Keynote: Ralph Nader: The Road to Corporate Fascism
Ralph Nader says the central political issue of our time is giant corporate power and its take over of our government, plus the spread of commercial values into every nook and cranny of our culture including the commercialization of childhood, the universities and almost everything these large corporations touch. Speaking at the Washington, DC Green Festival, he also details what we can and must do about it.
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Ralph Nader
Thank God for Ralph Nader! Where would the American consumer be today but for the intense interest for the public and the hours and hours of hard work this man has selflessly contributed for the cause of freedom and justice. Has anyone noticed how our members of Congress treat Mr. Nader when he testifies in front of their panels? They give him no respect whatsoever. The media won't give him the time of day much less the respect and coverage he deserves. Why? Because he speaks the truth, something they will go to any length to obscure, cover-up, spin and twist, or keep secret. The greatest injustice of so many people who purportedly are progressive is the fallacy that he cost Gore the election in 2000 by splitting the democratic vote. What a crock! Hindsight is 20/20 and it is obvious that the Bush cartel hijacked the election process! Democratic voters were bickering amongst each other as the fascists destroyed what was left of our once proud nation. Over the following 8 years time after time the democrats in Washington rolled over and played dead or joined the gang-rape of the public. As crisis after crisis after crisis were skillfully perpetrated by the republicans the democrats said nothing in opposition, did nothing to stop the wholesale corruption of every facet of our government and the perversion of our values. The secret is out, the democratic party is really the left wing of the republican party. The conservatives who own and control everything and have no interest in change, fairness, justice, or freedom control both parties. It's obvious by the actions of the democratic majority in Washington today. Where is the change? It's business as usual. The democratic executive branch has embraced many of the policies and processes of the former regime. The justice department having been totally compromised by the Bush mob refuses to even assign a special prosecutor to investigate the greatest string of crimes to have ever been committed by public servants. Obama and the democrats had a public mandate and in the face of enormous public outcry they give their tacit good wishes to the most despicable group of despots to have passed themselves off as patriots. Well I guess crime really does pay and handsomely at that. So now the secret is out. The secret is that the national security agency has taken over and we are controlled by a shadow government. It is a black program, run from behind closed doors, and protected by secrecy. The time has come to rid ourselves of this two party dictatorship. The media is a cover for the secret department of propaganda and mind control. Time to shut them and their lies out. Let's open our eyes, get involved, and make Ralph Nader the next President of the United States. How long do you suppose he would live if we actually could? I say we give it a go. Most of us have a lifetime of slavery to look forward to if we don't get off our asses and beat the man, big brother, Mr. businessman at his own game. Come on America get outraged! How long are you going to take this crap?
Lifestyle as an instrument of corporate displacement
For all those who are unable, for whatever reason or reasons they determine for themselves, to take direct political action against the corporations, remember that refusing to participate in the corporate society and culture is also a very powerful displacement activity. The source of the corporations' power-- money-- is also their weakness, and our indignation at corporate profiteering from our lives should be our motivation to minimize and eliminate that profiteering in every way we can. Just like pulling weeds in a garden, when we consistently identify how corporations take our money, and then when we make the appropriate changes to our lives so that subsidizing those corporations with our dollars becomes unnecessary, the corporations lose power they otherwise would have had. We already know that so many tons of carbon could be prevented from being spewed into the atmosphere each year if every American merely swapped out a single incandescent light bulb in their homes with a compact fluorescent. Now imagine the impact on the corporations' profits if every American family dried even a single load of laundry a year on a clothesline instead of in their dryers. It is not so much our political apathy but our "normal" lifestyles, reprogrammed over the decades by the corporations for no other reason than to obtain profits, that are truly transferring our power from the many to the few. Americans, in theory, could virtually ignore the political process altogether, and even never say a word to one another the entire time, yet still destroy corporate hegemony by merely altering their lifestyles to conform with sustainability. Could these corporations exist in the manner they do today in a country full of Amish? No; and while that does not necessarily mean we must become as frugal as the Amish to reclaim our government, it is illustrative of a point, which is that our waste-- essentially, wasted wealth-- does not really disappear, but is transferred into aberrant corporate strength. So, when we proffer our reasons for not becoming more politically involved, regardless of how valid those reasons may be, remember that we are neither powerless nor off the hook of civic responsibility. Far from it, when the lifestyles we lead are arguably more important than the letters we write and the phone calls we make to our elected officials. In fact, such letters and phone calls should be considered indulgences of action before they are considered necessities of such, as you can imagine the hypocrisy of one who writes letters to their senator and then leaves all the lights in the house on while they drive halfway across town to get to Starbucks. You can't turn activism on its head like that; our lifestyles must come first and foremost, even before our decision to engage in direct political action, and as the author of The Seventeen Traditions I'm sure Ralph would agree with me on that.
truth
Ralph Nader and Ron Paul are the amongst few speaking truth to power (see Luke 4:18-19)
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