By The Voice of Treason

Dawn is rising. The dawning of a new era is just over the horizon. Fantastic opportunities for organizing and empowering the working class are about to open up and allow for us to have a hand in shaping a new reality. I believe that these opportunities are going to be made available through Barak Obama. Not that I have any illusions about his plans for ‘Change’. I think that it will be through the failures of his administration that we will have chances for real change.

Should we have faith that a President Obama will be progressive? Those who do, might want to take a look at Howard Zinn’s bestseller “A People’s History of the United States” to review elementary lessons on how big progressive change occurs: through dedicated activism and the threat of radical reconstruction from below. It’s not about managing, manipulating, and propagandizing the electorate.  It’s about expanding and mobilizing the citizenry and creating a more participatory, responsive, and democratic political culture beneath and beyond corporate-crafted,mass-marketed electoral spectacles.

The events we are witness to are going to lead to a series of cataclysmic occurrences that will shock the public, and pull away the facade that covers the real world.  People will lose faith in the lies told by the media. They will seek answers in other places. People will start to believe what was, not very long ago, unthinkable. It has already started. The financial crisis has ordinary people asking about things like fair income distribution, participatory economics, collectivization, and workers control. They can see the people standing up to oppression in Greece, Thailand, Oaxaca, Burma, and elsewhere.

I think that US hegemony will continue to decline as the world becomes more diverse. US power peaked at the end of World War II, when it had literally half the world’s wealth and incomparable military power and security. By 1970, its share of global wealth had declined by about half, and it has remained fairly stable since then. In some important respects, US domination has weakened. One important illustration is Latin America, Washington’s traditional ‘backyard’. For the first time since European colonization 500 years ago, South America is making significant progress towards integration and independence, and is also establishing relations independent of the US.

In my view, it will be an impossibility for the Obama administration to overcome the combined challenges of the environmental crisis, the financial crisis, the economic crisis, with a diminishing American influence and the growing class consciousness in the population. People are starting to see the connections. They are beginning to put it together. As the comfort zone crumbles, average citizens will understand. The elites running this capitalist enterprise are the ones to blame for our current situation. Who else can put us on such a calamitous course? Not only killing the earth, but also strangling the economy with low wages and high debt. Why do we put up with all of this garbage then? Not for long my friends. The end is in sight. The first rays of the new day are breaking through the darkness that has surrounded us for far too long. Dawn is rising.