Detroit files for bankrutcy

[Michael Grove]

Detroit has become the largest city in US history

to file for bankruptcy after accumulating spiralling

debt estimated at $18.5 billion.

Remember those three car bosses who each flew from Detroit to

Washington in their very own company aircraft to attend the

congressional hearing about their request for taxpayer bailout ?

Remember Paulson pleading with Congress for the $700 billion

bailout so that Goldman Sachs and all the rest could cover the

losses which they had accrued as a result of gambling with their

clients money ?

Remember Martha's statement back in December 2006 that - 

It's not that U.S. businesses couldn't make a profit staying in the U.S., it's that they couldn't maximize their profits and that somehow, over the last 200 years, Americans have forgotten that WE the PEOPLE are AMERICA, and that our country can really be BY US and FOR US. 

Now really, what do we want? Do we want laws and standard

practices that facilitate the enrichment of a few? Or do we want

laws and standards that facilitate the full utilization of the labor,

imagination and vision of everyone?

Which economy, ultimately, would be the strongest?

 

WE can talk about it  and we can vote.

They say that a week is a long time in politics - because by the time next week

comes the politicians can almost guarantee that last weeks problems have been

forgotten, buried or covered up.

Political Parties are Seen as Most Corrupt Institutions Globally 

People power is burgeoning around the world like never before. And we're winning.

Brazilians have used the online tools of Avaaz to get huge media and political attention,

showing how anyone -

can now kick off a campaign that might change their country or the world. 

Start a petition now!

.

[Michael Grove]

They say that a week is a long time in politics - because by the time next week

comes the politicians can almost guarantee that last weeks problems have been

forgotten, buried or covered up.

People power is burgeoning around the world like never before. And we're winning.

Brazilians have used our online tools to get huge media and political attention, showing

how anyone can now kick off a campaign that might change their country or the world. 

Start a petition now!

[Michael Grove]

Our Story of the People trundled forward under the momentum of centuries, but with each

passing decade the hollowing-out of its core, that started perhaps with the industrial-scale

slaughter of World War One, extended further. When I was a child, our system of ideology and

mass media still protected that story, but in the last thirty years the incursions of reality 

have punctured its protective shell and have ruptured its essential infrastructure.

We no longer believe our storytellers, our elites. We don’t believe the politicians, we don’t

believe the doctors, we don’t believe the professors, we don’t believe the bankers, we don’t 

believe the technologists. All of them imply that everything is under control, and we know that

it is not. 

We have lost the vision of the future we once had; most people have no vision of the future at

all. This is new for our society. Fifty or a hundred years ago, most people agreed on the general 

outlines of the future. We thought we knew where society was going. Even the Marxists and the 

capitalists agreed on its basic outlines: a paradise of mechanized leisure and scientifically 

engineered social harmony, with spirituality either abolished entirely or relegated to a materially 

inconsequential corner of life that happened mostly on Sundays. Of course there were dissenters 

from this vision, but this was the general consensus.

When a story nears its end it goes through death throes, an exaggerated semblance of life.

So today we see domination, conquest, violence, and separation take on absurd extremes that

hold a mirror up to what was once hidden and diffuse. The year 2012 ended with just such a

potent story-disrupting event: the Sandy Hook massacre. Even realizing that far more, equally

innocent, children have been killed in the last few years by, say, U.S. drone strikes, it really got

under my skin. No one was immune. I think that is because its utter senselessness penetrated

every defense mechanism we have to maintain the fiction that the world is basically OK. Unlike

9/11 or Oklahoma City, and certainly unlike the horrors that go on around the world, there was

no convenient narrative to divert the raw pain of what happened. We cannot help but map those

murdered innocents onto the young faces we know, and the anguish of their parents onto

ourselves.

At the base of our Story of the People is separation, of humanity from nature, of me

from you, of each from all, and this event united everyone, of whatever culture, nationality, 

or political persuasion. For a moment, we all felt the exact same thing. For at least a moment,

I am sure, most people were in touch with the simplicity of what is important; I am sure many

people had that fleeting feeling, “It doesn’t have to be that difficult, if only we could

remember what is so obvious now, that love is all there is.”

We humans have made such a mess of things, forgetting LOVE. It is the same realization we 

have when a loved one is going through the dying process, and we think, “Ah, how precious this 

person is – why couldn’t I see that? Why couldn’t I appreciate all those moments we had together?

All the arguments and grudges seem so tiny now.”

                                                                                         Charles Eisenstein