Time to pull the plug

An anonymous reader at Rigorous Intuition does an outstanding job of deconstructing the engine that drives one murderous war after another:

I hate to use Matrix-like comparisons but we are literally the batteries of politics.

Politics is the space of debate and compromise between people, and political power begins as simply as that. The power is constructed between two people and amplified the more people that take part in the interaction.

We have collectively deferred the wielding of that power to political elites internationally. Most importantly we confuse the institutions of that deferred political power, parties, government, treaties, constitutions, as politics per se.

But these are only the devices used to consolidate hegemony. They are not politics. They are symbols of power but are not the power themselves. For ultimately their continued legitimacy relies on our collective reconstruction of these symbols as reality, that we are and should be governed by political elites within their protective institutions. And that is where we can fight back.

The game being played at the moment is one of confusing the very concept of reality. By constantly changing the justifications for war and creating ambiguous threats as precepts for war, the elites keep shifting the sands and clogging our senses. Refuse to be cast about in the sand. Stand firm.

When enough of us stand firm with clear senses we can catch the others being cast about. As long as we keep standing firm a critical mass of people will come to see the lies of the political elites. The sands will become a trickle.

We then have an opportunity to reappropriate political power, for if we collectively fail to recognise the institutions then the symbol falters, fails and dies. Politics returns to its natural state of being the space of debate and compromise between people rather than the unnaturally deferred aberration that licences elites to behave as they want.

Jeff made an important point before about the anti-war protests around the world: what if we hadn't gone home at the end of the day? What if we had stayed? We would have shorted out the illusion of authority, reappropriated political power and the invasion might not have happened.

Be the one in the cave who turns from the shadows and sees the daylight. Keep turned from the shadows and others will turn too.

It's now or never, people. It's time to pull the plug.


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Thanks, AJ