Four more years

George Monbiot's latest has this keeper:

Political systems that were supposed to represent everyone now return governments of millionaires, financed by and acting on behalf of billionaires.

It's funny 'cause it's true!  Oh wait, it's not funny.  Still true though.  And then there's this:

You have only to see the way the United States has savaged the Earth summit's draft declaration to grasp the scale of this problem. The word "equitable", the US insists, must be cleansed from the text. So must any mention of the right to food, water, health, the rule of law, gender equality and women's empowerment. So must a clear target of preventing two degrees of global warming. So must a commitment to change "unsustainable consumption and production patterns", and to decouple economic growth from the use of natural resources.

Most significantly, the US delegation demands the removal of many of the foundations agreed by a Republican president in Rio in 1992. In particular, it has set out to purge all mention of the core principle of that Earth summit: common but differentiated responsibilities.

You really should click through on that link he provides, which shows the actual changes made by the US and its co-conspirators to the draft.  In fact you should so really click through on that link he provides that I'm going to make the rest of this paragraph one big clickable link so that if you even innocently click in this window to change the mouse focus and accidentally nick the side of this paragraph you'll end up following it.  Please don't hate me for helping you.

That's the first most important thing people are ignoring as they obsess over the minutiae of the most inconsequential election in living memory.  Here's the second and even more important thing, which is intimately related:

LORI WALLACH: The [Trans-Pacific Partnership] requires that every signatory country conform all of its laws, regulations and administrative procedures to what are 26 chapters of very comprehensive rules, only two of which have anything to do with trade. The other 24 chapters set a whole array of corporate new privileges and rights and handcuff governments, limit regulation. So the chapter that leaked—and it’s actually on the website of Citizens Trade Campaign, it’s a national coalition for fair trade—that chapter is the chapter that sets up new rights and privileges for foreign investors, including their right to privately enforce this public treaty by suing our government, raiding our Treasury, over costs of complying with the same policies that all U.S. companies have to comply with. [...]

[E]ach of these agreements has gotten bolder, more expansive in its limits on government regulation and in its granting of corporate powers. This one could be the end, because what they intend to do is leave it open, once it’s done, for any other country to join. So, this is an agreement that ultimately could have the whole world in it as a set of binding corporate guarantees of new rights and privileges, enforced with cash sanctions and trade sanctions. It is not an exaggeration to say that the TPP threatens to become a regime of binding global governance, right at the time that the Occupy movement and movements around the world are demanding more power and control.

Which shows that even though underappreciated heroes like Wallach managed to kill the Multilateral Agreement on Investment over a decade ago, its worst provisions have shambled zombie-like through the sweaty dreams of neoliberals, waiting to find new life in yet another secretly negotiated corporate constitution with global ambitions.  (I've always found it bitterly amusing that while hyperventilating right wingers conjure up conspiracies to establish a UN-controlled one world government in nefarious plots like the attempt to increase bike ridership, corporations are taking actual, concrete and successful steps to render democratic self-governance—in the broadest sense of the phrase—all but meaningless.)

No matter which millionaire wins, the entrenchment of corporate control over every aspect of our lives and the destruction of the ecosystems in which human civilization developed will both continue without a pause.  "Four more years" isn't an aspiration—it's a threat.

Comments

[Harpfool]

"Four more years" is not even a threat - it's a certainty.
Good to see you back!

[Radical Livre]

It's a minor quibble, but that quote is actually neither funny nor true.

No political system was supposed to represent everyone. Modern political institutions were basically designed by 18\19th century plutocrats to limit (and, if possible, abolish) the power of the landed aristocracy, while increasing their own power. There were reforms since then - for better and for worse - and each country implements some details differently, but plutocracy isn't a modern corruption of the system.

Plutocracy is the system.

[John Caruso]

Thanks, Harpfool, and you're right (I didn't say so outright, but I meant that "four more years" applies no matter who wins).

Radical Livre: I get where you're coming from, though Monbiot wasn't giving a capsule history but rather summarizing popular understanding vs. reality, and he did it in a way that's much like the 99%/1% message—which is analogously flawed but nonetheless very powerful because it captures a critical truth in a way that's easy for anyone to understand. I think the notion of millionaires-working-for-billionaires has a similar ability to reach a wide audience with a simplified but important truth. Someone should start making buttons.

My own quibble with it (in the context of this posting) was "billionaires", which is also basically my quibble with the 99%/1% distinction. It's a mistake to focus too much on individuals when the core problem is corporate power. But as with Monbiot's bon mot it's nonetheless a good message that's easier to deliver to the intended audience.

[Radical Livre]

"But as with Monbiot's bon mot it's nonetheless a good message that's easier to deliver to the intended audience."

Oh, I agree, which is why I said it's a minor quibble. Anyways, thanks a lot for that link. Very interesting.

[cemmcs]

"Four more years" is very optimistic. How much more of this can we really take?

[coobek]

Mordor

[Leesburg Independent]

Monbiot chose his coda, lamenting the failure of the people to rise en masse against the plutocrats, carefully: "But we do not mobilise, perhaps because we are endlessly seduced by hope. Hope is the rope from which we all hang."

Obama was a masterful conman, seducing millions of middle-class Americans with this drivel about hope. What they didn't realize - and mostly still don't - is that the hope being delivered was for Wall Street bankers eager to avoid criminal prosecution and return to business as usual, and for American corporations ready to continue amassing record-breaking profits at the expense of social and environmental cohesion.

All the talk about Citizens United and its rather obvious impact on the Republican front distracts us from the extent to which the Democrats are in thrall to corporate interests of their own, albeit a slightly different grouping. Obama is having a field day attacking Mitt Romney's record at Bain and his offshore bank accounts, masking his own sell-out to high finance and his own neoliberal proclivities. Meanwhile, the right's increasingly ludicrous ravings about socialism serve as perfect cover for the hidden reality of plutocratic advance on all meaningful fronts. The only choice here, brilliantly marketed to a society that is brainwashed from cradle to grave by slick commercials, is between two flavors of plutocracy - overt or covert.

[shipwreckedintheocean]

Have loved your site, wanted to share my latest post which you helped inspire:
http://realchangeorfalsehope.wordpress.com/2012/09/04/18-betrayals-in-the-2012-democratic-platform/