Democratic Revolution Handbook

By Dave Patterson

Democracy in Canada is a dead thing walking - vote for whoever you like, you get austerity, support for US war-criminal bombings around the world, support for corporate so-called 'trade' treaties that impoverish us yet more both financially and in democratic deficit. And the Canadian media supports this pretend-democracy. Change is only going to come if 'we the people' make it happen ourselves, through a Democratic Revolution. This books talks about why Canada's democracy is on its last legs, and what we can do about it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dave Patterson
• Release date: Aug 14, 2016
• ISBN: 9781370181179

Dave Patterson

Dave Patterson is an award-winning writer, musician and high school English teacher.  He received his MA in English from the Bread Loaf School of English and an M.F.A. from the University of Southern Maine’s Stonecoast program.  His writing has appeared in Portland Press Herald,  the Maine Sunday Telegram, and Slice Magazine, among others.  He lives outside Portland, Maine, with his wife, two kids, and dog.

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Democratic Revolution Handbook

by

Dave Patterson

Smashwords EPUB Edition July 2016

Copyright 2016 by Dave Patterson

Democratic Revolution Handbook - Copyright Page

copyright 2016 Dave Patterson*

* as in David Leslie Patterson, born March 22 1950 in Toronto, Canada, parents Leslie David Patterson and Marguerite Loretta Patterson, nee Wyse; later of Hastings, Ontario, Charlottetown and Harrington, PEI, Hat Yai, Thailand, and Green Island. To date.

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This Smashwords EPUB edition of Democratic Revolution Handbook by Dave Patterson, ISBN: 9781370181179 (provided by Smashwords), is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License

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Table of Contents

Title page.

Copyright page.

Table of Contents

Preface Losing? Yes, losing ...

DRH Introduction

Part I Intro: Our Pretend World

I-1 Sheeps and wolves

I-2a Pretend Democracy

I-2b The 'Democracy Gambit'

I-3a Pseudo-Debt - Real Chains, Real Misery

I-3b The Money Gambit

I-3c Money Rules!!

I-3d Capitalism: The greatest fraud since god

I-4a The Mainstream Corporate Propaganda Media: Free but very much *not* democratic

I-4b The great CBC doing propaganda?!!?? No way!!

I-4c CBC Case Studies I

I-4d CBC Case Studies Part II

I-5 Enemy

Part II The Corporate Reactionary Revolution

II-2 The Corporate Reactionary Revolution - Inception

II-3 Creating a new narrative - CRR begins

II-3 The Great Transition - The Corporate Reactionary Revolution Ascendant

II-4a The 'I' Word: Don't get mad at me, Chomsky's been talking about it for years ....

II-4b Creating the NWO citizen 1: Indoctrination in the 'modern' world

II-4c I'm indoctrinated?? No freakin way jack!!

II-4d Dumbing Down and the CBC.... the White Wizard revealed as a tool of Mordor

II-5 Dumbing Down: Enclosing the limits of debate

II-6 The CRR Ascendant

II-7 They've built a box - and we're all in it

II-8 The Stupid Essay - What the CBC Hath Wrought

II-9 What's all the whining about dave? It's a great life, a great country, we're all ok!!!

III-Intro: The Pharoah Gambit Declined

III-2 First Responders - who will awaken the sleeping giant?

III-3 Before Democracy - A Truly Informed Citizenry

III-4 Preparation: Focused and Effective and Aware

III-5 What is Democracy?

III-6 How would a 'real' not-pretend Democracy work??

III-7 A Democratic Economy

III-8 A Democratic Media - Reprise

III-9 From here to there... From Oligarchy to Democracy

III-10 Never forget - we have a very powerful and ruthless enemy, who will do all they can to stop us

Get involved with the Democratic Revolution ...

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DRH - Preface: Losing? Yes - Losing ....

Who's losing?

We are - those who want a decent, social-democratic society, behaving like a modern,advanced Democracy, looking after all of its citizens decently, being a strong force for good in the world. The poverty rate in this country is now abysmal, we are one of the leading capitalist rogue states in the world, following the US where they want bombing and destroying countries whose governments they do not like, half our citizens are one paycheck away from disaster, our kids can't afford university, people are dying in emergency rooms for lack of doctors, etc etc etc - the corporate propaganda media, one of our main problems, does what it can to keep our sweet child brains in candycaneland, but these facts are undeniable to the thinking person, and something we should be very, very worried about, not allowing ourselves to be lulled into complacence like the Germans in the 1930s - there is serious business going on here, which is leading to some very, very bad places, if those of us who see do not soon become much stronger in our opposition to what is becoming of our country.

Yes - we were once an almost great country, and working with joy and enthusiasm to correct the things that weren't so great, and become ever greater. But then something happened - and for the last 30 years, we have been getting less and less great. Yes, there is still much to be proud of, much that was created during the years and decades leading up to the 60s and 70s of which remnants still remain, but we are on a slippery slope going downhill faster and faster, the once-almost-great society getting poorer and poorer for more and more of us, and we need to be thinking about this, wondering 

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why we have been going backwards instead of forwards for the last 40 years, wondering how things got this bad so fast, wondering if this is all some kind of natural decay, or if there is some driving force making things as they are that we could change, if we understood what was happening better, and were fighting all of these backward changes more effectively. Actually when you think of it, there's not really much to celebrate about our country these days, if we think about things honestly - if we don't stop this descent we've been on for the last few decades very soon, we'll be off the edge and truly into the abyss, and getting back on the road to greatness we were once on will be on hold for god knows how many generations, if the new 'masters of the world' ever allow us to, if they don't entirely destroy the world we live on first.

