Democracy Isn't Always Pretty

An interesting article, The Matrix, 2009, presents an analogy of The Matrix with the concept of democracy.

The Matrix as metaphor: what if the world we know and live in is actually not a world but a simulacrum, created by omnipotent machines in order to numb and distract us while draining us of our labor (in the 1999 film, the machines use our body heat as an energy source). With corporations as the machines, we are numbed and distracted by the purported opposition of free market democracy to socialism, terrorism, and (at least among secular liberals) theocracy, as if the separation of church and state which shifts power—i.e. the power to enslave—from the cloak to the white collared suit is an improvement.

The US government is run not as a democracy—do a majority of us want troops in Iraq or Afghanistan, or bailouts of AIG and Bank of America?—but as a corporation. [...]

The opposition to a public option in the healthcare reform debates, as much as the denunciation of a single payer system as dangerously socialistic (even by Medicare recipients), underscores the corporatization of both government and discourse. At the mercy of private insurance companies, health care becomes completely arbitrary: practitioners are forced to deny coverage or bill for care they never actually provided, dates and descriptions are altered, unnecessary treatment is prescribed and the health care consumer is penalized while the perpetrators avoid accountability. Where else can such large sums of money be exchanged for a product that doesn’t actually exist, only to benefit those further removed from the point of care? [...]

As a culture we’re taught to blame the people victimized by greed rather than the victimizers, whether those with balloon mortgages and subprime loans they can’t afford and didn’t understand or those who max out their credit cards on groceries and emergency room visits. We’re never taught to blame marketing. [...]

Our world runs on exploitation of what does exist (resources, labor) in support of what doesn’t (the power of the simulacrum). [...]

As Morpheus warns Neo in The Matrix: “You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on the system, that they will fight to protect it.”

Today, we need to fight for a society that truly has compassion. We also need to fight to keep reality in the forefront of the news especially when there is faux news such as Fox.

It is most important to understand that nonsense, fear and an imitation of the truth spews forth from talking heads such as Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh and politicians such as Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachman.

The 'compassionate conservatives' have been taken over by the SSRWNJ's (sanctimonious, shrilly, screaming, right wing nut jobs)!!!!

It is time to take back compassion and call it Democracy.

WATCH: Mark Fiore's cartoon as he muses: Democracy isn't always pretty. But shouldn't it at least be kind of attractive?