A Green State of Mind

The constant incorporation of reality into the creation of political structures that are employed as an alternative to the status quo can be one of the most important actions in regards to real political change, more revolutionary than traditional types of revolution.

The main hope for a real political alternative lies in the ability to both understand how the current structures of power work, as well as the formation of tools for empowerment. The political is always embedded within both the social field and reality in itself, and makes use of reality in order make new configurations within the social field. These structures of power can be transcendent and lay beyond the ability of the populace to control it, taking on the appearance of being both natural and eternal. However, these structures of power can also be immanent and within the control of the people who are engaged within it to solve problems within social relationships. The factors that determine whether political structures are transcendent or immanent is whether or not prehension and prefiguration are employed to allow a true and direct democratic process. Democracy used to widen empowerment will use prehension and prefiguration to accomplish specific goals while also generally offering a real alternative to business as usual.

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By Susan Donderewicz:

This is our third annual public meeting on the economy. If ever there was a subject that lent itself to varied and often inconsistent viewpoints, it is the economy. Tonight, we’ll focus on the policy of collecting taxes based on property. It has occurred to me as I planned for this program that most people, the sane ones, would rather have knee surgery than sit through a meeting about tax policy. So thank you so much for being here. I’m going to try to make this as listener-friendly as possible. We’ll look at some different taxes and see what kind of footprint each leaves.

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In the election of 2008 Barack Obama became a commodity sold to voters as an agent of change, regardless of his status quo platform, that spoke volumes about the mediation of human desire into instruments of control.

It can not be denied that on the election night of 2008 there literally was dancing in the streets. This phenomenon illuminated the fact that the past eight years was in many ways a time of immense darkness. In possibly no other time in the history of the United States was the country so close to an actual dictatorship as it was during the George W. Bush administration. There were concrete cases of a centralization of power within the executive branch, and especially within the office of the president and vice president. The Patriot Act, sanctioning of torture, increased internal surveillance, and the detaining of suspects without filing of charges all eroded the protections found in the Constitution and the Bill Of Rights. These decisions all did lasting damage to the idea of the United States as a representative democracy. Unfortunately, this centralization of power was the culmination of other actions taken by previous presidents during times of war. Lincoln suspended habeas corpus during the Civil War, Wilson enacted the Alien and Sedition Act with the Palmer Raids during WWI, Roosevelt interned Japanese-Americans during WWII, and Nixon used COINTELPRO and an enemies list during the war in Vietnam. All of these men were gravely wrong, but what distinguished the Bush administration was the creation of an artificial state of emergency after Sept. 11th, 2001 that lead to a fabricated war for hegemony in the Middle East. Therefore, there were reasons to celebrate the election of a new president, one who was considered a real agent of change.

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