And no - I'm not talking about 'economic' problems, falling GDP, problems with the housing market, falling loony, bad oil prices, high unemployment, student debt, people wanting to retire but no savings, etc - these are problems, yes, but they are symptoms of the much deeper problems we have, deep and serious problems that very few people seem to understand, so although quite a few people are trying to deal with environmental problems, or increasing debt and poverty, or 'democratic deficits', almost nobody is recognizing and facing the elephant in the room that is causing all of the problems.

Which is what I want to talk about in the coming pages.

Losing to who?

Those who want nothing to do with democracy, but see themselves as the new Lords in a new feudal society of a small elite running their wealthy society, with a large mass of powerless, ignorant serfs maintaining them in the way to which they wish to become accustomed. Like the good old days before the ideas of 'democracy' got loose in Europe a few hundred years ago, and grew into a real nuisance in the years after WWII.

Losing what, you ask?

Everything. Our lives, our country, our world, our planet, our children's futures, our minds, our freedoms, our chance to become something notable, good, in this universe.

Everything.

Why we're losing

We, or most of us, are like naive children, or gullible corncobbers, being manipulated by moral-less, avaricious, very cunning, very experienced, very modern, completely ruthless con artists. We're losing, to a very large extent, because they lie about pretty much everything of serious importance in our world and country, and we either simply believe them, or are too polite or trusting or timid to challenge and question them openly because the various propaganda and indoctrination systems they control (education and media primarily) have trained us well to be as trusting, naive children listening to and trusting our 'honest and smart and 'doing the very best they can for our own good!' authorities' as we believe and trust our teachers as children, as they carry on with various policies to shut down our once-almost democracy in front of our faces based on those lies and our naive trust and disinclination, even lack of ability, to question their statements. 

This has been one of the successfully accomplished reasons behind the 'dumbing down' process of the last 30 years - our not-so-distant ancestors were far less trusting of their authorities, far more open-eyed about what our rulers were actually up to, far more understanding of the life-or-death struggle they were engaged in, and far stronger in their opposition, and in their demands for honesty and accountability from those they elected. The dumbing down has successfully countered these aware and skeptical adult traits of our ancestors, and turned back the clock on the democratic advances they made during the first 75 years of the last century to a point where we're trained to be like a dark-ages superstitious religious peasant society, believing any shit our rulers and their messengers and priests tell us about why the world works as it does, and how we must passively allow them to continue doing whatever they want to do.

We believe almost anything we hear on 'the news' in terms of what they say about why they do what they do - and almost all of those things are lies. For example, politicians and news pundits and economics 'analysts' all wring their hands and cry crocodile tears about the ongoing 'financial crisis' as if it were some act of god or nature completely beyond anyone's control, but it's all a huge fraud, completely controlled by the same people who control the money, to give themselves more power and reduce our own wealth, and this instability could be almost completely controlled by the passing of a few laws and some public education about what is really going on (many people understand this, you just will **never** hear them on the corporate propaganda media); the 'terrorism scare' and all things related is just another massive lie (many people understand this, i.e. 'terrorism' - a self-fulfilling prophecy, but you won't hear this kind of thing on the CBC ...), again engineered by those in power and spread by their complicit media, to justify their creation of a lockdown-ready police state around us, to control us when we finally start to understand all the lies they tell us and try to get rid of them; the idea we live in a 'democracy', and that the 'featured' political parties we are given every few years to choose from are actually in any serious way 'different' is another big lie; the idea the media are 'free' and thus we can rely on what they tell us, another lie; they say their 'free trade' deals will make us all rich, but they are again lying, they say we have to 'honor the debt', but the 'debts' are complete frauds, and etc.

One thing is true - as they said about a certain US president a few years ago - how do you know he's lying? His lips are moving. Without exception, with everything of any importance they talk about on the media, they are lying. (yes, that includes 'global warming' - global warming may indeed be happening, or not, but if it is, it is much more involved with long term natural fluctuations than being caused by man - they are making a big issue out of it simply to occupy a great deal of time and energy that should be spent on more important things, things involved with how our country is run by an oligarchy for the interests of the few such as outlined above, and if we want **any**thing to change, we need to be fighting for a true democracy of informed, engaged citizens.)

When you engage, or try to engage, these people in debate, working from the basic assumption that they just have different ideas than you do that they are honestly expressing, and thus (you think) you can talk to them logically and make them see reason - you've lost before you even start. It's like a rabbit trying to logically explain to the hungry wolf why it shouldn't eat you. You are never going to 'change their minds', because they know they are lying, and their job is not to engage you honestly and perhaps reach a compromise of some kind, but to continually put forward rationalisations to block you - 'rationalisations' which will again be a lot of lies as much as anything else. They know the 'truth' would see them 'lose' any of these 'debates' (and in many if not most if not all of these 'discussions' actually lay them open to serious criminal charges and a life in jail). For example, when they say 'free trade will be good for Canada!!' - they lie, they **know** what kind of 'free trade' they are trying to impose will make them wealthier, and be an attack on the incomes of a very high number of working Canadians, and also reduce the little power remaining with pretend-democratic governments to challenge the power of the wealthy (a strong democratic government is a democratic government free from money worries and not controlled by people holding 'debt'). They know these things, and they know that if they tell the truth, they will never convince Canadians to agree to their plans, so their only choice is to lie, and to control the means of public information so things they need to keep away from the public debate are kept away from it.

