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M. Create a wholly new global political party supporting as many of the causes described on this page and its siblings as possible, within the present system
Charge this new party to especially confront and resist the forces of war, weapons proliferation, greed, nationalism, environmental degradation, propaganda and/or dishonest or misleading news and media across-the-board; to ferret out, publicize, and work against instances of racism, sexism, ageism, religious intolerance, secrecy, censorship, the merger of business OR religion with government, political, business, or government retaliation against whistleblowers, unethical advertising, marketing, and other practices, and undue infringement upon civil liberties of all kinds.
This appears especially important for developed nations like the USA, where the existing duopoly of political parties (Republicans and Democrats) appears so hopelessly corrupt and obliged to nefarious factions favoring the current status quo as to threaten the very existence of mankind itself.
Increasingly the elite of developed nations like the USA force most all below them in the hierarchy to ignore any considerations of the future beyond the next quarter, which leads to severe curtailments in projects and goals vital to humanity's future survival-- since most of these require a long term perspective for true cost-benefit accounting. For example, public education of the young makes no sense at all from a narrow quarterly perspective (which may account for why some developed nations have been reducing real support for this sector in various ways for decades now). But from a multi-generational view it's absolutely vital to the interests of a long-lived, just, dynamic, and democratic civilization.
Cost-benefit calculations which take little interest in the long term on many issues involved cannot help but provide the wrong answers to most questions. And yet the vast majority of business and political decisions made today in the developed nations appear to be based on formulas which look no further than the next quarter or the next election.
| -- Corporate executives still place far too much emphasis on the next-quarter stock price than on long-term strategic planning; CS Monitor |
All this has been exacerbated by a news and entertainment media in the developed nations which goes still further, usually encouraging consumers to live in the moment, pretending tomorrow will never come-- in order to get said consumers to buy more things, and sooner rather than later.
Truth be told, the ultimate end of civilization could come from a great many different sources. But in my view a top contender for the postion would be a lack of regard for the long view in one or more matters crucial to a civil, healthy, and prosperous society.
This across-the-board evangelism pushing the notion of living only for the present without regard for the future (or to consequences of virtually any kind) is resulting in more lax enforcement of business and government accounting and other behavior, as well as a consumer base living off financial fumes, as more and more spend themselves into bankruptcy. Investors seek ever faster and higher returns on their money, making them ever more vulnerable to scams and con artists, as well as higher risks in even valid investment vehicles. This shortsightedness also shortchanges important groups like schoolchildren, as real education resources are cut over and over again to shift money elsewhere, into shorter term projects.
It's also resulting in increasing damage to up and coming generations. All too often they are mentally and physically damaged by malnutrition and exposure to environmental pollution of various sorts, then poorly educated and finally overwhelmed by the demands of the marketplace as they seek out their place in same. As adults they are then often subjected to still more unnecessary environmental dangers, including but not limited to overwork and excessive mental stresses.
