Power and the Tiny Acts of Rebellion

FOCUS: Apocalypse Fairly Soon

FOCUS: Five Facts That Put America to Shame

The NDAA's Coup d'Etat Foiled

FOCUS: The Commencement Address That Won't Be Given

A Victory for All of Us

Chris Hedges: "We must take to the street. We must jam as many wrenches into the corporate system as we can. We must not make it easy for them. But we also must no longer live in self-delusion. This is a battle that will outlive us."

A protester holds Adbuster's Corporate American Flag at Bush's 2nd inauguration, 01/20/05. (photo: Jonathan McIntosh)

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+24 # RealM5 2010-11-22 10:07

As your article points out, Kucinich and Sanders are the only two still standing who have not sold out.

+17 # r.d.keene 2010-11-22 12:18

Have you seen the European soccer player who is telling Europeans to remove all their money from the banks. He said marches don't work anymore. For health care I don't know but someone clever will come up with something...everyone showing up at the ER. Taking over the schools and first and foremost stop watching TV.

+16 # DurangoKid 2010-11-22 13:44

You cannot reform a shark by feeding it tofu. Hedges is right. People justify their cruelty by hiding behind institutional barriers. Institutions are not reformable. When they act as a shield, they must be abolished. It's not enough to put new people in old institutions. At the end of the oil age many institutions will teeter. A good push will be all that's required to topple them. Our job is to bring this about by eroding the foundations of these institutions. We should be the rot in the timbers that hold them up. The simplest tactic is to get out of debt and save your money as cash and coin. Deny the institutions your bondage to debt and usury. Neither a borrower nor lender be. The weakest link is capital in the form of money.

+12 # rob 2010-11-22 15:13

"I do not know if we can win this battle. I suspect we cannot."
Wars are won, one battle at a time. There will always be battles lost. But we must Never give up on the war!

+4 # Barbara 2010-11-22 15:33

Today in a town where the majority of people are from China and few speak English (San Mareno, Cal) In the front of the US Post Office a person was excising his First Amendment with a Large Poster of President Obama with a Hitler Mustash (sic) and represented as a Nazi. There was no one there to oppose him so I know the disrespect shown him will not only weaken us more but will give the impression that this type of bigotry and sickness is what Americans are made of.

+5 # Dez 2010-11-23 09:40

Respectfully, Barbara ... unless you heard about it after the fact, why weren't YOU the person to challenge him?

+15 # Dan Fletcher 2010-11-22 18:44

I truly hope that RSN readers everywhere will read this article a second time and really examine it in depth. The legitimate avenues for change are dying or dead. The opportunities for negotiating with the powers that be are closed. Change from within the system is impossible because in the end, we really don't matter any more. This article makes plain the powerlessness that we have to live with and the lack of our protests being heard or heeded. Our fate is not in our hands. We must acquiesce or must steel ourselves for the coming wars of resistance, the insurgency ahead which may be our only way of ever achieving a government of, by and for the people. This kind of government is now dead. It is over. It no longer exists in America (to the degree it ever did). This battle will outlive us, but we must fight or surrender. All other options are off the table. And remember that the fight was brought to us. We must engage in it in every manner we can, peacefully or by any other means necessary, or simply be consumed. The assault on us will not lessen until those systems and parties attacking us are destroyed.
Pardon my language, but lets stop being a bunch of pussies..er, sheeple.

+6 # sabiha1 2010-11-23 00:10

Corporatios do not fund candidates out of charity. They do it for their prospective pound of flesh. Wars are also fought so that the arms corporations keep earning their billions. Death and destruction is just collateral damage. Unrevealed statistics! Voters are ignorant, rulers are arrogant. Things won't change.

+2 # bjw 2010-11-26 09:40

There are plenty enough rebels around. The problem with rebels is that they rebel against each other as well and waste a lot of the energy needed to organize against the oligarchy. So far, we are just annoying little nippers-at- heels and no serious threat.

Things can change when they get bad enough.

+2 # Jim Cap 2010-11-26 18:50

Remember Norman Morrison?

Morrison was a 31-year-old Quaker from Baltimore who, in 1965, handed his infant daughter off to a bystander, doused himself with kerosene and set himself ablaze under Robert McNamara's window at the Pentagon.

Morrison wanted to demonstrate to the world that he was willing to die---to do the ultimate in violence to himself---to put the killing and horror of America's invasion of Vietnam in front of the conscience of our citizens.

Imagine people burning themselves in front of the offices of WellPoint, UnitedHealth Group, Aetna, Cigna and Humana, especially after their treatment was denied by these companies working to maximize profits at the expense of human health and dignity.

What would America say if a man, whose 5 year old daughter was denied care, burned himself in front of the offices of WellPoint, or UnitedHealth Group, or Aetna, or Cigna, or Humana?

Small acts of courage, self-sacrifice, and refusal to "go along". We may be seeing new Norman Morrisons soon...

+2 # Dan Fletcher 2010-11-26 22:28

Jim, you got that right. I am barely containing a friend of mine right now. As a Quaker, he has my sympathy and I fear for the violence in this man. Violence turned inward is pretty much the same as violence turned outward. As a Quaker I would have argued this with Morrison. Despite the nay sayers, there is a growing tide of discontent and it is going to produce some terrible results soon.
And for Glen...if you're up on Alinsky's logic, it only takes 5% to 10% of the population at maximum, to turn a revolutionary tide.

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