Guest Editorials: The Age of Consent

Senior members of the Democratic party leadership: willing tools for what is in effect a raging plutocracy.

I know what the title brings to mind.  Furtive teenage attempts to get to second base, raging hormones, and the age at which it becomes permissible by society to allow them to do what they want with their own bodies.  When you put it that way?  Think about it.  We need the consent of others, and often never get that consent, from those that govern us to touch even our own parts; spilt seed on the ground and all that jazz.  Or jizz-jazz.

The whole of human history, written in the ochre war paint of blood has always been about consent.  Consent of the Governed, as it were.  It seems we have yet to come of age.There is always a series of lies we are told, or tell ourselves in the narrative that allow us to be controlled.  Things are done in our name, we would never do ourselves.  Things are done to us we despise.  And each and every time we seek to take the reins of our own destiny we are called insurgents, traitors, seditionists, or terrorists… like some unruly children that need extreme corporeal punishment before anyone else gets any ideas.

I try to wrap my head around this insanity that cannot be cured:  Some amoeba somewhere in our lineage who felt unloved, insecure and in order to feel safe in controlling their own single-celled autonomy, decided it had to control every single organism around them. I like that answer, for its so much simpler than thinking about the reality of tribes competing for resources and learning to enslave one another.  I can almost give that a pass on an evolutionary level, success of a group often balances on its brutality.  We are a top predator after all.  Ameobas don’t plot, the oppressed always revolt, and we know where the sun goes at night.  Oh, and trust me as a devoted practitioner?  Touching yourself will not make you go blind.  That’s called getting old, period.

So.  What the fuck is it we are we doing in this latest round of empires always fall?

No matter how many times we see the movie where one era’s most-wanted criminal is History’s greatest hero, we are being governed wholly without our consent and pretty much doing nothing about it.

Let me start with the tanks. 

 

The world, this country, your neighborhood, is no less violent, scary, or dangerous than it ever was before.  It’s definitely poorer unless you are a Kock or Walton, though.  So, why in the world are they trying to convince us they need military grade equipment to catch “bad guys”?  Why in the world are they using tools of WAR within our borders if not because they see us as enemy combatants?  It is NOT because it is “more dangerous” than ever to be in law enforcement.  Police deaths went down 23% last year, and have been coming down steadily since the 80’s, despite a rise in population.  In fact, the number one cause of death is them getting in auto accidents and not wearing seatbelts.

There are 1.1 million law enforcement agents in the US, and the ball park average is 150 of those 1.1 million a year losing their lives in the line of duty – including those who die from accidents and heart attacks.

I haven’t the capacity to count the zeros behind the decimal place to say what a miniscule percentage this is.  Something like .00000015% ?  I’m going to go out on a limb here and say its probably more dangerous to be a truck driver.  Last year over 300 unarmed black men were shot by Police.  Why are we buying the “fear for our lives” bullshit when flack vested, trained officers surround an OBVIOUSLY mentally handicapped old man and empty their guns into him?

Strip away the propaganda.  Who is the “other” if not you?  Even as a law abiding citizen, tell me… do you really think your local police need assault weapons, tanks and armor to protect and serve you?

Did you consent to this?

Hell, did you ever have a chance to give your consent to the cameras on every corner watching you?

Did you say, “Ok, listen to my every phone call, and track my every keystroke online!”?

No.  They just do it.  They just do it to protect the other things they are doing without your consent.  Just in case, you know, you ever decide to object to being ruled without your consent.

Its really not that far from public hangings, or heads on pikes. Its a warning from those who have the power that you do nothing without their permission or they can take your life, swat you like a fly.  We have pea-shooters, so they have drones and microwave cannons.

So, let’s talk a little about what this Trans-Pacific Partnership. (TPP)

If you are no economist, and like me, find your eyes rolling back into your head at the mention of deficits and derivatives?  I’ll bring now how Noam Chomsky explained it in simple terms to me to the table.

Remember NAFTA being sold to us? Remember the jobs leaving the country?

This is 100 times worse.  What it does, essentially is REMOVE THE CONSENT OF THE NATIONS from any business owned by the rich, ANYWHERE. It says they don’t have to follow local environmental laws.  It says they get to take land if they want to, pay what they feel like, not pay taxes where they operate and get to set the rules.  It essentially makes the uber-wealthy not beholden to anyone, anywhere.  

So, you elect a government, vote for a living wage and clean water, and some guy from some other country comes in and says, “Sorry, [we’re] building a plutonium plant in your garden,” and you can do not one thing about it. Now, you can’t grow food, and have to buy water, and the only way to afford that is to work for the company of a dollar a day.  Your government has had its power taken by the bigger badder power, the ultimate power.  The power of the rich, who now rule the WORLD.  Sounds alarming, I know.  It sounds almost too extreme to be true.  But it is.  Wonkier people than me, with a string of letters behind their names are saying the same thing.

Take Costa Rica, who is being sued by a Canadian mining company for not allowing it to strip mine the jungle for gold. Under a TPP agreement, Costa Rica would lose.  In fact, they would have no standing to stop the mining.

 

Detroit is a test case of removing Consent of the Governed from people completely.

Detroit is nothing, if not a result of NAFTA.  The jobs left and took its tax base with it. Period.  It is not because of ineptitude, corruption, or any other factor than poverty and predatory banking that Detroit has “debt.”  And the rich?  Those who demand their pound of flesh, are showing us what happens to those who do not pay.  All public services are being privatized, to further take away consent and control of publicly held trusts and make them forced pay to profiteers.  Their appointed Emergency Manager is above the vote, scrutiny and the law.  