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-- Corruption 'Rampant' in Two-Thirds of Countries; Reuters
-- Americans are 'one illness away' from financial collapse "Americans are raising the white flag as never before..." -- Breaking Records--For Bankruptcies By Andy Serwer; FORTUNE STREET LIFE found on or about 7-14-2002 -- Whites join slide into poverty as US incomes fall; UK Guardian -- Census U.S. Poverty Up, Income Down (washingtonpost.com) -- U.S. Poverty Up, Income Down; ABC News -- US in denial as poverty rises; UK Observer -- Ninety percent of young white male workers now doing worse than they would have 20 years ago; EurekAlert!; 20-Feb-2002; Contact: Joel Schwarz; joels@u.washington.edu; 206-543-2580; University of Washington -- Most Americans Experience Poverty Sometime In Adult Life, Study Finds; 7 APRIL 1999; Contact: Gerry Everding; gerry_everding@aismail.wustl.edu; 314-935-6375; Washington University in St. Louis Lower education levels usually limit a person's legitimate employment and wage potential-- and so might help nudge them into crime. Ergo, helping insure everyone the opportunity to attain higher levels of education may reduce levels of crime and violence across-the-board. -- Higher crime rate linked to low wages and unemployment, study finds; EurekAlert -- Floundering Youth in the U.S. Labor Market -- Students 'depressed by debt burden'; BBC -- Today's foods lack yesterday's nutrition; The Globe and Mail -- Crime and nourishment; UK Guardian -- Poor Diet May Trigger Asthma -- Children Greatest Victims Of Degrading Environment; Unisci.com -- Children face environmental risks; BBC -- Strong Statistical Correlation Between Prevalence Of Diabetes, Air Pollution; Science Daily
In developed nations like the USA, many corporations are exploiting the way TV, radio, videos, games, and the internet have become defacto babysitters of many children due to the frequent absence or inattention of their parents, stemming from both often working and being otherwise time-pressed. These corporations use the latest child psychology information available in state-of-the-art multimedia to seduce children via violence, addictive mental hooks, and gaudy sensuality into shrill harassment of parents for the purchase of various products/services the corporations are pushing. This is leading to more than 50% of parents admittedly buying items for their children which they themselves disapprove of, but feel compelled to buy to avoid disappointing their children. This ongoing virtual child abuse appears to be desensitizing children to violence and its results in general, perhaps leading to some of them later on inflicting great tragedies upon themselves and others as teens or adults. In short, this corporate abuse of children today may be leading, at worst, to a new 'lost' generation of violent criminals tomorrow. Or, at best, to a future generation of adults who themselves may become poor excuses for individual human beings-- and even worse parents. The Center for a New American Dream is one group formed to combat this phenomena. -- The nanny by Ralph Nader, Oct. 27, 1999, Ralph Nader/In the Public Interest, San Francisco Bay Guardian, sfbg.com -- Teens' jobs too often are unsafe, groups say -- Work is three times as deadly as war, says UN; UK Guardian
From 8-3-02 jrm&aFLUX newz&viewz: Why is it easier for many to find things to die for than to live for?Suicide, murder, terrorism, war, and violence of many other sorts, both physical and mental, done to oneself and/or to others. It's remarkably easy for the average human being today to find something they consider to be 'worth dying for'. Usually, perhaps normally, such justifications for death are related to one's family, and sometimes friends and lovers. But governments often ask (or demand) that we (or typically men, anyway) see more distant or abstract ideas as sufficient to die for, such as nationalism/patriotism, etc. The most extreme of cult or religious leaders sometimes desire something similar from both sexes.If you look around, you find almost everyone is constantly trying to persuade you that their particular agenda or idol or idea is worth dying for-- even if it only means a drawn out death, reached via one pinprick at a time. For as your free time is the most valuable asset of anyone alive, and most of us must give up great gobs of that time to earn money, then everytime we pay money for something we're trading a bit of our life for it-- and so dying a little. Thus, Madison Avenue advertising is constantly pushing different brands and speeds of death upon us, not much different from the worst illegal drug pushers-- at least from one perspective. The developed world is now inundated with such death merchants, with the overall level of advertising becoming almost subliminal now, as it pervades our internet experience, TV viewing, radio listening, theater visits, taxi cab rides-- practically any aspect of human experience you can name, today. At the same time we're drenched in violence in our media, and urged to act on impulse and make more money ever faster so we can spend more faster-- and die faster. Apparently the ideal consumer would be one who frenziedly works their butt off for a lifetime so that they can buy as much stuff as possible, and never ever stop to contemplate any other aspects of their lives or the world. Today's America seems the epitome of this, as the entire economy appears structured to minimize conscious thought or financial independence on the part of individual consumers, while also draining them in every conceivable way money-wise in