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Gary Null's Tools for Social Change and Personal Empowerment. January 30, 2008. KPFK-90.7 FM.
http://www.virtuallybaroque.com/roh/2008/2008.htm
Gary Null Live, Wednesday, 1-31-08, 3:30 am - 5:30 am.
Real Player 2:24:55 (The following is a transcript of 2:00:19 to 2:13:29, a Gary Null monologue on American election issues)
"These people will assume that we can force, through nation building and will, our democracy down anyone's throat.
We don't even have a democracy today. We are bordering on a theocracy. The John McCain's.... These people will pander and cater to whoever allows them into power. And then, if not openly, court them, but allow them access, as they have always had, to all the other venues of power in Washington. Nothing will change with any of the candidates. The only candidate who would actually offer change, cannot be elected. And that is Ron Paul. The people interested in Ron Paul tend to be young, idealistic, and still believe in the virtue of individual sanctity and the Constitution.
The baby boomer, my generation, is already finished. They're tired. They're burned-out. They're emotionally distressed. They're empty. They're vacuous. They're selfish. They blew through nine trillion dollars in assets and have nothing to show to make a better world for it.
The Senior Citizens are in LaLa land. And with rare exception they will not be counted upon to do anything unless it is their own individual proclivity to do so. But the vast majority will be rubbing their hemorrhoids, looking for the next AARP mindset to vote on, like their disastrous Medicare plan. And they can be forgotten because they have forgotten what it was to be a part of an activist culture. We're not known for activism in America. We're too comfortable.
You do not see people taking to the streets, or risking arrest, or risking challenge, or risking exclusion, unless they live from a higher ideal. Their ideals are not always correct. Some come from Marxist, some come from Socialist, some come Communist, some come from Libertarian, some come from Constitutional, or Green ideologies.
Sometimes those ideologies are the only thing a person believes in as they have not yet found a reason to believe fully in themselves. If you want to find some people who are really challenged in life find people who are radically associated in balancing, emotionally associated with any cause, whether it is a Feminist cause or a Vegan cause.
It doesn't matter. It is not the cause that is the problem. There is noble gesture in all causes. It is us not having a balance in how we approach things with a sense of responsibility and reason and detachment.
And so we are at this point with those who still believe in ideals and have not yet been corrupted by the "get what you can for yourself kid and let the rest be...." Those young people in America in their teens and 20's, and some in their 30's, but not many, still believe it is possible to make change. For the smathering of the one percent to two percent of baby boomers who still believe in the ideals we had in the 1960's, it is now time to join. You do not need the majority of the disempowered to make change. All change historically in the world have always come from the minority of the empowered. You've never had critical shift in world history in majorities. Majorities, by their very nature are passive and adaptive. They are based upon hierarchical structure. And whoever runs the hierarchy, the cult of the leader, dominates that entire era. Tribe, country, does not matter. They are only challenged by idealists who have the power to persuade. Those are the dynamic-assertive life energies, those who can define a movement, the creative-assertives, and those who are willing to support the movement through the courage of their own convictions.
So we are at a perfect storm. All the candidates have been co-opted. I'm sure, at some point, they actually believe that they have some ideal that has not been compromised. But find me any ideals or anything that Hillary and Bill Clinton have ever risked. Bill Clinton's entire modus operandi is "like me for what I represent, not for what I do." Because there's nothing this man has ever done that shows a sense of integrity. I've looked carefully at all of his votes. I've looked carefully at his voting record, and as governor, as Attorney--General, and as President, twice. He has caused more damage to the American soul than any other president in American history. Even more so, believe it or not, than George Bush, because he was smarter and the people around him opened up the free market system.
Others would have, but he was the one who had the keys to the gates. And the World Trade Organization, NAFTA, and GATT, the raping of our environment, the evisceration of our Clean Water Act, our Clean Air Act, the mining of the old forests, all of which is the negative karma of Al Gore that hopefully, at this point, is beginning to rectify by his actions.
It's amazing when you think back. Think of Gorbachov. Gorbachov actually sent in the Russian elite paratroopers to crush the rebellion of freedom in Georgia. Thousands were detained and arrested and killed. And yet he won a Nobel Prize. Kissinger won a Nobel Peace prize and that was after his secret bombing campaign and the support of the Pathet Lao and Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. So, we do not have a shortage of people who won awards who do not deserve them.
