Article: Played Like Kazoos

Played Like Kazoos

August 9, 2018 - Critical Thought Critique

In the recent history of the U.S. we have seen small and large uprisings and mobilizations of people. Demands made, to the government, for us and by us. The list of our needs grow but never seem to be met. We are ignored, shut down, attacked, and humiliated.  As the needs grow and the crowds grow, everything just seems to stay the same. Progressives, liberals, and leftists all gather to the streets to be heard. We have gathered together and struggled together. No-one, it would seem, has listened.

On September 15th 2011 after the nation had just elected a new president, whose campaign was ran on the belief of hope, millions of people gathered around the world to occupy the system. Demands were made and for weeks the movement stayed and it grew. The struggle was real and it was not being won. Human lives seemed not to matter to those who run the country. Not the new president, not those in congress, and certainly not the corporations, who had crippled our economy just a handful of years earlier. Since then we have watched women marching against the oppression and abuse that the system is offering them. People have risen to fight for a better federal minimum wage. The people have risen in protest of being targeted, harassed, and murdered by the police. Others have come out to scream out against the election process and state that our nation’s president is not theirs. Children marched in the streets demanding gun reform due to mass shootings in schools. Still more actions occur against the government kidnapping immigrant children from their parents. We have come out in a celebration of human life to demand that the State help us and protect us. The inequalities that the common people have from those of mass wealth is being very much noticed.

What has happened? Where did the Occupy movement go? What happened to sticking together until we win? The distractions are always around us. From smart phones and TV’s to fast food to sports. We are constantly distracted from the real problems in our daily lives. Why would we call our congress and representatives about reforming the policing system if we can laugh at a the latest sitcom after a long hard day of work? How do we have time to fight for a livable minimum wage when we barely have time to feed our kids between working up to 3 jobs just to make enough money for food? Just trying to keep our heads above water is bad enough but asking us to fight for a system that actually cares about the environment is too much to ask. Isn’t it the job of our so-called representatives to do that for us?

Distractions and trickery is how they are so easily playing us like a kazoo. Millions of women, men, and children came out in support of the women’s march, it was shown on major media, it was celebrated by corporations. They gave us all a hand and patted us on the back. They brought out celebrities who sang and danced. When it was over we were so distracted by the feel-good recognition of it all that we didn’t achieve anything. President Trump actually reversed the Obama orders that granted women equal pay for the same jobs as men. One must ask oneself, did the women’s march celebration actually get used to manipulate our focus from say: the Fight for $15 movement? I mean, after all states started to raise the minimum wages but why didn’t the federal minimum change?  Did the March for Our Lives drown out the Black Lives Matter movement? How adorable? All of our children marching in a parade to change gun laws. Let’s put that on prime time and give a round of applause. Meanwhile, the police are claiming their next victim and no-one asks for reform or de-escalation of the increasingly militarized and privatized policing system. Now all we see is the Russiagate conspiracy. All over mainstream news, this story has become so important to the people of the U.S. that we completely dropped the ball on a national healthcare plan and a plan for getting public funding for higher education.

Another game we see played is the lumping in of all actions and movements into the subjects of “issues” and topics of “news.” There are winnable battles for us. The fight for $15 for example, has seen some progress. Within certain states we have already seen the minimum wage go up. The problem is that each mobilization or movement in isolation and the short-term becomes a distraction for more feasible demands. The women’s march didn’t gain anything because it’s a battle which is expansive and takes more than a day to fight. No women’s movement can succeed as merely a “march,” it requires more detailed demands and would be a longer struggle. So, in the short-run, this mobilization did little more than to overshadow the fact that we were winning a better minimum wage, while not being federally passed, which can cause dangers to corporations. By danger, I mean we can have great political pull. Another fight is a national health program i.e. single payer healthcare. That was overshadowed by the March for Our Lives. Again, it’s a broad subject. Healthcare on the other hand although detailed has only one real thing to focus on, getting healthcare to the people. It seems they manipulate us by switching our focus on which fight to bring to the table.

So, what do we do and where do we go from here? There is no one thing that I can say that will be a fix. It is obvious that we must work together. Having little skirmishes is what will happen any time you have a large mass of people fighting injustice. Our message must be simple, clear, and direct. It’s bad enough fighting against the mainstream media and the lies they spread to manipulate the populous against us. Fighting the system is difficult in itself but fighting too many battles and spreading ourselves thin is the wrong way to handle it.  To clarify, I’m not saying we can’t fight for $15 and Black Lives matter as well as state funded college all at the same time. As an individual; find what you love and fight for it so future generations won’t have to. As a collection of thinking, caring people; we need to stay focused and strong. Don’t let yourself get burned out either, too much focus will burn us out. Keep pressure on the government. Along with marches, actions, and protests we do need to get in touch with our representatives and tell them if they don’t give us what we need then we’ll find someone who will.

We also need to address who we are fighting against. These fights are not simply leftists vs right wingers. That’s what major news medias want us to believe. These fights are about struggling against the entities that need to prevent changes. Who would be negatively affected if we were to have stronger environmental protection laws? Who is affected by the fight for a $15/hr minimum? Who or what would be affected by a national healthcare plan? For the most part, we know the answer to these questions. It’s big corporations, too-big-to-fail banks, the owners, the donors and our representatives. Owners and big business all lobby to our representatives to make laws that help sales, profits, and other forms of growth for them. So we are not just fighting each other but our representatives and the corporations that get them in office. We know that politicians lie and we know that corporations will do whatever they have to for money, so when do we put that together and begin to fight the real fight?

We are seeing wrong ways to fight against the powers that be. We cannot hyper-focus and become tunnel visioned so greatly as to miss the bigger picture, nor can we only fight for issues as they pop up without  the long term drive to know that we can finish a fight. One right way is to not only build solidarity within one subject or issue but to try and build solidarity between all of the like-minded movements that come our way. We must counter or ignore virtually all mainstream media narratives, contend with provocateurs and anyone who we know are disingenuously swaying the movement into the wrong direction, and sometimes choose our battles very carefully. We must ban together and grow into one massive movement from many other movements. It is the goal of progressives to fight for all the people’s needs and we must start working toward the betterment of everyone, for everyone, by everyone.