One of the problems for us ordinary folks
is that we can gain so little access to where the power is. If we did have access then we might very
carefully begin to dismantle piece by piece the state which the excesses of the
political and power systems of every ilk have brought
many of us to, that is : our tolerance and acceptance of the abject poverty suffered by most of our fellows. It always seems that things are reduced to
there being a few winners and a lot of losers.
Looking towards the horizon, change does
not seem to be approaching and things will stay as they are if we continue to allow
ourselves to be governed on the basis of there being, first: a small group of very
powerful, very wealthy winners; second: a greater number – I am ashamed to
admit I would place myself in this group
- of those who though they lose most of the time are nevertheless silenced by
being allowed the occasional win and so have just sufficient reward to live tolerably
while they are hoodwinked by an
education system which invariably serves the status quo, and, third : by far the largest group in number, whose members
are never allowed to win, can never flourish and who are denied the opportunity
of any effective form of expression.
It is evident the powerful few have a hold of
both the political system and the media and they use them very effectively as
their form of expression. Well, there are the occasional spats, which are
sometimes investigated and usually followed by a few show trials of dispensable
people. These happen in order to kid us that we really are free but pretty soon
things fall back into their old place. We merely cultivate frustration and
despair if we allow ourselves to be duped by the notion that we enjoy freedom
of speech or freedom of the press. This has been rather comically demonstrated
by the BBC’s censoring Judy Garland’s song, “Ding, dong the wicked witch is
dead” following the death of Margaret Thatcher. This public broadcasting organization, the
British Broadcasting Corporation which is supposed to represent the expression
of everyone in the UK is so fearful of losing its place close to the vicinity
of power, so running scared of being diminished or closed down by a political
body which finds the BBC’s notional independence a nuisance, that it kowtows in
a subtle but nonetheless cowardly manner to the political and financial power
bases. The “Biff, bam, power monster is very much alive.”
This “ding dong” is one of the sideshows
which has arisen in the fairground that has been constructed in the aftermath
of Margaret Thatcher’s death. The irony
of “the iron lady” is that she is revered mainly by a certain kind of man
because she represented not the “wicked witch” but the Biff Bam Power
monster they would have so liked themselves to be. In this sense Margaret Thatcher was an
anachronism. She was a woman who exercised her power in the way all the
infamous power mongers - who were and are overwhelmingly of the male sex - exercised power. It is a way which says that, “It‘s OK to
look after number one at all times and to knock out anyone who tries to get in the way.” It is a philosophy – if it can be called
that - which allows us to understand how
the financial crisis of the last decade came about. It shines a light on why
powerful and wealthy people invariably look in askance and can’t comprehend
when someone suggests that their inordinate affluence and influence could
possibly be the cause of the vast amount of poverty so many of their fellow
beings are suffering.
People who protest about these matters are
frequently described by politicians, and by their buddies in the "free" press as moaning and envious
lefties who, when they are not demonstrating or rioting, talk ad infinitum about
inequality and poverty, without ever offering up any remedies. The plight of the protester is not so much what
seems the sheer impossibility of persuading the rich and powerful that poor people
are fellow members of our human community and we should all help them and
support them in getting themselves out of their unhappy and intolerable
situation. It is not so much persuading
the powerful to yield up, no, to share their power, to give up much of their
wealth and to distribute it fairly. Of
course all this must be done but the real plight for the protester is persuading
those of us who just about get enough out of the financial and political system
to keep us silent about the need to start dealing with the issue of undue inequality in the distribution of the world’s resources.
We should all move towards acknowledging
that each one of us owns every single square inch of our planet. No doubt cynics as well as many of those who
consider themselves realists will think these ideas an escape to Planet Krypton
but nothing ever gets changed for the better if we don't start trying to achieve
it.
We should access and unite our individual
power and our different and unique talents to move towards a fairer human
community. Let’s change the nature of the Biff Bam power monster.
