Citizens United – Engaging Peace

You don’t have to vote for a party!

Posted on October 31, 2018October 31, 2018 by kathiemm

By Kathie MM

The floodgates are open: “Vote, vote, vote!” “Vote for me!” “Vote for him!” “Vote for her!”

Engaging Peace has contributed to the flood. Like millions of other people in this country (and around the world), we see the American flag becoming increasingly a symbol of racism, sexism, hatred, violence, and environmental holocaust. And we believe it’s not too late to start turning the tide.

Many people are asking, “Why vote? The politicians are all equally corrupt, it doesn’t matter which party label they wear.”

So, don’t vote for parties. Vote for candidates based on their demonstrated principles, their records, their affiliations. They are not all alike. You have almost a week; check into every candidate and every issue on the ballot for your district (if you have not voted already). New voices are speaking up for old and neglected principles like peace, social justice, the environment, democratic principles, moral principles. Find out who they are. Vote for them.

Being an activist isn’t easy. Promoting true democracy, representative democracy, isn’t easy, But many people are recognizing that government by the rich means government for the rich, and that’s not a government that serves most people well. While you’re checking out the candidates for this year’s elections, check out their social class background too. If you want a more representative government, if, for example, you are in favor of Medicare for All, if you recognize that Citizen’s United has given the ultra-rich too much control over the government and its policies, then identify the working class candidates on your local ballot and help them open the doors to change. Grass roots grow.

Finally, 2020 is only two years away. Unless you want more of the same, start planning now for that next challenge to democracy.* You can do it.

*A good place to start is reading Dr. Nicholas Carnes’ article “Working-class people are underrepresented in politics. The problem isn’t voters.”

Honoring a national hero, Part 2.

Posted on August 12, 2016 by kathiemm

By Kathie Malley-Morrison

Andrew Bacevich has confronted our nation with some hard truths about the dismal state of democracy in this troubled and troubling election year. He has also shared his wisdom on the forces that led to our current debacle.

Factor 1 is the evil effects of money. Bacevich suggests that people read Harvard Professor Lawrence Lessig’s book, Republic Lost, Version 2.0., or see Lessig’s 18 minute TED talk . The message is not a happy one: “Professor Lessig argues persuasively that unless the United States radically changes the way it finances political campaigns, we’re pretty much doomed to see our democracy wither and die.”

Factor 2 is “the perverse impact of identity politics on policy”—the assumption that increasing diversity in our leaders will necessarily lead to better politics, truer democracy. Bacevich comments: “In the end, it’s not identity that matters but ideas and their implementation… Putting a woman in charge of national security policy will not in itself amend the defects exhibited in recent years. For that, the obsolete principles with which Clinton along with the rest of Washington remains enamored will have to be jettisoned. In his own bizarre way (albeit without a clue as to a plausible alternative), Donald Trump seems to get that; Hillary Clinton does not.

Factor 3 is “the substitution of “reality” for reality.” To understand this principle, Bacevich recommends reading Daniel Boorstin’s book The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America. Presidential campaigns today are, according to Bacevich, using a term from Boorstin, “pseudo-events.” By now, he comments, “most Americans know better than to take at face value anything candidates say or promise along the way. We’re in on the joke — or at least we think we are. Reinforcing that perception on a daily basis are media outlets that have abandoned mere reporting in favor of enhancing the spectacle of the moment.”

So, what do you, the reader, think? Is democracy being steadily subverted by the rich and powerful, their banks and international corporations legitimized as human citizens by the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision? Is electing a man of color or a woman to the nation’s highest office enough to ensure that democracy can be strengthened and extended to all? Can we preserve democracy if the corporate media create exciting public spectacles that serve to protect both the status quo and those very same rich and powerful people who control them and much of what goes on in politics? Or do none of these factors seem like the real problem to you? Is our democracy doing just fine?

Corporate America: Purveyor of Inhuman “Rights”

Posted on June 30, 2014June 30, 2014 by kathiemm

When you hear the word “rights” in the American corporate media, it is usually preceded by “Constitutional” rather than “human.”

The Supreme Court has declared that corporations have the same rights as people. Their first declaration of this principle came as early as 1818 and most recently in 2010 in the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission case.

The Citizens United decision serves the latest cabal of robber barons and further empowers the military industrial complex, which may be credited by the Court as having enough brain to exercise rights but has manifested little in regard to a heart.

Indeed, in exercising their putative Constitutional rights, the profiteers of the military industrial complex have shown an enormous talent for crushing human rights both within the borders of the United States and in other lands wounded by US hegemony.

In one of the latest examples of human rights violations in the US, the City of Detroit has been shutting off water to the poorest residents of the city, unable to pay their water bills.

The shutoffs have been linked to a push towards privatization of the water system. Like the privatization of prison management, this effort is one more giant step forward in the rush to privatization that disproportionately violates the human rights of people of color and poverty in the U.S.

Former President Jimmy Carter is appalled by the U.S. record on human rights violations.

How about you?

Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology