Published in Intrepid Report on April 18, 2013
By Larry Pinkney
“Democracy depends on citizens being informed, and since our media, especially television (which is the most important source of news for most Americans) reports mostly what the people in power do, and repeats what the people in power say, the public is badly informed and it means we cannot really say we have a functioning democracy.”—Howard Zinn
“O my body, make me always a man who questions!”—Frantz Fanon
The millions of women and men in the U.S. have, for many decades, been ingrained by the U.S. power elite, with the fallacious notion that we live in a “functioning democracy” that serves the interests of everyday ordinary Black, White, Brown, Red, and Yellow people. This notion is of course a well perpetuated myth of gigantic proportions.
We are taught that the existence of the corporate-controlled, symbiotically-joined Democrat and Republican parties somehow represents incontrovertible proof of this supposed democracy. We are not taught, however, that partisan politics has little or nothing whatever to do with a genuine functioning people’s democracy.
We are programmed to politically salivate whenever the U.S. corporate-stream ‘news’ propagates what the “people in power do, and repeats what the people in power say.” We are expected to obediently regurgitate, by rote, the narrative of the power elite. Critical thinking and any serious questioning of this narrative is considered to be, in real terms, subversive.
The everyday people of this nation are perniciously and incessantly trained to be obedient, submissive, and unthinking slaves to and for the power elite’s corporate controlled Democrat and Republican parties—which in reality—is but one party. The bell of obedience is rung by the power elite, through its corporate-stream media, and like Pavlov’s dog, the everyday people are expected to salivate and jump to its tune.
This national reality of course, is not a democracy, but a fine-tuned hypocrisy which serves the interests of the U.S. power elite at the expense of everyday people.
The politicians of the corporate-owned Democrat and Republican parties are, as if in Pavlov’s laboratory, the control mechanism that keeps everyday ordinary Black, White, Brown, Red, and Yellow people perpetually divided and manipulated. The phony public bickering between the misleaders of the Democrat and Republican parties (especially on the national level) is, by design, a farcical spectacle whose purpose is to keep ordinary people mesmerized, salivating, unthinking and malleable.
It is important to be very discerning, and careful not to confuse the farce of ‘partisan politics’ by the Democrat and Republican parties, with having a genuine democracy that serves the interests of everyday people. Our task is to creatively find the ways and means to come together for our collective interests, despite the contrived machinations of the power elite to keep us distracted, divided, and powerless.
Drone man Barack Obama’s austerity measures and the destruction of civil liberties at home, combined with perpetual U.S. wars and/or military incursions abroad, cannot and must not be accepted by the everyday people of this nation. But first and foremost we must recognize that we are being manipulated and controlled by the corporate owned Democrat and Republican parties who serve the relatively small, blood sucking U.S. power elite. With this recognition, we must make every effort to psychologically deprogram and remove ourselves from this systemic slavery that has us reacting like laboratory rats and/or Pavlov’s dogs to the whims of the U.S. power elite.
We must be critical thinkers and questioners as we all internalize the words of Frantz Fanon, when he said, “O my body, make me always a man who questions!” It is we ourselves, the women and men of this nation, who hold the key to systemic change and our own collective national liberation! We must do this not only for ourselves, but in conjunction with the everyday struggling peoples throughout Mother Earth.
Each one, reach one. Each one, teach one. Onward, then my sisters and brothers. Onward . . . !
Larry Pinkney is a veteran of the Black Panther Party, the former Minister of Interior of the Republic of New Africa, a former political prisoner and the only American to have successfully self-authored his civil/political rights case to the United Nations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. In connection with his political organizing activities, Pinkney was interviewed in 1988 on the nationally televised PBS News Hour, formerly known as The MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour, and more recently on the nationally syndicated Alex Jones Show. Pinkney is a former university instructor of political science and international relations, and his writings have been published in various places, including The Boston Globe, San Francisco BayView newspaper, Black Commentator, Intrepid Report, Global Research (Canada), LINKE ZEITUNG (Germany), 107 Cowgate (Ireland and Scotland), and Mayihlome News (Azania/South Africa). He is in the archives of Dr. Huey P. Newton (Stanford University, CA), cofounder of the Black Panther Party. For more about Larry Pinkney see the book, Saying No to Power: Autobiography of a 20th Century Activist and Thinker, by William Mandel [Introduction by Howard Zinn]. (Click here to read excerpts from the book.)
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