And lie and control they do. The national debt is the same - a massive lie, and every politician at a senior level who whines they have to cut spending on programs helpful to Canadians to 'pay down the debt' is just lying through their teeth in the service of their real masters.

We are losing because almost everyone is completely ignorant of these things, and when told about them react with instant kneejerk denial, barking out slogans like 'Oh stupid conspiracy theory haha!!' like the well-trained Pavlovian dog salivating when the bell rings.

We are never going to defeat the Great Wizard if we keep fighting the false smoke-and-noise dragons he sets racing around the country, using his media to feed us endless lies about what is happening, to tell us all we have to Fight the Dragons!!!, while he remains safe and comfy behind his curtain, a curtain which is quite vulnerable to open eyes, and brains not controlled by the Great Free Press!!! media dragon, and the equally influential Great Education System!!! dragon.

A few understand, many don't. Some are in denial, some are well paid to help people not understand, to keep the soma flowing while the blood is extracted. Some understand something is happening here, but don't know what it is, do you, Mr Jones. Some don't care - those who are winning provide lots of toys and spectacle and drugs and cynicism to help you maintain a very shallow 'in the now!' (lack of) perspective and not care about what tomorrow might bring, and of course the same people look after their managerial class pretty well so it's easy to pretend things are fine.

If you understand, and want to fight, or if you don't really understand but know some bad shit is going down and don't want to go down with it, and aren't ready to give up and want to understand, and aren't finding any happiness in the places they direct people like you - I wrote this to try and help.

The only way out of a nightmare is by waking up.

I wrote this to try to help wake people up.

(I have a bit more on this at the end of the first section, but if you want a bit more on why you're not maybe as ok as you think you are, you can skip ahead to II-09: But *I'M** Ok Jack!! - epiphany time is here, son, or the end of Canada. You can be part of the solution, or remain part of the problem.)

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DRH - Introduction

(if your first reaction is I'M NOT READING THIS CAPITALISM IS THE GREATEST GIFT GOD EVER GAVE TO MAN!!! - that's the fundamental lie of capitalism, kind of like believing in your wonderful benevolent 'god ' is the fundamental lie of religion - if you're not too deeply indoctrinated, you could disabuse yourself of some serious misperceptions about your god capitalism by skipping ahead a bit - I-3d. Pretend 'Great Benevolent God' Capitalism - then come back, there's lots to learn about how all this came about)

I dunno davy, why should we listen to you, eh? You use a lot of bad language nice children don't use, and your writing could clearly use some editing, and you seem to have subscribed to a lot of, you know, crazy conspiracy theories - I mean, we have all these very learned academic types on the CBC, with nice suits and lots of big words and stuff who offer some pretty cogent-sounding analyses of what's been going on here, talking to the lovable people they call 'journalists' on the CBC, you know, Ms Tremonti and the incomparable Michael Enright and the wonderful Paul Kennedy and Peter Mansbridge and the obviously pretty serious and hardhitting Rosemary Barton, and all the rest we all look on as our highly respected and honest and really smart senior brothers and sisters journalists guiding us through difficult times, and doing a great job of it as they tell us often enough - why should we listen to you and not them, eh?

Well - as the man said, how's that been working out for you, eh, listening to the 'friendly' academics and hosts and such they give you on the CBC? Do you feel better off than you were 20 or 30 years ago, after listening to these guys and women telling you what's happening, and what you should think about it and do (or actually sit quietly by and let our Leaders do), all that time? Be honest now - under their guidance, are we winning the fight against the forces of Big Business and Big Money and Big Brother's corporate globalisation, or not? There's a lot more people opposing what they are doing than support it, so we should be winning, right? Making noticeable gains at least? And is that happening? Are we driving these people back, or are they just rolling on with their 'free trade' and 'war on terrorism' and 'austerity' shit, doing pretty much as they please, no matter how much we protest? And how is the CBC and their great analysis and people fitting into that fact, are they actually working to get us to 'accept the inevitable', or are they giving us guests and advice to actually help us fight back these globalisers?

Be, as I said, honest now.

Me, I might have a working class tongue and hair and attitude and poor taste in clothes and like a beer or two of an evening, but I also have been thinking for myself all my life, and reading and thinking all over the place as I tried to figure what was going on in my country and world, and have a lot of new ideas, or at least ideas you won't hear on Ideas or other places on your CBC, non-CBC ideas that might turn on some lights in your brain that need turning on if you're really serious about fighting for a better Canada, rather than letting these barbarian banker-globalist-new feudalists finish the job they've been working on the last few decades - closing down Democracy all over the world, and creating a great new 4th Reich, a New World Feudalism, based on their Mammon Capitalist religion and run by the High Priest Bankers, a New World Order they intend to last even longer than 1,000 years.

Up to you - if you're happy with the way our country has been going the last few decades, and are content with more of the same, or maybe sure we have some problems but the fine folk at the CBC and those they have on to talk about our problems are offering great analysis and advice and helping us get through these difficult times as best we can expect - there's no reason at all to listen to me, I'll just put some troubling thoughts into your head.

If, however, you're getting a bit unhappy with the same old same old as offered by the CBC et al - read on. Nothing to lose (you're not really going to fall far behind in your life if you miss a few hours of twitter or the latest lengthy commentary on the latest outrageous bum-patting or uninvited shoulder-massage incident on the CBC), and, I assure you, much to gain, if you're interested in the kind of 'deeper truths' that are barred from the CBC that can save our country from the new dark ages that are, seriously, not too far off if we all don't start doing things a bit differently.