order to keep them running the treadmill in their cage. America does little or nothing to train children how to resist this bombardment, or even how to manage their own budgets in order to protect themselves from financial ruin when they grow up. We're all pretty much on our own, with 'every man for himself'. No wonder some foreign observers often comment on the short-sightedness, selfish and self-centered nature of certain Americans. In broad societal terms, we're raised that way. I wonder though, if there's no way we could turn this around? Help one another find things to live for, rather than die for? Of course, some would sneer that such a philosophy smacks of cowardice, as it would dilute the urge to find just causes for death, either for onself or others, in pursuits like war or terrorism, etc. But life itself is often no picnic, as even we sometimes pampered Americans know from first-hand experience. Indeed, choosing life over death is often the more difficult course for many of us, as death would release us from all sorts of obligations, uncertainties, and suffering, while life tends to do only the opposite. We Americans effectively rule the world at the moment. But find ourselves aghast when our emphasis on essentially glorifying death saturates the globe, and helps result in things like suicide bombers and the use of airliners as manned missiles. Just look at the Hollywood blockbusters we feed upon and export to the rest of the world. Often brimming with extreme violence, and focusing on heroes who can find something or someone worth risking their life for around every corner. What can we do about all this? That's hard to say, as glorifying extreme violence, suicide, and murder is very profitable for our media elite and large shareholders, as well as very useful to our politicians when they want to elicit emotional responses from us in support of various wars, candidates, or passage of new laws, and our employers when they wish to motivate us to be as ruthless as possible in business dealings-- since American brand capitalism seems to have degenerated into something like a perpetual war footing itself, since the end of the Cold War. They've got us locked up tight in support of death and violence in so many ways that it's mind-boggling. |
To answer my likely critics, yes, many of the measures preceding this item on the list appear to display "liberal" characteristics. Let me address this by saying that in the past I've voted for both republican and democratic candidates: their party affiliation was always much less important to me than their stand on important issues. Unfortunately those candidates and their respective parties almost always disappointed me with their actions in the cases where they successfully took office. In the 2000 Presidential race I didn't vote for either candidate, as both seemed deeply flawed and unqualified for the job. My personal favorite was actually John McCain, but his own party did everything it could to prevent him from getting the nomination-- apparently because they wouldn't be able to adequately control him if he won.
I also believe that today's American public is subject to extremes on both ends, conservative and liberal, and has tended to swing back and forth between these extremes for decades. These swings have helped result in huge budget deficits, war after war after war, and an astounding squandering of both public and private wealth to basically line the pockets of corrupt politicians and unethical businessmen.
"American families live just one illness or accident away from complete financial collapse" -- Harvard law school professor Elizabeth Warren, co-author of a study published in Norton's Bankruptcy AdviserStaggeringly high health care costs are a major contributing factor to bankruptcies in the USA. And this is true for middle-class families which possess health insurance, but whose policies do not adequately cover their expenses.
"It was very unlikely 30 years ago that an ordinary family could run up a half-million dollar medical bill, yet today that can happen in a matter of weeks in a major medical centre" -- Harvard professor Elizabeth Warren-- US Study: Medical Bills Main Culprit In Bankruptcies by Araminta Wordsworth; www.commondreams.org; October 09, 2002; originally published by the National Post in Canada, April 27, 2000"Americans are raising the white flag as never before..." -- Breaking Records--For Bankruptcies By Andy Serwer; FORTUNE STREET LIFE found on or about 7-14-2002 If the above is what's happening to many fairly well-off middle-class folks with at least some health care insurance protection, what might the less fortunate people in America be going through? 30 million US workers don't possess health insurance. 40 million total Americans don't have health insurance. -- Study: Uninsured Don't Get Needed Health Care By Ceci Connolly Washington Post; May 22, 2002; Page A03 Many of the those who are themselves uninsured actually pay thousands in taxes which end up paying for the health care of others. -- Harvard Medical School study concludes: 'We pay for national health insurance but don't get it' by Frances M. Beal; July 17, 2002; San Francisco Bay View Ironically, Americans already pay enough in taxes to get the universal health care virtually all other developed nations already possess. But we've let our politicians and big business simply pocket huge chunks of it rather than provide us with the services we've paid for. At some point this may become a far bigger scandal than the other schenanigans of US business accounting fraud and government waste.
