It's gaslighting of the have-nots, likewise done to suppress all key truths: 9/11, need to mandate Covid-19 vaccinations, C02, 'unprovoked' Russian aggression in Ukraine, Gulf of Tonkin, etc. etc.
Most people may be reluctant to tell lies, to steal, to kill. However some pathological people seem to have no compunction about lying, stealing, or killing. And so many of them succeed in getting into "leadership" positions of government and other institutions.
And. Bob. that is because of their insatiable drive for power and control over others. We need to find away to weed out these folks before they can do such damage. We need to have competency tests for high public office, just as we do for licenses to fly airplanes, conduct surgery, and other specialized activities that affect people's lives. HOW that can be done needs a lot of discussion, but moral competency is one criterion.
As I often say, the egalitarians in a local community should be the sovereign power in that community, meeting in their local assembly. Any person in a "high public office" would be a person with only such power as was delegated to them by the local assembly of egalitarians and they could be recalled from their office whenever the egalitarians meeting in their local assembly wanted. Given this method of government, it might be reasonable to require a person to demonstrate by a test that they have whatever competency is necessary for the proper exercise of the specific power that is delegated to them.
In the Spanish revolution Buenoventura Durutti was the leader/commander of the famous Durutti Column voluntary militia force. I have read a biography of Durutti. I don't recall him ever taking a competency test. People followed his leadership because they trusted him based on his previous years of activism and leadership of the anarchist movement. I suspect that local assemblies of egalitarians will likewise rely on their experience with a person when deciding to delegate any power to them. What do you think?
Sounds reasonable, but in the present context, LACK of competency testing is again (groan) providing Biden vs Trump for the most important office in the land. By any such reasonable test, both wold have been eliminated in the early going.
But aside from occasionally shooting a hunting partner, Dick Cheney would have passed any competency test (when he was a young Vice President), right? :)
thanks John for writing this. I accept your analysis and rational for configuring society along egalitarian principles. I grapple with what will conceivably motivate people to organize and take a strong stand. Many classical leftists appeal to class war, taking down the plutocrats, and changing society. But, the working classes don't seem to rally around opposition to the plutocracy, I suppose on the false grounds that maybe someday, I too, could get really rich, and would want to keep my wealth. However, the vast majority in society do want fairness, access to education, good clean nourishing food, a place to call home, heat in the winter, electricity year round; and health care, and time for a vacation. But, for all of this desire, there really isn't much of a groundswell of critique of the power elite. This is why I think calling out the big and most significant state crimes, like the JFK assassination, the others in the 1960's; Iran / Contra; the 9/11 attacks and subsequent anthrax attack, and now the Covid "plandemic" and the Ukraine and now Gaza wars: all founded on deception to cover up the brazen power grab each event represents. I feel that by addressing state crimes and teh big lies that cover them up, we can inspire a core group of egalitarians to take the fight to the door step of the state. There are a lot of people in the truth movement struggling, and getting the egalitarians to speak to the same concerns can grow the movement.
You raise many important points and questions here. I'll try to respond to them.
"What will motivate people to organize and take a stront stand?" As I have often said, I believe the answer to this question is that it will take enabling (by hook or by crook) people to learn what the ruling class works very hard to prevent them from knowing, which is that ALREADY they are the vast majority in wanting to remove the rich from power to have real, not fake, democracy with no rich and no poor. I suggest you ask random people, just as I did in this video ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95b3SmBYwfU ) if they think this goal is a good idea or a bad idea. You will find that the great majority (even as found to be the case at a pro-Trump rally) say it's a good (or a great!) idea. I will even send you stickers with "Let's remove the rich from power..." to show people to make asking them the question easier to do. My article, "What Causes a Political Sea Change" is about what happens when most people learn a) that their anti-establishment aim is morally just, and b) that the great majority of people support that aim: https://www.pdrboston.org/what-causes-a-political-sea-change .
Regarding "But, for all of this desire, there really isn't much of a groundswell of critique of the power elite" I suggest you ASK random people what they think of the power elite. What is the basis of your "there really isn't much..." words? Is it that people aren't calling for egalitarian revolution? Please understand that the reason the millions of people engaged in all the various reform struggles--this includes all the labor strikes and protests/demos for raising the minimum wage and efforts to form tenant organizations and get affordable housing and protests against students forced into debt-slavery and protests against police brutality and all the letter-writing campaigns and most of the charity efforts and lately anti-Zionism demos, etc. etc.--do NOT articulate radical critiques of the power elite and do not call for revolution is because they (wrongly!) believe that if they did express such radical views then they would lose the support of the general public, that they would "scare people away." As my video (2nd half) demonstrates, the truth is the opposite: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acmNtxyzEf4 . This is why it is so crucial to help people learn the truth (that I described in my first paragraph above).