You can keep on doing what you've always done, and keep on getting what you've always got - or you can recognize that maybe that's not working out so well, and you need to try something new. Some thoughts on which are offered herein.

Some 'deeper truths' -

- you'll learn here about what is going on in our world and country that you will, I utterly guarantee you, never hear on the CBC - but you will learn about in this book...

** The Corporate Reactionary Revolution - how the rulers infiltraited our once-almost-great-democracy in Canada back in the 1970s, and are stealing everything from us, by making us believe some pretty amazing lies, such as:

** Capitalism - the greatest economic system ever invented??? no, actually the greatest con ever devised by 'those who would be as gods' to keep the peasants believing in a false god and creating the great wealth the wouldbe kings claimed as theirs; how the religion of 'capitalism' was built on the back of the new philosopher's stone which could create pretend-gold out of paper, a religion sold like any religion to the ignorant masses

** Great and Terrible National Debt Monster!! - as big as lies get, a completely fraudulent 'debt', being used to degrade and destroy our once-almost-great-democracy

** Canada the Great Democracy? Not really - a few decades ago an almost-great-democracy, but now a dead thing walking. Our ancestors fought for generations to force the rulers to make some concessions about how they treat us, but the rulers never turned control of our country over to any kind of 'democratic will', and have been creating a new oligarchy right in front of our ever-more passive, turned-off brains.

** A Great Free and Democratic Media???? - again, 40 years ago some truth, now the media has been completely taken over by the Masters, and is nothing more than a 21st century Orwellian Ministry of Truth

** Great Debt Crisis!!! - a complete lie, to enable massive looting and the deconstruction of 'our' once-almost 'democracy'

** 'War on Terror' - another complete fraud, the real terrorists are the ones running your country, creating a lockdown-ready state around you - when the velvet glove comes off some day soon, the iron fist of the new 1000-year feudal reich will be all over you like an anacondca on a squealing pig.

** Enemy: The people who have taken over our country, who are robbing us blind and putting the chains of a new feudal society all around us, and not your friends - they are Enemy. And they are very, very sophisticated, think Sun Tzu and Machiavelli, given the best modern education in the educational places 'normal' people never get near, only those who are to be Rulers, where the **only** thing of importance is winning, using the major predator weapons of violence and deception. You against them is very much like a naive child educated to be a peasant vs a top level military strategist. There is no contest, and you are not in any way challenging their rule. Leading to -

Deepest truth of all, the Truth that you must face and defeat if you want to stop losing - you are probably deeply indoctrinated to believe the lies above - not everyone is indoctrinated, of course, many, Canadian and otherwise, have managed to avoid or escape the chains they have been placing around us all the last 30-odd years - but - if you believe capitalism is great, if you believe Canada is a Democracy, if you believe the people at the CBC are great journalists telling us what we need to know, if you believe that working for the NDP is the road to democracy and a better country, if you believe we need all of the 'security' measures they are putting in place because there could be a Terrorist!! under your bed, and we have to bomb bomb bomb them bastards somewhere in the middle east because they might take over the world if we don't - you are deeply, deeply indoctrinated, and we are **not** going to be free until you break free of those chains.

** One more Truth - This book can help - if you have the courage to face the Truth and your greatest enemy.

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Part I Intro: Our Pretend World

One way to help understand our situation, the main reason we are losing, is because we don't understand what is going on around us. Oh sure, we all think we do, or at least those of us fighting what Harper and his cons were up to, or the larger Big Money influence in our politics, but we, or at least most of us, don't, not really, not in the deeper sense. We, most of us involved in opposing the neocon rightwing takeover of our country and world, are fighting pretend dragons with pretend weapons, whilst the real dragons sit high above us directing everything, sending out all kinds of decoys and setting up all kinds of barriers to make sure we never even recognize the true enemy, let alone start directing some useful efforts towards fighting them. 

Sure many of the pretend dragons are real enough in their limited way, and must be dealt with at some point, but they are also baby dragons, troll spawn of the parent dragons who would largely simply cease to exist if the big main real dragons were identified and slain, baby dragons dressed up as decoys with the very purpose of looking scary and making lots of colorful smoke and noise and getting our attention, to keep us away from the main gates of power, the big dragons with deadly and terrifying fire but also vulnerable bellies or Achilles' heels when you know where to direct your deadly arrow or spear.

This needs to be the starting point of our exploration into why we are losing. If your enemy spreads a bunch of decoys around, and you spend all your time fighting these decoys - you're never going to win. If your enemy convinces you there are places you cannot go, and rules you must follow, and people who are on your side you must let advise you who are actually working for the enemy - your chance of winning gets even less, more or less to the point of non-existance. The enemy abides, the resistance is drained of will at so much time and energy being expended for no gain.

We need to take control of our brains away from the enemy, if we want to start formulating effective plans to fight them.

The first thing we need to do is look around at our society, some of the main things we believe about our society, that we have been taught to believe since we were children - things of which are partly true but leave out some important parts, and other things about which we are not taught at all. Part of what we will be looking at is that the enemy has been controlling things for a long, long time - controlling our 'democracy' so that no matter who we 'elect', the enemy controls them; controlling our money, so they always have an endless supply and we are fighting daily for survival; controlling our education systems and the media through which we get our information.

Controlling, in other words, our perception of the world, of our country. Controlling the dragons we are fighting, controlling our perceptions so we do not see the real dragons we need to be fighting if we are to start winning here.

Let's take away some of their filters, and look at things as they don't want you looking at them.

