It's the 250th Fourth of July or something. Let's talk about democracy.
The United States cannot be saved by returning to the Revolutionary War or the Founding Fathers or the Enlightenment. We cannot find the solution to Western imperialism from the core of Western imperialism; we cannot find the escape from capitalist modernity from within capitalist modernity.
Every terrible thing that is happening in the United States - and all that which seeps out from it to the rest of the Americas and the rest of the world - can be traced back to authoritarianism, hierarchy, and the commodification of people and the natural world. The U.S has always been, at its best, "state-plus-democracy," having been forced to compromise and share power with the people, and the state is always seeking for ways to maintain its hegemonic power. Your voice doesn't matter because it was never supposed to matter, not as much as the businessmen. You feel this disempowered because you were always supposed to be powerless, your vote just part of an elaborate system meant to keep the peace between the wealthy and keep the poor productive. This country was never for you; it's all been one long con, and even the con-artists had themselves convinced it was "for the People."
In order to truly love democracy, and all the people of the Americas, you must hate the United States, which has only ever captured the will of the people to lend legitimacy to the rule of the wealthy. True (direct) democracy is possible, and it will be achieved through landback, Black liberation, gender liberation, solidarity with the Global South, and socialism.
Read more here.
