…We not

going to

make it

doing what the Masters expect.

They’ll take and take

until you don’t have the humanity left to know what’s missing…

They want us their obedient white and blue collar slaves.

fighting each other, not the Man.

It’s a pyramid scheme.

It’s divide and conquer.

see it before it’s too late…

-Sun Tae Kim

Everything for sale

Every last one of us prostitutes, hustling something

Methamphetamine trailers lighting up the high plains night

Strip malls from sea to shining sea

All for another slice of virtual pizza

While the other nation-states are busy copying us

But these campesinos

Why are they stampeding across our borders?

If their local, village-based mode of survival

Were still functioning after corporate capital’s depradations

After the bait-and-switch called Free Trade

After the drug violence fueled by our cocaine habit

Do you really believe they’d leave families and ancestral lands

For a life of drudgery in the icy heart of the North?

Can you imagine what those who’ve risked their lives

To cross the border are thinking

As they clean our toilets and mow the lawns

Outside our cheesy McMansions

While we sprawl in the family room

Sucking up doses of radiation from our plasma screens?

Hey, that’s not me, man: I’m not watching TV. I’m fixated on my new

iPad. I’m pecking away at my Blackberry, dude. I’m cheering myself

hoarse for the home team while the world burns…

What if, on the contrary, these campesinos secretly envy us

What if they want their deracinated children

To grow into big-time consumers just like us?

What if they can’t wait until their children

Turn into dark-skinned versions of our tight white selves?

Dios Mio

…

And democracy, our claim to fame

Time for a reality check

We don’t live in a democracy

Voting means getting lost in make-believe

As soon as more than ten thousand people are involved

Approximate size of the polis in ancient Greece

Where citizens encountered one another face to face

Knew their strengths and foibles

Knew the skeletons in their closets

Their families and ancestors

Whereas in modern mega-states

Do we know who represents us?

Fantasies concocted by spin doctors and handlers

If you doubt it (and have enough pull)

Approach the leader of any nation-state

It doesn’t matter what their politics are

The only question is

How deep into trance is this person?

Wave your hand in front of the face

Watch the eyes light up

When you say you’ll vote for it

Watch the eyes go cold

When you say you won’t

Only local democracy is real

When allowed to function, that is

Living democracy of community movements

Farmers in Africa planting trees on barren land

Cooperative ventures worldwide

While left and right, socialist and capitalist

Two sides of the same grabby coin

Solidifying the delusion that we get somewhere

Only at the expense of others

And—haven’t you noticed?—the game is never won

Over the centuries always a sense

Of impending emergency, of corruption and betrayal

The open field of existence

Tricked into gigantic hoardings of mine and yours

The question is

Do we have what it takes to clear the deck

And work out a new way of life

The planet is calling to us in a voice louder than politics

Sweeter than vested interests

Can you hear her?

She’s asking for change

That’s the only reason astronauts were allowed up in space

To see a global intelligence unfolding

A vast gathering of ecologies

One flowing into the next

Rivers and mountains without end

To see that we’re all one

Humans and plants, animals and spirits, sky and ocean

No more nation-states

No more patriotism

Try it, you’ll like it

-Michael Brownstein, “Lets Burn the Flag of All Nations”.