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I 1: Sheeps and wolves

A bit of necessary context to inform the inquiry

(AKA Things they don't tell you in school (actually, I guess, 'Things they don't tell you in school Part I' - the whole book could be subbed 'Things they don't tell you in school or anywhere else, ever', I guess ...))

In the biggest picture, where the deep meaning can be recognized, where the many become one, where we see what the cat is really doing, where the talk is done and the walk begins, 'we the people' are losing the modern 'game of thrones', our ages-old struggle to create a democratic government of, by and for 'we the people' against those who wish to maintain their ages-old government of, by and for the elite, the powerful, the kings and emperors, the robber barons, those who have always ruled, and intend to continue always ruling.

Losing in the same way the once great forests are losing to the chain saws, the once uncountable ocean biomass is being cleaned out by the great trawler machines and the poisons we have been dumping as if the oceans were a bottomless garbage dump, losing the same way the atmosphere is being poisoned by the endless flow of industrial chemicals, in the same way so many of us are losing our minds to the programming of those who would make us slaves to their newage newmind plantations. We are losing in the same way lower order life forms inevitably lose to being exploited or destroyed at the whim of higher order life forms.

There are a number of lesser contained reasons for this, but again the 'big picture' reason boils down to this fact: 'we the people', even after centuries of struggle against oppressing forces, are rank amateurs in the power game that has gone on for millennia in our world, unsuited for such a great contest by our very lack of desire for power over others, challenging, or more correctly trying to defend ourselves against, a gang of predators who are, and who have always been, master gamesmen in the game of power, which they fervently desire, which is, indeed, the primary goal of their being.

led-by-debt These predators are manipulating us as they wish, as they always have, not so different from a farmer herding around his animals as he wishes, in no way facing any serious inconvenience from occasional minor temper tantrums or short-lived outbreaks of resistance from his herds, taking such things completely in his stride, bribing them into the barn with a bit of fresh grain if that is the easiest solution, or bringing out the cattle prod if they have some unhappiness a bit of grain won't alleviate.

The game, insofar as we can thusly characterize something so life-and-death serious, itself is millennia old, going back to the earliest days of human society, and as far back in biological history as you wish to observe and consider, with some animals evolving as the top-level predators in their communities, and others just as naturally accepting their role as the prey animals.

We humans, of course, are a somewhat different animal, with our thinking brain and intelligence orders of magnitude beyond the much more primitive instinct-driven animals of the forests and plains and oceans and skies, but we still have the innate predator-prey instincts we evolved with underlying our individual characters, with some small number of us, generally matching the proportions in the natural world, dominated by the 'predator dominate, kill and eat' instinct, and most of us by the less violent 'gather together collectively' herbivore/omnivore instinct.

Letting our discussion be informed by this basic biology that drives everything in nature, there are three things that follow, in terms of our human existence on this planet, related to these basic instincts and biological imperatives that are necessary to recognize, and understand, from the very beginning if we are to understand our very much removed from the 'real' natural world of lions and wildebeests or wolves and sheep, but very much related, modern problem of what seems to be happening to our 'democracy' that our parents and grandparents fought for for generations, which we are on the verge of losing today.

First - even though we all look the same as 'humans', as highly evolved omnivores, there are still two very distinct instinctive evolutionary strains running through our species, with a small percent of us dominated by 'predator' instincts, and most of us dominated by 'herd' genes - it's a full 'bell curve' type pattern of course, as genetic things often are, with most people falling somewhere between the poles, but these are the extremes we need to understand, paralleling nature where the few predators inhabit the top of the 'food chain', and the much larger populations of more cooperative herd animals living at the lower levels (bell curve pattern, but of course a 'pyramidal' type distribution, with the top level predators in much lower numbers than the orders of prey below them - a 'balanced natural habitat' requires great herds of prey to maintain a small number of top-level predators hunting them, and likewise in human societies, it takes a lot of slaves to create the wealth that builds and maintains the plantation for the top-level exploiter).

This 'natural dichotomy' has less to do with what we eat, as humans of all kinds are of course basically omnivorous, but it has a great deal to do with the deep inborn ways we deal with our fellow humans, most especially the 'power relations', with most of us instinctively looking to live peacefully together sharing the natural bounty, to cooperate and get along with one another and work together to survive and progress, with the attendant inborn tendencies to honesty and peaceful cooperation as we pursue our lives, but a few of us instinctively driven to be 'lone wolves' or pack predators, to dominate our fellow creatures by whatever means are necessary or available rather than work together with them, and the associated tendencies of deception and violence in the pursuit of their basic goals.

Cooperative herd animals instinctively 'play by rules', (a) not having the natural, finely-honed deceptiveness required by a successful predator 'stalking' its prey, and (b) as intelligent, peaceful humans, understanding that treating others fairly and honestly is the best way to ensure we ourselves are treated fairly and honestly - the survival of the herd ensures our own survival.

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But the predator recognizes no rules whatsoever beyond kill and eat as an individual entity or fail to kill and die as the same individual entity - thus his primary instinct tells him he must kill, by any means possible, to survive and prosper and, as in the wild, the primary weapons of the human predators roaming and hunting in our midst are violence and stealth. Notions of 'honesty' or 'fair play' and such things are simply not ideas they have any use for themselves, although, of course, clever as they are in the human incarnation, as part of their stealth, their deception, they do find it useful to encourage such ideas in those they rule, their prey - anyone playing any game by the rules, and trusting their opponent to do the same while that opponent has no intention to play by any 'rules', can only ever have one outcome (yes, human predators will make 'pacts' together when they see some short term advantage, but they will break the pact and stick a knife in their former ally's back the second they see an advantage in doing so).