An example of the above is this. I went to a $15 minimum wage rally in downtown Boston in front of a McDonalds. There were hundreds of people at the rally listening to speeches by the leaders of this movement. None of the speakers even HINTED at the idea of removing the rich from power or any radical critique of the power elite. I went around from person to person at the rally as they were listening to the speeches, and asked them to read "This I Believe" (read it here, it's an egalitarian revolutionary declaration of belief: https://www.pdrboston.org/_files/ugd/20615e_6c40d86078da6ea32d6379867405339e.pdf ) and sign it if they agreed. Every person (it was many!) signed it! (Read who else has signed it at https://www.pdrboston.org/who-has-signed-this-i-believe . But none of the people who signed This I Believe were at all critical of their leaders for not even hinting at this radical critique of the power elite. The reason they were not critical is because they AGREED with the leaders that to express such radical views would "scare away" the general public whose support they needed.
The reason you don't see people expressing a radical critique of the ruling class is because people self-censor themselves. The other reason they self-censor is, of course, fear of the consequences--meaning harm caused to them by the ruling class, their boss, etc--if they start talking about overthrowing the rich. The antidote to this fear is numbers; knowing one is joined by the vast majority and is not alone in having an egalitarian revolutionary aspiration. Hence the key strategy TODAY is to help people learn they are not alone in their egalitarian revolutionary aspirations
Regarding "I suppose on the false grounds that maybe someday, I too, could get really rich, and would want to keep my wealth": When I talked to literally thousands of people on the street about removing the rich from power to have no rich and no poor, the number of people who told me that was a bad idea because they expected/hoped to be rich one day could be counted with less than the fingers of one hand. The ruling class promotes this ("they all hope to be rich one day" idea just as they promote ideas such as "Russia's unprovoked aggression in Ukraine."
As I have said elsewhere, the problem is NOT that people are not angry at the power elite. They already are! If, contrary to fact, it were true that people were not angry at the power elite, that they were not angry at being treated like dirt by the rich in countless everyday routine non-secret ways (many of which I discuss at https://open.substack.com/pub/johnspritzler/p/why-have-no-rich-and-no-poor?r=1iggn&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web ), in other words if people were APATHETIC (meaning not caring) rather than (as is the case) HOPELESS (because of feeling all alone regarding truly solving the problem at its root) THEN it would make sense to think, "We need to find something that will make people be angry for a change, something so horrible that they cannot fail to be horrified by it." I think this is the thinking behind the notion that issues like 9/11 and JFK assassination etc. are the most important issues to be talking about. As I have said before, however, these issues--what I call SECRET evils because most people do not know about them or their evilness--can only anger the very small number who know the truth about them; it's a small number because the mass media never tell the truth AND (this is key!) people don't know about them from their own personal experience the way they DO know about the zillion NON-secret everyday routine openly done ways that the rich treat people like dirt.
The reason my substacks talk about these non-secret evil ways that the rich treat people like dirt is to illustrate HOW to talk about them in a way that builds an egalitarian revolutionary movement, a way that encourages people to say why they really hate being treated this way, namely because it is not the way society ought to be, it is not they way things would be in a proper egalitarian society. THIS is how to build a truly radical revolutionary movement based on the anger that people ALREADY have against the power elite. Why do you think it was soj EASY for me to get 500 of my neighbors to pose with this egalitarian revolutionary sign (see them at https://www.flickr.com/photos/182436693@N06/ )? It was because I talked to them about what was on their mind--the lack of affordable housing--and I gave them a way to say what they REALLY thought the solution must be for that (and all the other) problems. I never got into arguments with people about whether an egalitarian revolution was necessary or not. They all KNEW it was. The controversial question was never whether we needed such a revolution, the controversial question was whether it was POSSIBLE. We need to help people see that it IS possible because they are the vast majority in wanting to make it happen.
