We are the People of the Year

When FOX Noise got the word, they predictably hit the rhetorical roof. How dare they compare those filthy hippies in Zuccotti Park to the good people of the Arab Spring who are fighting for the rights that have been denied to them for too long! Uber-dunce Brian Kilmeade, one of the hosts of FOX and Friends, giddily noted that Time Magazine had in the past awarded the "Man of the Year" title to the likes of Josef Stalin and Adolf Hitler. It went right over the head of this jackass that the title "person of the year" is not necessarily a judgement of someone's "niceness", but rather that person's capacity as a news-maker. That's why the Ayatolla Khomeini was named Time's 1979 Man of the Year - and not the cast of One Day at a Time. What an idiot.

I am the person of the year. So are you.

You don't have to be down in Zuccotti Park. You don't have to be on the streets of Oakland, California or Madison, Wisconsin or Austin, Texas or South Bend, Indiana. You won't have to be out in Ulme Park in Poughkeepsie, NY this afternoon at 4 PM in order to be a part of this movement. That's why the worldwide Occupy movement is so frightening, not only to the corporate media, but to our "rulers" as well. Jello Biafra (photo left) is the former lead singer of the legendary political punk band The Dead Kennedys. He is today a lecturer who has released a number of spoken-word CD's on his Alternative Tentacles record label . Ten years ago, in a statement that is truly sunning in hindsight, he advised us, "Don't criticize the media, become the media!" A decade ago his words left some of us scratching our clueless heads. Today we know what he was talking about. We are the media. The revolution is being televised!

Thank you, Steve Jobs.

The order is rapidly fading. We are no longer reliant on the three-network-monte game for our news and information. It's no longer just the cable news channels that corner the market of ideas. The old media is now almost irrelevant. You and I are now the nightly news. You and I are now Huntley and Brinkley. You and I are now the managing editors of this broadcast. ABC, NBC and CBS no longer hold all the cards. Although I do miss the Ed Sullivan Show - I gotta tell ya.

With our laptops and our iPhones we are grabbing this country by the lapels and shaking it back into consciousness. Fifty years ago all we had to rely on were a handful of antique mimeograph machines. This is something else entirely. This is an information revolution. Will the plutocracy try to shut us down? Maybe. They'll never know what hit them if they do though. Yesterday Mitch McConnell was threatening - once again - to shut the government down. That's nothing! We can shut this entire country down if we want to. I know we can do it, too. They may have the money; we've got the numbers. Power to the people, ya dig? This is for keeps, baby! We are the media. We are their worst nightmare come-to-life a thousandfold. We are tens-of-millions of Hunter Thompsons risen from the dead. Wow! Just picture that! That's what I call a Ralph Steadman sketch waiting to happen! Ralph???

I've had enough of reading things
By NEU-rotic, PSY-chotic, pig-headed politicians
All I want is some truth!
Just gimme some truth!

-John Lennon

Get the message out. You don't need to be a rock star or a journalist or a reporter or a poet laureate. You don't need to be a bestselling author or a Nobel Prize-winning scientist or an Oscar-winning actor. You don't need to be Rachel Maddow, Michael Moore or Noam Chomskey or Keith Olbermann (although it helps). You don't need to own a computer. You don't even need access to one. Spread the message the old fashioned way: Write a letter to the editor of your local newspaper. I had one published just last week. And if all of the above fail, go to your nearest mountaintop and shout the truth from there!

"How long? NOT LONG!"

-Martin Luther King

These are the salad days of a movement that is going to turn America - and the planet earth - around. How long it will take is anybody's guess; but I cannot help but be inspired by the good Doctor King's words. I'm also reminded of Supreme Court Justice Lois Brandeis when he said that America will either have one of two things: extreme income inequality or democracy. It cannot - it will not - have both. Yeah. We're gonna have democracy alright. You can take that to the bank. On second thought, stuff it under the mattress. It's probably safer there.

You want all the proof you need that we are now living in a plutocratic dictatorship? Here it is:

Just suppose for a minute that I was the supervisor of a small village somewhere in upstate New York. I once ran for supervisor of Goshen so we'll make that our hypothetical location. Now imagine that at a Town Hall meeting one night, I cheerfully announced to the hardworking citizens of that lovely little burg that I had "misplaced" a hundred-thousand dollars in taxpayer money - their money. What do you think would happen to me? They would drag me out of the place in handcuffs. They would then hang me from the nearest tree. Come to think about it, that's probably what would have happened eventually. I'm awfully glad I lost that election. Honestly.

Now picture this if you will: Just a few days ago, former New Jersey Governor and billionaire John Corzine admitted to a panel of lawmakers that the investment firm that he was the head of "misplaced" over a billion dollars in investors' money. Now just what the hell do you think happened to him? He was allowed to walk out of the place, free as a freakin' bird. Does it puzzle you just a tad that no one from Goldman Sachs is not at this moment rotting in federal prison - or has even been brought up on charges??? We're living under a plutocratic dictatorship. Open your eyes. Take action NOW.

Wasn't deregulation a really neat idea? And they say they can't understand our rage? HELLO???

The Democrats in general - and President Obama in particular - would be foolish to try and capitalize on this rage. If they had bothered to remember a long time ago that they are (or were) the party of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and had had the guts to stand up to the right wing extremism of the last three decades, we probably wouldn't be brow-deep in the economic quagmire we find ourselves in today. That worthless party is within five years of finding themselves where the Republicans are at this moment; beyond redemption. If they know what's good for them they'll clean up their act - pretty damned quick. They have got to stop nominating these pathetic, right wing Blue Dogs. Otherwise, within the next five years a new party will emerge from the wreckage of their incompetence and indifference.

This week the spokespersons for the plutocracy have been predicting the end of the movement which is now engulfing the world. The joke's on them. I really hate to be quoting the Carpenters here but Frank Zappa doesn't have anything apropos for this particular moment: "We've only just begun".

Everybody sing!! "SHARING HORIZONS THAT ARE NEW TO US!!!" I'm sorry. I'll stop.

See you at the occupation, kiddies!

Tom Degan
Defeated 2000 Candidate for Supervisor of Goshen, New York
tomdegan@frontiernet.net

SUGGESTED READING:

Lincoln at Gettysburg
by Gary Wills

"....and that government - of the people, by the people, for the people - shall not perish from the earth."

Imagine that.

AFTERTHOUGHT:

I'm not the only person ranting out there in cyberspace, folks. Here is a link to a new blog by a guy named Bryan Raines. It ain't too shabby:

Time to Rant

It's time for all of us to do some serious ranting. Seriously.

Please, join me on Facebook:

http://www.facebook.com/tomdegan

Cheers!