They are selling off the art from the DIA, they are selling off Belle Isle.  EM Brown shut off power last summer to teach people a lesson about turning down their AC, stranding people in elevators in 90 degree heat.

While cutting pensioner’s pay by 20% or more?  Somehow the EM of Detroit sees fit to pay one man 8 million dollars out of our tax coffers to make the deal to privatize the Water Department – Ken Buckfire.

Did you give your consent to pay your retirement to one Wall Street mucky muck to take your water and make that the property of more wall Street mucky mucks?

You cannot vote in Detroit on any of these things.  You have ZERO say in what the Rich Rulers decide for you.  You are children, owned, have zero consent about the very fabric of your life.  

The bigger picture…

The devil may be in the details, but the hellfire is in the whole.

The world over, people are having to live on the brink of disaster, if not already destitute and homeless.  It has become a crime to feed the homeless in cities all over the US, the city of Angels, L.A., being the latest to join the heartless.  Do you feel this is moral, right, or just?  

We are being forced into compulsory purchase of inadequate insurance policies, rather than be allowed actual health care.  Let’s face it, there is an enormous difference between medicine and banking, and insurance is banking.  Lucrative banking.  Isn’t all you really want is to be able to get well, and see your loved ones be treated for whatever they may get without paying the rich for the privilege of medicine standing in the way?

Did you consent to this, or settle for it, because you feel like you have no control?  Like those who govern you will not let you have what you really want?

All over the world, people are beginning to rise up, against oppression, debt, austerity, low wages, high prices and the ever increasing gap between the haves and have-nots.  We are beginning to realize we like one another, even as we hate what our own governments do in our name.  No one wants fracking in their yard.  No one wants war.  No one wants starving children,  No one wants epic islands of plastic in the ocean.  No one wants 2017 to be the last livable year on a dying planet.  No one wants to work every day until they drop dead and still die in debt.  No one wants to be spied upon or shot for daring to speak up about their lack of consent.

We are stuck in pubescence, not allowed to pursue happiness.   

Haven’t we yet reached the “age” of consent?

There are a gazillion of us, and we still somehow think “Daddy knows best,” or “That’s just reality, there is nothing to be done,” like battered children who don’t realize that not every home is abusive.  It’s like we don’t know we have a choice.  It doesn’t take a “Braveheart” hero, nor a “Burning Bed” heroine to say “No more.”

All it ever really has taken is removing our consent.  

But, where will our wages come from, our heat, our water, and what happens when the bank takes our home?  Each and every one of those questions are a valid fear.  IF and only if, you work under the presumption that those things are theirs to give or withhold from us.  Is any infant that draws its first breath more entitled to the air, the water, the Earth than any other?  Does any geographic place, with their arbitrary lines drawn by the men who wield power entitle one zygote control over the potential of another zygote?  How old does humanity have to be to touch their own stuff?  

Its not just that government is evil as many on the left or right agree.  Its not just that power corrupts.  It is that at no time in our development have we had a system that demanded the CONSENT of the people affected for things done to them, with all beings being equal. Good rules are good. Staying on your side of the yellow line in traffic makes sense.  Combining our talents and resources make sense too.  Taxes build bridges and schools.  But truth be told, Governments have never been about self-rule, because it is the economic system that ultimately decides what you may or may not do, and they never rule in your interest.

No government that operates under the will of the people would have ever blocked the environmental gains of the 70’s; cuckolded the reach for clean energy and fouled the planet for profit until it has a shelf life of “we are truly fucked.”  Yet, that is where we are.  

There can be no self-rule in a system set up to eat the weak and empower the powerful.  

It brings us back to the notion of consent.  Don’t pay.  Don’t buy.  Stop working.  They may have all the tanks, but we have numbers they fear, a fear belied by their militarization against us.  We should be deciding what is best for all of us.  Our lives, our choice of what they should be.  Our planet.  Our bodies.  Ours. The materials we use to build come from our earth,  The labor we use to make things is our labor.  The technology we employ comes from our brains.  No one owns that.  Not the bankers, the politicians, the church or our ancestors.

[pullquote]The pervasive dynamic and overwhelming social and environmental toxicity of capitalism envelopes the world, asphyxiating it like an implacable garrote. [/pullquote]

Insanity is making the same mistake over and over.  The greedheads take over, we rebel, we make some gains, then let the greedheads take over again, repackaged as something slicker. The shadows in Plato’s cave are now bobble heads on the shelf; the bread and circuses are now yuppies playing rednecks on the tubez. The Kings beget Captains of Industry beget “Too Big to Fail Bankers.”

And we have never consented, save by the slow froggy boil of standing mute and helpless, silently complicit.

Ask yourself, “Am I happy?”  And when the reasons why come to bear, realize that every word I have uttered today is a factor in those reasons.  

They know damn well we have not given consent, and are amping up the war against us to ensure that they never have to endure our consent. Because they know they would never have it, to rape, pillage and plunder as they have.

We are not naughty adolescents.  We are not terrorists.  

We are human beings with a right to self-determination, that have long past reached the age of consent.

We have a right to a fair economic system, a livable planet and a Government for and by ALL the Governed.

Now.  Whatever are we going to do about it?

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Diane Gee is founding editor of a site that would make Tom Paine proud, WildWildLeft.com, and its Facebook iteration, LinksfortheWildlyLeft. She also manages to produce a weekly radio program on blogradio.  She’s also a senior contributing editor to The Greanville Post.