Sorry for using a lot of words here. But the questions you raise are fundamental and excellent, and it's hard to do justice to them with just a short quip.
Most people may be reluctant to tell lies, to steal, to kill. However some pathological people seem to have no compunction about lying, stealing, or killing. And so many of them succeed in getting into "leadership" positions of government and other institutions.
And. Bob. that is because of their insatiable drive for power and control over others. We need to find away to weed out these folks before they can do such damage. We need to have competency tests for high public office, just as we do for licenses to fly airplanes, conduct surgery, and other specialized activities that affect people's lives. HOW that can be done needs a lot of discussion, but moral competency is one criterion.
As I often say, the egalitarians in a local community should be the sovereign power in that community, meeting in their local assembly. Any person in a "high public office" would be a person with only such power as was delegated to them by the local assembly of egalitarians and they could be recalled from their office whenever the egalitarians meeting in their local assembly wanted. Given this method of government, it might be reasonable to require a person to demonstrate by a test that they have whatever competency is necessary for the proper exercise of the specific power that is delegated to them.
In the Spanish revolution Buenoventura Durutti was the leader/commander of the famous Durutti Column voluntary militia force. I have read a biography of Durutti. I don't recall him ever taking a competency test. People followed his leadership because they trusted him based on his previous years of activism and leadership of the anarchist movement. I suspect that local assemblies of egalitarians will likewise rely on their experience with a person when deciding to delegate any power to them. What do you think?
Sounds reasonable, but in the present context, LACK of competency testing is again (groan) providing Biden vs Trump for the most important office in the land. By any such reasonable test, both wold have been eliminated in the early going.
But aside from occasionally shooting a hunting partner, Dick Cheney would have passed any competency test (when he was a young Vice President), right? :)
Not necessarily.One needs evidence of a moral compass.
thanks John for writing this. I accept your analysis and rational for configuring society along egalitarian principles. I grapple with what will conceivably motivate people to organize and take a strong stand. Many classical leftists appeal to class war, taking down the plutocrats, and changing society. But, the working classes don't seem to rally around opposition to the plutocracy, I suppose on the false grounds that maybe someday, I too, could get really rich, and would want to keep my wealth. However, the vast majority in society do want fairness, access to education, good clean nourishing food, a place to call home, heat in the winter, electricity year round; and health care, and time for a vacation. But, for all of this desire, there really isn't much of a groundswell of critique of the power elite. This is why I think calling out the big and most significant state crimes, like the JFK assassination, the others in the 1960's; Iran / Contra; the 9/11 attacks and subsequent anthrax attack, and now the Covid "plandemic" and the Ukraine and now Gaza wars: all founded on deception to cover up the brazen power grab each event represents. I feel that by addressing state crimes and teh big lies that cover them up, we can inspire a core group of egalitarians to take the fight to the door step of the state. There are a lot of people in the truth movement struggling, and getting the egalitarians to speak to the same concerns can grow the movement.
Hi Chuck,
You raise many important points and questions here. I'll try to respond to them.
"What will motivate people to organize and take a stront stand?" As I have often said, I believe the answer to this question is that it will take enabling (by hook or by crook) people to learn what the ruling class works very hard to prevent them from knowing, which is that ALREADY they are the vast majority in wanting to remove the rich from power to have real, not fake, democracy with no rich and no poor. I suggest you ask random people, just as I did in this video ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95b3SmBYwfU ) if they think this goal is a good idea or a bad idea. You will find that the great majority (even as found to be the case at a pro-Trump rally) say it's a good (or a great!) idea. I will even send you stickers with "Let's remove the rich from power..." to show people to make asking them the question easier to do. My article, "What Causes a Political Sea Change" is about what happens when most people learn a) that their anti-establishment aim is morally just, and b) that the great majority of people support that aim: https://www.pdrboston.org/what-causes-a-political-sea-change .
Regarding "But, for all of this desire, there really isn't much of a groundswell of critique of the power elite" I suggest you ASK random people what they think of the power elite. What is the basis of your "there really isn't much..." words? Is it that people aren't calling for egalitarian revolution? Please understand that the reason the millions of people engaged in all the various reform struggles--this includes all the labor strikes and protests/demos for raising the minimum wage and efforts to form tenant organizations and get affordable housing and protests against students forced into debt-slavery and protests against police brutality and all the letter-writing campaigns and most of the charity efforts and lately anti-Zionism demos, etc. etc.--do NOT articulate radical critiques of the power elite and do not call for revolution is because they (wrongly!) believe that if they did express such radical views then they would lose the support of the general public, that they would "scare people away." As my video (2nd half) demonstrates, the truth is the opposite: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acmNtxyzEf4 . This is why it is so crucial to help people learn the truth (that I described in my first paragraph above).
