07 April, 2013

[Political Content Post]

It has been some time since I've written a political post, so I figure that there's no time like the present to rectify this grievous wrong. If you don't like these posts, feel free to skip it and wait a few weeks for me to post some humorous apocrypha from my daily misadventures or some small tidbit of fiction that I happen to be tinkering with. If you're a subscriber here, I'm sure that that will prove to be more to your liking.

Anyway, I have been thinking quite a bit lately about the state of the world. It's positively abysmal, in the very kindest of terms. Criminals are more powerful than ever, governments the world over are encroaching ever more on their denizens' freedoms and rights and both groups have unprecedented - and growing - power to destroy your very safety and serenity no matter where you might be. Aiding, abetting, and comprising both groups are the ever present and all powerful megacorporations which in effect rule the world. These foul organizations are the embodiment of all that is wrong with the world. They're too big to fail. They're too vast to be accountable to anyone. They're too impersonal to be reigned in by morals. Their only allegiance is to the almighty dollar - or Euro, or Yen, or Yuan. Pick your poison, it's all the same. These multinational corporations possess such capital that they can get whatever they want from governments with great benefit to their bottom line and great peril to our liberties.

It didn't have to be like this, however. Throughout the development of the modern world, we've had several opportunities to avert this horrible present in which we live from coming to fruition. We could have sided with Unions and workers against their bourgeoisie masters in the Depression. We could have rejected Reagan's absurd corporate tax rates. We could have worked with the Soviets to ensure that the Cold War didn't spend them to death. We could have rejected interference in Southeast Asia or kept our noses out of the Middle East. We could have preserved a world wherein there were many poles of power independent of the world of capital. Where if the United States refused to control her corporations, why, the USSR or the British Empire could step in and knock them down a peg.

Multipolarity is the best way of dealing with the world, in my opinion. It ensures that no one is powerful enough to be oppressive but no one is so weak that they cannot protect themselves. Instead, we live as we do now: where the illusion of peace is preserved for the sake of the oligarchy's bottom line.

I close by saying for the umpteenth time that I wish fervently that we had not won the Cold War. I wish we still had Communism as a world power. Marxist-Leninism wasn't perfect, sure, but can the world really be any worse than it is under the Capitalists? Of course not. In any case, the coming resource shortages of the 21st century will invariably prove that Capitalism is the worst way to run humanity. It is insustainable in the long term and immoral for us as a whole.

But who am I kidding? We'll survive. Or, at least, the rich and enough of the poor to serve their needs will live on and the gulf between them will widen. Hell, we'll just rob Africa some more and start exploiting space. "Civilization" will live on.