It's Time to End Monkey Politics

As we watch the slowly unfolding crash of the infrastructure of Zimbabwe, the facts of who and what is responsible for the crash is self-evident. Robert Mugabe’s lust for power and prestige is the unquestionable cause of Zimbabwe’s slow decline into chaos. Only the wealthy and powerful are capable of living lives that are insulated from the rampant cholera and inflation. Vladimir Putin in Russia is another prime example of government for the leading alpha male, as was or latest Republican president, George W. Bush.

What we are witnessing is the culmination of five millennia of monkey politics. Our entire political structure has been and still is driven by hormonally charged, biologically driven social structures in which so-called “Alpha” Males are driven to monopolize all the good female breeding stock, hell, all the female breeding stock. Those of us who are not “Alpha,” ie., driven by the secretions of our gonads, are expected to cower before the “Alpha’s” magnificence and accept the “self-evident proof” of their superiority. In truth, those who seek power over others are akin to “dirty” neutron atomic bombs designed to destroy all life while preserving valuable architectural structures. Their desire for power is limited only by the competition of other “Alphas.”

Over the millennia we have seen thousands of philosophical “explanations” of why monkey politics and monkey politics political structures are “natural.” Such explanations from the “natural” superiority of wealthy, white males to the “divine” right of kings, from “might makes right” to “inbred inferiority.”
The days of monkey politics must come to an end. In true democracies the only power any individual seeks is the power develop their full potential as individuals in such ways that other individuals are granted the same power. If we, as a species, are to survive and not self-destruct we must forgo the kind of hormone driven politics and political structures that create and support men such as Robert Mugabe, Vladimir Putin and George W. Bush.

SOS Different Decade

I have been reluctant to write much in the last few weeks for several reasons—mostly I want to avoid sounding like a cassette tape stuck on rewind and play of the same passage. At the moment, the future of the economy is the largest issue most people are dealing with. Unfortunately, most discussions concerning the economy are abstract. That is, they focus on surveys, market prices and figures and ignore the human cost of economic realities. Frankly, the dehumanization of economic realities is the bane of free market ideologies. (See! I sound like a broken tape deck!)

The auto industry bailout is the current media darling story with the spectre of deflation rapidly coming to the forefront from behind. Why no one seems willing to comment on the fact that the present cost of buying and operating an automobile are the two main reasons sales have fallen to nearly zero would be a mystery if I were not such a cynic. We are presently experiencing a period of economic readjustment, a moment when the economic excesses of the elite few are in the process of rectification by the economic and social sacrifices of the working class many. Banks are cheerfully taking federal money without loosening credit restrictions. Auto manufacturers are taking federal money without appreciably changing the way they do business. I await breathlessly for the predictable fingerpointing by management to the “outrageous” benefits and wages of auto workers. No one will even begin to address the economic cost to our society of auto part outsourcing to foreign manufacturers.

Our wonderful governments will continue to threaten us with service cutbacks and berate us with the necessity for tax increases without ever addressing the way they do business. Employment initiatives will continue to focus on luring corporate jobs to an ailing economy rather than seeking entrepreneurial solutions of both the mini and maxi kinds.

In short, we will see business as usual in 2009 and the average worker will unequally suffer the consequences of lackluster leadership and the greed based world perspective of those leaders.