or corporate sponsors, would be preferable to a bad actress pretending to be human, in the pockets of bankers and corporations? And we’ve still got Bernie in the mix, a man of the people and one just as capable as any to crash the ship of state onto the rocks. Ted Cruz is now out of the picture.

Why all the excitement this time? It’s as though decades of Americans have had the choice of either dog shit or cat shit on their political menu. They’ve come to dislike the taste of both, decrying the evils of the political process while validating it with their vote. This year, for the first time ever, there are two new options on the menu – pig shit and horse manure. The simple logic for many is that however unsavoury these new excrements may be they “can’t be any worse than what we’ve already got so why not?”

Those who hate the straw of horse manure getting caught in their teeth might opt for pig shit, the nutritionally denser option. Those who’d prefer the vegetarian source will opt for horse manure, needing more chewing to extract its nutritional value – but better for the planet. And many will stick with the same old shit, hoping it might taste better coming from a female animal. Some even profess to like their chosen diet and argue its virtues. I like a lot of what Bernie says and some of what Trump says but recognize that words and deeds rarely link together in politics, even when they are heart-felt.

At my Uncle Floyd’s farm in Nebraska (circa 1958) I recall how the pigs lined up behind the cattle, feeding on their waste, while the chickens gathered to recycle the pig’s poo and the chicken shit helped feed the maize that became food for the cattle. Hippie-era Goa was famous for its ‘pig toilets’ (ashrams could identify drug users when the pigs fought over their poo position). The point is – excrement contains nutrients and believe me when everybody else is picking through the shit for something valuable it will seem normal and okay.

I’m just saying that it’s kind of like picking through poo today, searching for something we can eat. Trump doesn’t like the TTIP deal and isn’t in corporate pockets. I’ll swallow that. Hillary Clinton is a woman and has experience in the fetid quagmire of corporate American politics. Most of all, she is not Donald Trump. Bernie Saunders is wise, compassionate, honest and outspoken (note to Brits – even commie-hatin’ rednecks might admire these qualities in what they view as horse manure).

For many today, much of government itself seems generously endowed in bullshit, with politicians consistently ranking as the least trusted of all the professions, below estate agents and bankers. But people are not so much upset about having to search through the bullshit to find things of value, as at the reduction in good stuff to be found, as less and less of our taxed wealth gets sprinkled back in valuable and essential services.

Very few like the wars, corruption, infighting, corporate control, appalling waste, callousness, loss of freedoms and underlying brutality of the state apparatus that rules this nation of people. But they accept it as “the way it is” and hold up gems like worker’s safety and the NHS, building standards and the laying of roads, in the assumption that humanity could never have arrived at those desirable places by any other means. Of course, we the people do all this stuff and get paid for with our own money – you don’t see politicians or civil servant laying roads or performing heart surgery. For decades they never bothered to check whether their vehicle testing data bore any relationship to real life, with Volkswagen or any other vehicle manufacturer.

Before assuming the state to be a necessary evil consider that it was not the state that built canals, railways, the London Underground and laid telegraph cables across the Atlantic; it was people who set up the first charities for alcoholics, the homeless, single mothers; people who created product and service certification standards such as the Fairtrade Mark and Soil Association; people who created wine, airplanes, jewelry, radio, TV, bread, the personal computer, buttons and smartphones. Britain’s Royal National Lifeboat service is charity and volunteer based, as are many of America’s rural fire services.

We complain constantly about out-of-touch bureaucrats making daft rules; spending billions, our billions, on pointless wars, failed NHS projects, obsolete-at-birth nuclear submarines, overpriced rail schemes and a fiscally disastrous nuclear power establishment. We desperately wish that our rulers would stop waging wars and pandering to the power of corporations, bailing out the bankers who supply them with thin-air money. We want them to help the disadvantaged, create rewarding employment, and defend the rights of their people. But when it comes to the crunch, this is not what ruling is about. We keep hoping that some savvy saint will get to the top and transform government into a caring and compassionate enterprise, will make a barrel of rotten apples fresh and crisp again. Dream on.

I am the proud author of a book about all this, and won’t try to summarize it here, but mention that there have been many successful cultures that progressed without a set of rulers setting the rules and telling us what we may or may not think, do or consume. Human civilization and trade preceded the concept of a ruling class, whether in South America or early Mesopotamia, tribal Europe or the Indus Valley. Cities and civilizations developed and functioned in freedom, without rulers, for thousands of years in some cases. You have to create wealth before plunderers arise.

You can imagine how difficult, often terrible, it must have been for those first generations to come under the yoke of a ruler claiming authority over their lives at the point of a sword. Today’s rulers rarely need to wave their swords, such is the compliance of their subjects to be governed, subjects who equate freedom with occasionally having influence over what flavor of ruler they get. This is not democracy, this is not self-rule or true freedom.

History shows us that when people are connected they come up with solutions to life’s social challenges while responding to all sorts of other wants and needs. Today we are more connected, and wealthier, than at any time in human history. We have the tools and the skills needed to govern ourselves from the bottom up, to supersede the power of those giant corporations in bed with government. We need to understand this and realize we are already doing the work we see as essential and still could, even if the inefficient middleman of the state were to crumble in a global financial collapse, as nearly occurred in 2008.

In short, as much as we may think this shit is essential to our lives, we may one day discover that we can live without it. There is another way.

 

Greg Sams

gregorysams.com

 

 

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Politics may look like the only game in town,
but it isn’t even the primary one. People are.

 

 


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One Response to What Flavour of S**** Will Voters Select?

    1. Very funny analogy Greg, but’s that’s all it is: an analogy. If your vote meant the difference between Bernie getting in or Hillary, say, or Corbyn or Cameron, wouldn’t you want to use it?

      Comment by Christopher J Stone on 9 May, 2016 at 11:35 am

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