For most of my life I was told that we lived under the best system possible. We were free! If we stayed within accepted boundaries. We were told the truth! By a “Free” press and media. We were the masters of our fate and if we worked hard, we could have a good life. Those I call the Cons, the Conservatives have made sure, that we now know none of that was true. And I wish to now take a moment to thank them for that!

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The truth is, our system only worked because it was a rich white man’s game and they played fair, for the most part, with each other. There was the civil war thing and occasional tantrums and petulance but for the most part it worked. It was always going to be an inside game, and the Harvard and Yale guys made sure that they each took care of each other. Political parties were there to funnel political thought to only what worked for the rich white men.

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But then the 1960s and 70s came along. White men were no longer gods, women and people of black and brown skin color wanted a piece of the action too. The system was no longer completely white and male. That was the real problem for the Cons. Of course, they will frame it differently but that is the real problem.

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So, they mobilized the forces of racism, the forces of male dominated religion, and of corporate leadership to create the well-funded and organized resistance to change. Kind of the “He-man woman haters club” of the “Our Gang” comedies of the 1930s. They were the system and knew very well how to sabotage it.

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The problem all along was the system. Not democracy but the system of how it was organized. Because it was always designed to be run by a hierarchy of rich white men. Sometimes they may not be rich, but they were always white men. It was all a handshake deal, where they played by agreed upon rules, and were honest, mostly within the class of white men. Then it changed to a defense of white skin, wealth and separation, and balls. Real and acquired through accepting the ruling classes lies, as gospel.

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The truth is everything else is a kind of Kabuki Theater. Full of flash and the banging of cymbals, to hide the real forces at work with pieces of the truth, here and there. We see and the media only shows us, those things that support our misunderstanding of what’s really going on.

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The success of this nation has been in spite of the system. Don’t get me wrong, in the spectrum of government, any kind of democracy that protects the value of an individual is better than the authoritarian alternatives. But our democracy is a mere shadow of what it can and could be.

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The war in which we are engaged is one to keep us from using our most powerful tool of survival and advancement. Adaption! Our ability to evolve to meet the challenges before us. Because, if we were to evolve beyond the rich white and male domination of our society, they would no longer be the mini kings, our system creates. Women, and those not born to the ruling class have a far different perspective than the present ruling class. Those now in power have in many cases made the choice to make sure that they don’t lose power, even if it kills most of us.

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This is the first of a series breaking down how it all works and how we can evolve our system into a real and working democracy.