Letter to Editors. Make Your Vote Count in 2004.
The following is written in the spirit of the Avocado Declaration and
the Missouri proposal. It is 760 words and can be used as letters to
editors. Every Green is welcome to post or use it with or without
attribution. For even more limited space, the whole paragraph on Los
Vaqueros Reservoir, very illustrative in our neck of the woods, can
be deleted, without altering the message.
My title for it is: “Make Your Vote Count in 2004.” But you can find
a better title. I also would appreciate any and all suggestions about
short snappy bumper sticker phrases and questions that draws
attention to the fact that our “representatives” are a different
class and cannot represent us. You can email them to me. I get some
wonderfully encouraging emails. But I would appreciate them more on
the list serves.
There are still plenty of really good people who are vacillating. We
need the repetition to make this reality sink in. And the real king
makers too, are not totally oblivious to our sentiments; Not for
altruism, but for their need to manage.
Please do repeat our values. Our message needs to be repeated. It is
the people’s message. It sparks a fire when a person hears it the
first time. I have seen many people that initially retorted that
Nader caused Bush to win in Florida. I simply said no cheating did.
Soon I saw them saying it to others. It WAS THEIR IDEA. Kamran
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The financial gap between the elected officials and “their
constituents” has been widening. By now the “representatives of the
people” are in a distinct class, above them and without any
allegiance to, or feeling for them.
The stratification of the society into two classes is at a historical
high: A ruling minority, gets the bulk of the material rewards AND
CONTROLS the three powers of government; And an increasingly
disenfranchised majority has decreasing say in how the society is run.
I believe it is possible to make changes in the system peacefully.
But we have to increase our levels of skill.
Once again in the elections of the year 2000, people saw that their
votes don’t count.
How then, could it be possible to affect positive changes peacefully?
The ruling elite employs scientists who study people, with the
intention to “manage” them. They make constant assessments of the
current sentiments. Then they develop plans to harness and shift
these sentiments. The results are found in their management books.
Many are based on the humanity’s strong need for belonging.
This social nature of humans is mainly a very positive attribute of
humanity. But it also allows people to be managed.
When civilized skills are low, humans are competitive. In their lore
and even individual lives, people are subconsciously aware that
competition, thinly veiled in a “civilized” cloak, is actually murder
in small steps. Not wanting to be victims, and without skills to
alter the game, they want to side with the “winner.” But winners are
illusory, everyone loses. A person of high social-civilized skills is
altruistic.
A millennia old trick of the ruling minorities has been to convince
the ruled, that they are very close to, and for a little
more “trying” they WILL be included in, the elite.
As part of the “dues” to join the elite, a person can be easily
buffaloed into thinking that there are those who “know better.” And
in controversial situations, this person backs “down” in favor of the
elite.
Using the other side of the same coin, the ruling elite, by
presenting an initial proposal, way beyond their own expectation, and
then “backing down” to a “middle ground” can convince many that they
have been reasonable. If gasoline is 90 cents a gallon, and they
jack it up to $3/gallon, with any pretext whatsoever, and then
gradually adjust it “down” to 1.69/gal, most people will utter a sigh
of relief. After four years of Bush, ANYBODY, is deemed OK.
This technique is very standard, in submitting plans
for “developments.” The ruling elite wanted tax money to finance the
development of water reserves for the biggest development in history,
from Tasajara in the East Bay to the Sierra Foothills. First, they
started a propaganda campaign, following a draught year. “What will
happen if we have one more year of draught?” Well we had six more
years of draught and nothing bad happened. Rationing water to 200
gals/family/day, is not drastic by any stretch of the imagination,
for the majority of the people. Then they submitted the “original”
proposal for the Los Vaqueros Reservoir, which would have increased
the water reserves 2000 folds. Then the “radical extremists” “had a
fit.” So “the reasonable” scaled their plans down ten folds and
settled for the plans of the present reservoir that increased the
reserves a mere 200 times. Now people, at least till the place is
worse than LA Basin, have all the water to hose down their SUVs,
driveways and the whole street. And should they be shamed by their
neighbor’s bigger boat at Del Valle, they can tow theirs across the
town to Los Vaqueros.
Now what the heck does all this have to do with making your votes
count in the next election? Well we have already seen that our one
vote rarely is enough to elect the person we really want.
We have also seen, repeatedly, that our panic driven votes for the
lesser of the two evils, serves only to raise the bar of our
tolerance of evils that are increasingly lesser representative of us.
But by knowing that the elite group that really chooses who gets
to “represent” the people, is constantly monitoring and testing our
tolerance, we can present them with nothing less than the utmost of
our desire in an elected official. This may not immediately give us
the desired representative, but will greatly increase the chances of
getting the LESSER evil that may be easier to tolerate. Kamran
Alavi