It will ever be the predator who brings the gun to the knifefight, believing what a clever chap he is for doing so, while the 'prey' animal who broke the rules in such a way would be shunned by his or her fellow herd members for doing so - lies in the herd endanger us all, thus honestly is one of the strongest virtues in the herd, whilst having no meaning at all to the predator, beyond its use in deceiving a prey.

It's not who wins, but how you play the game, is **not** a predator saying - just the reverse - who wins is, in the end, the only thing that counts. When you get the billion dollars - you can buy what you have to, to send the law agencies looking somewhere else.

Second, we need to recognize the human brain and its capacity for thought and learning, not only in one lifetime but over generations and centuries, in the context of this basic predator-prey division - most of us who would consider ourselves 'progressive' are well aware of, and suitably proud of, our accomplishments as a species over the last few thousand years, and also take deserved pride in our own individual learning.

capitalist-chess But what we often forget, not entirely accidentally, what we are encouraged to NOT think about, is that when you put this great learning-over-time-and-generations ability into a predator, or a 'class' of such predator-humans, they also learn, over time, not only new ways of dominating by violence, but also by ever improving ways of deceit, and of managing their 'herd' of 'serf-animals', and we must start to understand that we are playing this power game as essentially reluctant amateurs against **MASTER** gamesplayers who have been controlling everything for centuries, and refining and improving their control every day, every year, every century, and learning every generation how to control their herds better.

We need to understand clearly that, as in nature, the predator sees two kinds of fellow humans in their world - fellow predators at a more or less equal level, and prey. Other predators are 'serious' business to be dealt with carefully as the various predator gangs jockey for power, but to the predator, to all of the predators, the various herds are just things to be managed, presenting no danger to their rule.

In our human society, the predators play the highest level games among themselves, the games for dominance of the top-level human societies and communities - basically it's just upper level gang warfare among predators for control of their local fiefdom. We 'herd-instinct humans' are nothing more than prey to all of them as they fight among themselves to control us, and metaphorically farm us as their slaves etc. There are no 'rules' in this great game of human predators, as we make and understand 'herd rules' among ourselves for the benefit of all of us - when predators fight, as in the microcosm of the wolf pack, at the end of the day there is a victor and one or many losers who may or may not be allowed to live or stay in the pack/community, if they survived the battles.

The predator wins or loses, that is the only rule. Tooth and claw violence was the original weapon of the jungle, and of humans in more primitive settings, but over the centuries various non-violent strategies came into play because, properly applied, the cunning warrior who has some capability of using his superior brain to plot stratagems to deceive their foe would gain an advantage over the warrior gang who relied on simple superiority of arms - and over the centuries of learning and refining, whoever had the best combination of violence and deception at any given struggle won the day, and right to control the human-herd-serfs, keeping them working and creating wealth which they claimed for their own. And of course, when the predator gangs then use their capacity for planning campaigns to defeat other predators to formulate ways to control the peaceful and generally passive herd, it is the same level of 'competition' as the human farmer planning ways to keep the more powerful beasts on his farm under his command.

When we look back through our history trying to understand what happened, we need to start looking through a new kind of filter, and understand that when the human predator-warlord seems to accede to demands for 'democracy' and 'the rule of law', and establish rules, or 'laws' that direct us to 'fight fairly', as we 'herd' animals are inclined to do among ourselves anyway, that is part of the deceitful strategy they use to control us, a factor of the great advantage the predators naturally have over the prey - they lie incessantly and instinctively, saying whatever they need to to get us to acquiesce to whatever they want.

The human predator, of course has no understanding of 'fighting fairly' when the only rules recognized by predators are 'kill or don't eat' when dealing with prey, and 'win and prosper or lose and be banished' when competing with other predators.

And of course, a great advantage for them, the predator only needs to win against the prey once, while for the prey it is simply an endless life of watching for predators, and the first time you miss one coming is probably the last time. The situation vis a vis 'feudalism vs democracy' is a bit more nuanced, as of course they are not actually killing and eating us, but the idea is the same - the predator only needs one small opening to establish their dominance, and once it is established it is very hard to oppose them - we prey turn our backs or let our guard down for a second, and that's the end of the story, as they happily take the easy kill or victory from behind, and the second they are in power they begin constructing as many things around us as they can to keep us in their power - and of course after several centuries of establishing their control of the 'democracies' we have all been fooled into believing we live in, the constructs around us to keep us 'in the box' are very deep and multi-faceted, layer upon layer upon layer of things to keep us completely unaware of the way our country really runs, and completely under their control as we challenge or fight any number of endless distractions or are led down false paths.

And in the human situation, once we're on the ground with the foot and sword on our necks, literally or figuratively, they are far too smart as predators to let us back on our feet to challenge them.

And they established that dominance a long, long time ago, and have maintained it, and increased it, every year since, until now, they are able to tell us the chains are symbols of freedom, and few even think to question it. And so it has been forever - and if we are going to challenge these human predators, ruthless and unbelievably strong in the modern world and master gamesplayers in the human game of thrones as they are, we need to understand their 'rules' - not play by their rules, as the peace-inclined, reluctant-to-kill herd folks will never defeat the violence-based, killing-as-second-nature predators in a violence contest, but we must understand the rules, or lack thereof, they follow, and how they manipulate us through our own peaceful and honest ways, so we simply put a stop to their manipulation through lies and deception - we can defeat them by using our brains and our superior numbers and working together, if we understand what is happening around us.