"We pay the world's highest health care taxes, but much of the money is squandered. The wealthy get tax breaks, and HMOs and drug companies pocket billions in profits at the taxpayers' expense."-- Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, an associate professor of medicine at Harvard "...politicians claim we can't afford universal coverage. Every other developed nation has national health insurance. We already pay for it, but we don't get it." -- Dr. David Himmelstein, of Physicians for a National Health Program "Other nations provide comprehensive health care to everyone without spending any more than the amount that we already pay in taxes to fund health care. But in the United States, we keep in place flawed policies that prevent tens of millions from having any health care coverage at all." "We have an abundance of data to show that we can provide truly comprehensive health care benefits for absolutely everyone and actually reduce our total health care costs by adopting a program of universal health insurance." -- Dr. Don McCanne, president of Physicians for a National Health Program -- Harvard Medical School study concludes: 'We pay for national health insurance but don't get it' by Frances M. Beal; July 17, 2002; San Francisco Bay View Compared to other countries, Americans are charged too much for just about everything health or medical-related. For example, we typically pay twice as much as other nations do for the same exact drugs. We pay our doctors twice on average what other OECD nations do too. We also pay lots more in administrative costs than most other OECD countries, wherever they use universal health systems compared to our private health care insurance system. -- Health Insurance Premiums; OUTSTANDING STORIES OF THE WEEK; Economic Reporting Review By Dean Baker; July 15, 2002 -- Pills, Profit and the Public Health with Peter Jennings; ABC News Internet Ventures; Bitter Medicine: Pills, Profit and the Public Health aired on ABC, May 29, 2002 at 10 PM ET -- Health Care in a 'Death Cycle' (washingtonpost.com) By David S. Broder; April 17, 2002; Page A15
Americans are more at risk from bioterror attacks than the citizens of any other developed nation on Earth due to the simple fact so many Americans have no health insurance."Their lack of insurance is a known risk to their own health, but it must now also be recognized as a risk to the nation's health"-- Dr. Matthew Wynia of the American Medical Association and Lawrence Gostin of Georgetown University -- Health experts worry uninsured may spread bioterror germs; The Associated Press/Nando Media /Nando Times; May 30, 2002 Even when a sick uninsured person does seeks help at a US hospital, they tend to receive a lower quality of care and less attention than the insured, both in cases considered routine or as emergencies-- and so a dangerous contagion from an as yet unreported bioterror attack would have that much more opportunity to spread throughout a community. -- Lack of Insurance Hurting Americans' Health: Report By Todd Zwillich; May 21, 2002; Yahoo!/Reuters Health --Myth challenged: uninsured adults not receiving needed care; 24 OCTOBER 2000; EurekAlert!; US Contact: John Lacey john_lacey@hms.harvard.edu 617-432-0442 Harvard Medical School -- Safety Net Just Isn't There For Health Care Uninsured; [Contact: John Lacey, Judith Montminy] 25-Oct-2000; UniSci Daily -- Many uninsured adults do not receive needed medical care; ; EurekAlert; 24 OCTOBER 2000; US Contact: John Lacey 617-432-0441 Center for the Advancement of Health |
Also note that there's growing evidence that so-called 'right-wing' political parties may be surprisingly hazardous and costly to society in general in many ways. CLICK HERE for how, why, and references. So during the formation of a new global party meant to better the world rather than hinder it, it would seem prudent to err on the side of less right-wing type behaviors and policies than more, in its composition.
However, this is not to say that a newborn party should lift its platform wholesale from current 'liberal' bodies or thinktanks; to the contrary, it should take the best from groups in both the 'liberal' and 'conservative' camps (as well as others), while discarding the rest. For instance, both the current Democratic and Republican parties in the USA have proven themselves to be unreliable with regards to curbing unnecessary deficit spending and questionable accounting practices. They have also both proven all too willing to spend huge and excessive amounts on the military and related agencies, at the expense of things like universal health care and expanded educational opportunities for the poor. They both support widescale surveillance of the public and excessive restrictions on civil liberties too, for the most part. Both groups have also shown consistent support for corporate socialism and lax regulation, as well as anti-competitive business behavior, thereby putting much of our financial infrastructure at risk (not to mention our retirement funds).