So, what do we do at this moment. We look at the candidates and with the exception of John Edwards who, at least, has now found his voice and found his courage and is the only current popular candidate to show some determination to set himself against special-interest groups and define his enemy and therefore has turned a light on himself. It is too little and too late. The American public is more interested in how someone laughs, how they smile, what they wear, and how quick they are at defending anything that they have said. The spin machines are winning the election. The individuals are really of secondary significance.
Barack Obama is not Martin Luther King. He has yet to define himself by what he is willing to risk. And thus far he has risked nothing in his career. That does not mean he is a corrupt person. He is not. It doesn't mean that he is a bad person. He is not. But he is not a person willing to make real change. You haven't heard him say, "I will dismantle the Federal Trade Organization. I will dismantle the Federal Reserve. I will dismantle the IRS. I will dismantle and take us out of GATT, NAFTA, the World Trade Organization. I will eliminate the super-secret agencies.
I will cut the military-industrial complex by 50%. I will...." And you don't hear him say any of those things. You don't hear him say what he will do. And what he does is just tokenism, meaninglessness. He hasn't taken on the military-industrial complex, the pharmaceutical industries, the oil cartels. He has done nothing. Sleight of hand.
It is only what you do that shows the risks you are willing to take to define the changes that determine the measure of your character.
We cannot, as a country, afford to have anyone too honest, too courageous, or willing to make too much change in office. We can't even have someone that is shown to be too angry. When we show someone who shows those kind of emotions we feel uncomfortable. So the American public, at least 90%, have been living with the illusion that as long as someone gives us the certainty that they know what they're doing, we will give them the power to make all the choices. Hence, we are still watching Katrina. All the while that we're watching Katrina, America is going, once again, down that slippery slope.
There's no candidate who said, "let us correct the environment by stopping all of the ways that we are destroying it, immediately." No one has advocated going meatless, which would be the number one way we could stop global warming. No one has advocated that we immediately start a Marshal Plan on creating electric cars. Instead, you have Barack Obama and Clinton wanting to build more nuclear plants. That's a disaster.
And also, what about being honest about why people get sick? People talk about having a coverage, but the coverage does not have prevention as a measure of it, of being honest and mandatory. You only get coverage if you show you've taken the classes and deserve the coverage you're getting. But we won't do that because of the special interest groups, the meat lobby, the dairy lobby, the sugar lobby, et cetera.
We have not told the government, interject into the states and stop all mortgage foreclosures. Protect the American consumer, so no one's home can be taken away. Cap all mortgage interest at 4%. At 4% nobody is going to lose their home. Everybody can afford their mortgage. Stop all credit cards until a person can prove they can pay for what they've bought. And cap it. The idea is right now, you're giving a 3,000 entre sugar-filled gourmet table to a diabetic and wondering why they're dying. Americans are spending themselves into oblivion. We have to have restraints.
We are addicted and we're out of control. We also have to look at cause and effect. Cap all credit card payments at 4%. Stop all penalties and late fees and compounded interest on all debit cards. When you do that, you will save over two trillion dollars in the American economy. Far more than the stupid stimulus package that's based upon people who don't have any savings now, spending the money they get. You should make it a federal law, nobody can trade in commodities, and nobody can trade in oil. Thirty-eight cents out of every dollar for the cost of oil is based upon someone taking a profit, generally, a hedge fund. And think of all the commodities and food, you're paying more, not because of supply and demand, but because of profit taking by a small group. And it's all legal. Hedge funds should be banned, and equity partnerships should be charged a tax of 65%. There have been twenty-eight million Americans, average working-class Americans, who have lost their jobs due to corporate taking-over and stripping off the assets, including the employees, so that the fabulously wealth can have even more money to brag about. We should have a hall of shame where Henry Kravits and Silverstone, the head of Blackstone Group, are pilloried for being against humanity. This is what we should do. Now, if you wait for any of the political candidates to do anything that's correct, and make any changes, then you are waiting for Godot.
It is now time for you to go meatless, for you to become conscious of the choices you make, for you to move out of the crowded cities like Los Angeles and New York. Move to sustainable environments. For you to start working towards making individual change a mandate of everyday of your life and then joining with other people who also live by higher consciousness. It will take more time. It'll be a slower evolutionary process but there will be enough people within another three to five years, at least 20 million Americans making positive choices and positive changes that other people will take notice. It's only going to get worse for everyone else. For those of you who are willing to disconnect yourself from the life-support system of this completely malignant machine, then you will be able to have a future of health and happiness and sustainability.
Those are my thoughts. I thank you all for yours. I thank you for listening." www.garynull.com
