Walter Mosley by Twelve Steps Toward Political Revelation Read Free Book Online

look at my carpenter’s level.
    But all is not lost.
    Jacques Ellul and Lewis Mumford tell us that not only technology but also technique (the way in which labor is executed and imagined) have toppled more civilizations than any creed or revolutionary outcry. A simple technological invention like a superior screw can so alter the economics of a culture that the old ways are forced to fall by the side of the road, making way for new organizations, politics, and governments.
    It is my fervent belief that the cigar-smoking backroom politicians of the latter half of the twentieth century are about to meet their fatal screw.
    Â 
    The problem with true democracy in America is that our nation is far too large for the plethora of political interests to organize themselves against the fairly small range of interests pursued by big business. On one side you have a group of wealthy individuals, families, and corporations that have the simple goal of wanting control of the means and the mode of production. They achieve these ends by bringing about lower salaries,
buying up cheap mineral rights, breaking unions, outsourcing labor, and convincing us to give them a healthy bailout if these machinations go awry. On the other side you have the abortionists and anti-abortionists, separatists and integrationists, universal marriage constituents and those who believe that gay marriage is somehow immoral, PETA adherents and the rightto-bear-arms hunting enthusiasts. There are ten thousand other interest groups all of whom can find as many iterations of their opposites in the spectrum of our so-called democracy.
    How can we, the People, stand against the highly organized and simplistic needs of the Joes when we are so separated and fragmented by ten thousand thousand conflicts?
    The answer is (at least from my point of view) to use the Internet (that new screw) and an equation that will allow us to stop working against each other and begin to work together on the topics where we agree.
    What I propose is a website called The Democracy Initiative. On this website each of us can identify our ten most pressing political interests in order of importance—for example, (1) the right to bear arms, (2) equal rights for women, (3) universal marriage rights. Once we’ve identified our convictions in a national
(and international) database we can find those others who are of a similar state of intention without having to know about their commitments that are antithetical to ours. As the song says, accentuate the positive . This will allow the black nationalist and white supremacist to vote together for the rights of poor children to have medical care; the anti-abortionist and the pro-choice advocate to unite against the war.
    We have more in common than we are against each other. It is only the big dollars of big business that separate us. But the technology and potential technique of the Internet open a door for us to unite outside of the edicts and directions of the so-called political parties, the Joes, and the Great Shadow Joe.
    The new technology can bring down the walls of the oligarchs; it can allow us to unite and change politics from an adversarial stance to one of unity.
    This is my ardent desire—to allow the individuals of our virtual democracy to come together on their own terms, not on the made-up issues of the wealthy who only wish to divide the lower classes and therefore shore up their position while keeping us groveling for crumbs.
    And so, even if my articulation here is not at the moment technically possible, there is at least a strategy
for an attempt at building an underground system of democracy against the surface lies of the special-interest parties.
    Â 
    And let me underscore the core belief of this Democracy Initiative: Objectivity . This is not a left or right question. Democracy is for all of us; for the voter, the child, the lonely prisoner, and those who live here without the benefit of citizenship; it is for