They well understand this dynamic, which is why they are winning.

We do not - and we continue losing.

And the Third and final crucial point that we need to get firmly on the table, in the front conscious parts of our brains, with a big bright light shining all over it is - we need to recognise clearly that these predators are Enemy, as any wouldbe-prey recognizes a predator as Enemy in the wild. Something that wants to kill and eat you, or enslave you, is nothing but an enemy to you, and you are some kind of naive, ready-to-be-eaten fool if you think otherwise, a soon to be dead or dominated fool. These human predators see we 'cooperative inclined humans' as prey, not as 'fellow herd members', and treat us as a farmer treats his animals, or a wolf a deer herd - something to kill and eat, or in a predator-human sense something to exploit and manipulate, to use for profit as a farmer uses a cow or sheep or horse, not someone to consult about the running of the farm, the big farm we call 'our' community, or society.

sheeps-wolves2

As long as we allow these predators to walk freely among us as one of us, as long as we welcome these predator-humans into our own community, and grant these wolves in sheep's clothing the same rights and legal protections and assumptions of good will and suchlike we grant one another - they will simply see us as fools and tools, and use these things, our naivete and trust and gullibility and peaceful inclinations, as weapons to be used against us - as we have seen over the centuries, very successfully.

It is good and right that we try to create decent societies for our own kind - but when we allow the predator - the classical wolf in sheep's clothing - to smile his crocodile smile and pretend to be one of us, and we let him in the door, and allow him to use and abuse these things, as Brutus was allowed to not only sit at the table of Caesar but to offer him words of council which Caesar heeded while Brutus was preparing the knife, these rules we create for ourselves, and claim the things we have created as their own - they just take over, as they have done.

We do not get the enemy out the door by saying 'please go now', which would be sufficient for one of our own kind, the enemy has no intention of going, and will only respond to the kind of violence they use to subdue us.

With those essential understandings beginning the informing of our exploration, let's carry on and take a short look at some other things in our current and (relatively) recent history that the predator-dominated education system and media don't teach us anything about, or teach us some very incomplete and/or false, very self-serving, things. Things that will let us understand more clearly why we are losing the almost-democracy our ancestors managed to create by recognizing their predator enemies much more clearly than we seem to today, and thus informed, ready to start some serious measures to degrade their power while moving towards their complete defeat and banishment from our halls of democratic government

We don't really have a choice at this time in our history, as those who would be Kings Forever have decided this is the time to force the game, to 'roll the dice' as any experienced but in a dangerous situation combatant will do at some time when he thinks he has an advantage or the situation promises to get worse before better and now is the time to act, and we are very much now at a crossroads.

And if we let Those Who Would Be Our Kings force us down their chosen road, a road into their well-prepared and well-fenced plantation, we become the new 21st century peasant class, with an oligarchy above us so powerful the chances of us or our children or their children ever getting out of their control are, as they say, slim and none.

If we reject their new serfdom road, and choose to make our own way - if we are careful, and smart, the untrod road could lead, if we step carefully, to the first full Democracy in the history of our species.

It's worth fighting for, I think. Red pill or blue, the time to choose is upon us.

As various observers of our history have noted - the tragedy of our times is not that a few bad people are doing bad things, it's that so many good people sit back and do nothing.

They wouldn't be talking about you, I do hope.

malcolm-enemyrfk-oligarchy

I 2a: Pretend Democracy

Michael Harris: '...Stephen Harper's Canada is not a democracy, let alone a parliamentary democracy. It is an oligarchy with a few well chosen friends and millions upon millions of people to ignore, vilify or bamboozle...' (might I add - Harris is still a bit stuck in the forest here in identifying Harper particularly, as all the parties for the last 30 years have behaved exactly the same, regarding slowly but surely turning the government into an oligarchy of, by and for the wealthy cabal who run the country from their Bay St penthouses ...)

Haroon Siddiqui: '..The latest national census is a stark reminder that Canada is ruled by one man - Stephen Harper...'

etc etc etc etc etc etc etc - obviously I am far from the first person to have recognized that our Canadian 'democracy' has been getting more and more manifest in the theory than the practice over the last 35 years or so - but there are still far, far, far too many people out there who do not understand it, and are trying to fight for a 'better world' within the bounds of this 'pretend' democracy' we have in Canada today - and we are never going to succeed until all of us understand that 'democracy' is not something somebody gives you, but something you make for yourself - in exactly the same way those who have taken power understood what they wanted, and did what they had to get it. We live in an oligarchy, very clearly and undeniably to the engaged observer, an oligarchy created over the last 40 years by those who wanted it, while those who thought they lived already in a fine democracy got complacent and stupid and allowed it to be taken away.

We might be able to get it back - but only after we realise it's been taken away in the first place.

Pseudo-democracy in Canada in the 21st century - the background

Most people learn the general history of the struggle for 'democracy' in school, in some form along these lines: during most of human history societies were ruled by emperors or god-kings or warlords or feudal kings of various sorts, all imposing their will mainly through simple violence, or by claiming, and through various means convincing their 'followers' or subjects to believe they actually had, some connection with a 'god' who 'validated' their rule. The idea of 'democracy' started back in ancient Greece, and then Rome in a limited way back in the BC(E) years, but those places reverted to either obscurity or emperors, and 'democracy' as we understand it today didn't progress much after that until the middle ages, when the people in England and other parts of western Europe started demanding more say in the running of their lives and societies, and the struggle for modern 'democracy' began, and over the next few centuries 'the people' won their 'freedom' from the kings and feudal lords, and today we (in 'the West') live in modern great democracies, with 'representative' parliaments or congresses and suchlike being the center of governments generally controlled of, by and for 'we the people', and any 'kings' that might be around these days, at least in our advanced western societies,are figureheads only, and real 'power' is democratic as 'we the people' rule ourselves.

