The Last Island in the Ocean

When I lived overseas, it was commonplace, during American elections, for expats to say: everyone in the world should get to vote in American elections, because American government runs the world. American government should have a global vote.

It seems a bit much, when you live here. But when you leave you realize how true this really is. American monetary policy, military policy, environmental regulations, banking policy… trade, taxation of the international corporations that are based here… technology policy, intellectual property, on and on the list goes… these all effect not just what happens within our borders, but the daily life of millions and millions of people flung all over the globe.

We don’t govern that way – openly anyway. Our political discourse takes as its presumption that we are an innocent little nation state amongst many others, that our behavior is normal, as if there were Tunisian military bases in 130 countries around the world, or if Malaysia regularly sent robot warplanes to bomb villages in Iceland.

I wrote a long time ago in a post about then freshman Congressman Patrick Murphy (D-PA) that one cannot understand the implications our foreign policy unless one witnesses it. And we are so geographically isolated that we cannot really see those things - nor the fact that we are most often the nation that others look to for help and succor, in the most desperate of circumstances. There are entire islands in Indonesia with cultures that have existed for thousands of years, now in danger of going permanently underwater because of the impacts of the 1950s suburbanization of America … whose only hope is that we start biking (and fast) or give them enough money to relocate.

When we do things right, we do things globally right… but more often than not, we do things wrong, and globally so. And this is not being talked about. This is all being swept under the rug. Our world is literally being burnt up, and the human race being overwhelmed in a plague of violence, dislocation, and greed, while our massive communications system and our media hides it, and prevents us from taking action to solve our problems.

I am an optimist. I believe in the intelligence and bravery and kindness and resourcefulness of human beings. Not because such traits automatically flourish – but rather because I have seen them flourish even under the most difficult and brutal of circumstances. Love and hope just never run out, and sometimes all that is needed is to be reminded of them.

No matter how grave and massive our global problems are, I believe that in the deep wisdom of all of our combined cultures we have the ability to address them, and stop them. No – I don’t just believe this. I know this. Ordinary human beings like me and you know what’s best for the world. We know better than anyone else what kind of world we would like to live in.

Right now, though, we are prevented from talking about this world. We are prevented from having the public deliberations that would allow us to come to conclusions and take action. We are prevented from doing so by democratic failures in many countries, and most of all, a global communications infrastructure that is not built for democracy.

And most of all, the most failed system of communications is that which we have in America. Where it is needed the most. Although e get to vote on what happens to the rest of the world, we have a communications system that almost completely fails to tell the truth and give us power over our own political conditions – despite it enveloping and overwhelming us. Our communications system is now actually standing in the way of the human race solving its own problems. It simply must be circumvented or reconfigured, if we are ever to survive at all.

Arundahti Roy wrote in An Ordinary Person’s Guide to Empire that “the only thing stronger than the United States government is American civil society.”

I say this to myself a lot, especially since I live in Washington now and have to see just what it is we are up against. Some of the media corporations we are up against have one lobbyist for every member of Congress.

I have to believe it is true. In fact, I know it is. It’s just a shock to realize that what we are doing is not just organizing for America – we are organizing for the world. And that if the world is to change, it will require nothing less than a sea change in the hearts of the American people.