An example of the above is this. I went to a $15 minimum wage rally in downtown Boston in front of a McDonalds. There were hundreds of people at the rally listening to speeches by the leaders of this movement. None of the speakers even HINTED at the idea of removing the rich from power or any radical critique of the power elite. I went around from person to person at the rally as they were listening to the speeches, and asked them to read "This I Believe" (read it here, it's an egalitarian revolutionary declaration of belief: https://www.pdrboston.org/_files/ugd/20615e_6c40d86078da6ea32d6379867405339e.pdf ) and sign it if they agreed. Every person (it was many!) signed it! (Read who else has signed it at https://www.pdrboston.org/who-has-signed-this-i-believe . But none of the people who signed This I Believe were at all critical of their leaders for not even hinting at this radical critique of the power elite. The reason they were not critical is because they AGREED with the leaders that to express such radical views would "scare away" the general public whose support they needed.
The reason you don't see people expressing a radical critique of the ruling class is because people self-censor themselves. The other reason they self-censor is, of course, fear of the consequences--meaning harm caused to them by the ruling class, their boss, etc--if they start talking about overthrowing the rich. The antidote to this fear is numbers; knowing one is joined by the vast majority and is not alone in having an egalitarian revolutionary aspiration. Hence the key strategy TODAY is to help people learn they are not alone in their egalitarian revolutionary aspirations
Regarding "I suppose on the false grounds that maybe someday, I too, could get really rich, and would want to keep my wealth": When I talked to literally thousands of people on the street about removing the rich from power to have no rich and no poor, the number of people who told me that was a bad idea because they expected/hoped to be rich one day could be counted with less than the fingers of one hand. The ruling class promotes this ("they all hope to be rich one day" idea just as they promote ideas such as "Russia's unprovoked aggression in Ukraine."
As I have said elsewhere, the problem is NOT that people are not angry at the power elite. They already are! If, contrary to fact, it were true that people were not angry at the power elite, that they were not angry at being treated like dirt by the rich in countless everyday routine non-secret ways (many of which I discuss at https://open.substack.com/pub/johnspritzler/p/why-have-no-rich-and-no-poor?r=1iggn&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web ), in other words if people were APATHETIC (meaning not caring) rather than (as is the case) HOPELESS (because of feeling all alone regarding truly solving the problem at its root) THEN it would make sense to think, "We need to find something that will make people be angry for a change, something so horrible that they cannot fail to be horrified by it." I think this is the thinking behind the notion that issues like 9/11 and JFK assassination etc. are the most important issues to be talking about. As I have said before, however, these issues--what I call SECRET evils because most people do not know about them or their evilness--can only anger the very small number who know the truth about them; it's a small number because the mass media never tell the truth AND (this is key!) people don't know about them from their own personal experience the way they DO know about the zillion NON-secret everyday routine openly done ways that the rich treat people like dirt.
The reason my substacks talk about these non-secret evil ways that the rich treat people like dirt is to illustrate HOW to talk about them in a way that builds an egalitarian revolutionary movement, a way that encourages people to say why they really hate being treated this way, namely because it is not the way society ought to be, it is not they way things would be in a proper egalitarian society. THIS is how to build a truly radical revolutionary movement based on the anger that people ALREADY have against the power elite. Why do you think it was soj EASY for me to get 500 of my neighbors to pose with this egalitarian revolutionary sign (see them at https://www.flickr.com/photos/182436693@N06/ )? It was because I talked to them about what was on their mind--the lack of affordable housing--and I gave them a way to say what they REALLY thought the solution must be for that (and all the other) problems. I never got into arguments with people about whether an egalitarian revolution was necessary or not. They all KNEW it was. The controversial question was never whether we needed such a revolution, the controversial question was whether it was POSSIBLE. We need to help people see that it IS possible because they are the vast majority in wanting to make it happen.
Sorry for using a lot of words here. But the questions you raise are fundamental and excellent, and it's hard to do justice to them with just a short quip.
What do you think of all this?