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Steve Brant's avatar

Thank you for this excellent essay. I believe the approach to dealing with this threat that’s most likely to succeed to a pro-active one. To quote Buckminster Fuller, “Don’t fight the existing system. Design a better system that makes the existing system obsolete.” That’s the goal of a project I’m working to launch with a speech I’m giving in September at the Oklahoma Museums Association’s annual conference. I’m calling it the American Moonshot Project. It will propose replacing the existing corrupt system with one based one values and developmental principles championed by societal transformation advocates such as Bucky Fuller, W Edwards Deming, Riane Eisler, Stephen R Covey, Fred Rogers and others.

If you’d like to know more, please let me know.

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Nancy G's avatar

Wolin's definition of fugitive democracy sounds more like protest or town halls on a small scale than democracy per se. He was a discerning political scientist very aware of the forces that made a mockery of democratic forces within society. (Chris Hedges interviewed Wolin several time before Wolin passed.)

Dr Paul Zeitz, author, physician and activist, has written a book that I think (?) includes information on Citizens' Assemblies. Here is the title of book: "Hit Refresh on the U.S. Constitution: A Revolutionary Roadmap for Fulfilling the Promise of Democracy."

Here is an article on Citizens' Assemblies in the US.

https://www.newamerica.org/political-reform/briefs/comparing-citizens-assemblies-across-the-united-states/

It's possible to use these and other tools to change the future. We can't just keep reacting. We have to rebuild what works, build new forms/organizations and not let the bad guys win by oppressing us and defeating us mentally and spiritually. If we have parallel structures like public banking (and workers coops), we can defeat them.

https://publicbankinginstitute.org/

We are many. They are few. This is a significant advantage. We just have to use it.

Lincoln might not have created the phrase. Don't know if he even repeated it, but it's still useful:

"You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time."

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