And since we now live in a 'democracy', which means, at least in theory, that the people as a whole actually run the country through elected and 'responsible' 'representatives' rather than some warlord or king of some type ruling by decree and doing various bad things to the people he rules according to nothing more than whatever whim he has no matter what the people desire, whatever is happening in our modern democratic country, it must be accepted peacefully if not always happily, keeping discontent and protest 'civil' and confined to certain approved channels, because it has the approval, of some (again 'theoretical') 'democratic majority' and thus those doing whatever during the time they have been given by the electors to run our country have a 'legitimate democratic mandate' to govern, and whatever its faults, this is the very highest and best form of government, so why would we want to change anything? - as the saying goes, we can always throw the bums out democratically at the next election. Sure, we can talk about various minor 'tweaks' or 'reforms', but the superiority, and validity, of the system itself is quite beyond question.

It's a clever, and powerful, argument when successfully sold to the people and deeply internalised by them, as it has been, as it's based on a truth that has become exaggerated and twisted quite out of shape, and also because it plays to the natural desires of people to believe their society is fundamentally a good one (even 'the best yea!!') being governed by the highest and best form of government, 'democracy'. It has the further strength of being strongly 'proactive', defusing before they even get started any number of lines of action or resistance that unhappy citizens might see as justifiable or necessary if they believed they were actually trying to create a true democracy from a non-democratic situation, rather than simply being engaged in contesting 'legitimate' differences in an existing democracy.

For, of course, the reality of the situation regarding 'democracy' in Canada, or most other modern western countries also considered to be 'great modern democracies', is a great deal more nuanced, and fundamentally simply not true in its basic belief, than this simplistic 'civics course democracy for school children' version of our country we all get indoctrinated with in school, indoctrination then constantly reinforced by the media and those who already believe the fairy tale. For of course any honest analysis indicates quite beyond legitimate questioning that we do not, in fact, live in a true democracy at all, using any realistic definition of the word.

We do indeed have the institutions of a good enough democracy, and the processes to put people into those institutions to do our democratic work, which were slowly created over 100s of years of struggle, and of course can be pointed at to claim we have a 'democracy' - but in reality, all of the central parts of the 'democracy' are, in our modern world, controlled from behind the scenes, the 'wizard's curtain' if you will, by a small group of powerful people, to the extent that it is a democracy in name only, and we are very obviously ruled to all intents and purposes as a plutocracy, or oligarchy, take your pick.

The Reality of 'Democracy' in Canada 1: More in the theory than the practice

The evidence that we do not actually run 'our' own country, as a democracy, is pretty much irrefutable to those able and willing to put rational thought processes ahead of years of enforced schooling and learned dogma memorisation mindlessly parroted on command.

Just for a few quick examples:

>> Unpopular policies: Far more Canadians have disagreed with rather than supported almost every important policy decision of the last 30 years, from 'free' trade through the ongoing lowering of corporate taxes and dismantling of the health care system and other major parts of 'our' democracy, through the various 'regime-change' operations (-aka-international-war-crimes, causing great devastation through bombing and invasions to countries presenting no threat to us ... etc) 'we' have participated in during the last ~25 years, through the ongoing persecution of the millions of Canadians who use or grow small amounts of marijuana and the imposition of seatbelt and helmet laws not wanted by most Canadians through many, many, many other things great and small, and it's just nonsense to wander around mindlessly parroting the claim we have all been thoroughly indoctrinated to mindlessly parrot that this is 'democracy in action yea!' when it so clearly is anything but, unless you redefine the word to the point of meaninglessness, as appears to have been done when a lot of people weren't paying enough attention (as most of the usurpation has proceeded - people trained to believe certain things in school, and then to (again, unquestioningly) follow the media telling them what is important, and what they should think about important things, and which then instructs them to turn their attention to trivia and gossip and spectacle after listening to the 'experts' tell them what is happening and what they should think about it all, when they should be paying attention to more important things and thinking for themselves).

>>Fraudulent debt - we have a massive debt of some $500 billion in Canada, which reached this level in the early 1990s upon which we have paid over a trillion dollars in interest over the last 35+ years (and double those figures when adding in provincial debt) - I'll talk about this in detail later, but it is completely unarguable that this debt should never have been incurred, there were very viable options which would have resulted in no debt and no interest payments, but Canadians were never told about the options, or the change of policy in the 1970s that led to this debt, it was done secretly and with no media coverage. This is very clearly simply highway robbery, and Canadians had no democratic say in anything to do with it.

>> Managed elections - The prevailing justification for calling the country a 'democracy' when it so obviously is run against the wishes of most of the people most of the time, when 'informed, engaged majority rule' is supposed to be a fundamental tenet of 'democracy', seems to be that that we get 'elections' every few years, thus conferring some 'legitimacy' and/or 'mandate' on the things done by whichever tweedle gets elected, a deception continually reinforced by the secretariat of the rulers (AKA the 'mainstream media', another great deception as discussed in more detail later) telling us daily what a great 'democracy' (and 'free media') we have, and through the school system which instills the message deeply into the basic unquestioned beliefs of all school children, but it's a pretty shallow and simply untrue argument in every way if examined rationally rather than through some kind of 'we're so great and don't you ask hard questions about it!!' patriotic blindness filter