Des DownUnder On Sundays

By Des Rutherford | ADELAIDE, AUSTRALIA -- Divide 99% by 1% and Conquer

So we have the 99%; mostly the deprived, the downtrodden and the poverty stricken. The 1% are from the richest people in society. They control the corporations and through lobbying they control the political-economic direction of the state. The 1% does everything in its power,which is considerable, to set parts of the 99% onto destructive paths against other parts of the 99%. This is the 'rule' of divide and conquer. It is enormously powerful because as the mass of humanity is divided, their will to work is supplanted by the will to merely survive. Encouraging mere survival, instead of enabling contributions to society, is nothing more than an extension of the greed and avarice, which is at the core of the economic system that threatens to enforce the plutocracy fast replacing the U.S. Political system.

The Occupy Movement is merely the vanguard of peaceful change, or frighteningly, a participant in its alternative, violent revolt. So far, the violence has come mainly from the plutocrats in defence of what is more and more obviously a corrupt and deficient corporate-political system, overseen by sociopaths, or just plain greedy individuals, boards and lobbyists with no moral or civic conscience at all. They see their job as doing whatever it takes to maximise profit for the shareholders, represented in that oxymoron known as the 'corporate identity.' If that means people go without the essentials of life, living in deprivation, or even if that means simply leaving people in the gutter to die, then that corporate identity has no ability to recognise such human suffering.

It has been long forgotten that the reason we formed tribes was to assist each other to live. In the mixtures of historical codes of conduct, sometimes in defiance of authorities, and sometimes with their assistance, we humans developed civilisations which are now on the brink of destroying all the promises of our sacrifices, knowledge and growth. Our once freely given help and assistance is now a torturous means for greed and avarice to enslave the deprived, and for profiteers to seek even further wealth at the expense of the people; again, without care for human dignity, let alone life.

There is a certain common sense residing in the 99% that escapes the 1%. The revolts against the tyrants of the old world, the stand against slavery, and the fight for the recognition of equality are all the same battles that influenced the documents that make up the U.S. Constitution. Where once purer forms of progressive and conservative opinions held the political congress in healthy Constitutional tension, we now suffer from ideas without experience, concepts without ideals or conscience, and uneducated greed betraying our goals of work, freedom and peace for all. Consequence is a conveniently absent consideration in the land of the brave, not so new world.

As the U.S. goes, so too does it influence the rest of our now global community. The corporate control of the Internet is the last stand in this battle for control over knowledge, and this time the people, the masses, the 99%, must claim their freedom of thought if human ingenuity is to survive. The demand for copyright protection is merely an admittance of political inadequacy in solving the protection of intellectual property . We must maintain the freedom for current creative persons to build on the creativity of the past generations. Lose the liberty which the Internet has given us and we lose our future freedom to discover what is being done to us by authorities, corporate, plutocratic or otherwise.

The corruption of democracy into a plutocracy is the heir to Hitler's fascism. The 99% are being bullied and beaten in the streets by the armies of the plutocrats. In addition, distinct from those peaceful believers of so many religious philosophies, the corporate arm of organised religion, a long time associate of despots, deny, forestall, and repress human rights, twist their beliefs to mean whatever will bring them money, power and notoriety. This is another pathway of dividing and conquering by distracting the masses with a false argument about variants in belief in a god, which they claim cares about what consenting humans do with their genitals, or which gender they marry. The god they serve is the god of money and they hypocritically claim their profit in the name of their Lord. Their aim is to make the plutocracy into a theocracy, a very wealthy theocracy which limits human growth, knowledge, and love. And that could mean we are headed towards a pluto-theocracy.

The 99% movement innately understands that the foundations of the U.S. are being seriously confronted. Deeper than that understanding, however, is the recognition of the undermining of facts.

Effective education, health, and economy are all subject to the elected representatives not misconstruing the practical workings of the political environment. Facts and beliefs must not be mistaken for each other.

At the moment there is abject denial of bipartisanship, confronting a naïve lack of practical knowledge of how to tension the balance of power with the right to govern.

The political pendulum needs room to swing between the opposite forces of good government, but right now the pendulum is dizzyingly spinning on its own axis. It is bewildered by the difference between illiterate right wing candidates, themselves struggling to even look intelligent, and the slightly less right wing representatives, ludicrously referred to as the left wing. What they have in common is the corruption of a once noble attempt to revolt against a tyranny that denied freedom; a freedom which is the right of every human being. That revolt is now in the hands of the 99%, but the 1% has the handcuffs and ankle chains. Why do I fear that too many people think the handcuffs and ankle chains are not a threat to our freedom, to our human development, and future?

Could it be that we will be handcuffed and ankle chained to each other after we have been divided and conquered? Could too many of us already be so chained and repressed?

If you think the answer is, “No,” then think again.