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First, to all of you who emailed me during my long absence from these pages, thank you for your concern.

I am finally finding my way back to normal life, and will be posting more frequently as time goes on.

I've just completed a much needed, and major, overhaul of the mechanics of the site.

If you are registered (it's free!) at the mull, you'll find that posting comments is much easier and formatting them is more flexible. You'll also notice that the search option works much better now, with some help from Google. [read more]

HOW DO THE APE-MASTERS convince us to vote for their lieutenants time and time again?

How do they continue to get and wield power?

• They oppose any meaningful campaign reform: any change which would mean that every candidate—Republican or Democrat—didn't need their money and influence to stand a chance in an election.
• They lie to us—Scott Walker didn't campaign on destroying worker rights, Paul Ryan won't tell you that he's out to eliminate Medicare for the elderly, John Boehner doesn't say that he wants to give the country away to the wealthy.
• They work behind the scenes to undermine the process:
  • using trumped-up concerns about "voter fraud" to keep the poor and the young and anyone who might see through their propaganda from voting,
  • consistently undermining the public school system, which might actually provide some informed and intelligent voters,
  • disenfranchising unions: the only powerful political organization of the middle class.
• But also—and this is going to hurt—they invite us into the game.

  [read more]

THERE ARE TWO WAYS to view a democracy.

In each of these cases the big apes win big, and the weaker apes lose big.

If you are a human being by conviction—that is, if you side with our traditional ancestors on questions of fairness and freedom and equality—you see a democratic government as simply the way that all of us, together, ensure a peaceful life, defend ourselves from outsiders, promote our general welfare, and preserve freedom for ourselves and our children and grandchildren.

On the other hand, if you are an ape-master by conviction—that is, if you side with the hierarchical culture of apes which we rejected when we became human beings—you see a democratic government as one more institution to be subverted and used in your ongoing quest to make yourself dominant over others.

Republicans in Michigan have passed a bill which will allow the governor to dissolve the elected governments of towns and cities, replacing them with "emergency financial managers" who can eliminate school boards, break union contracts, and eliminate services without recourse. They're calling it "financial martial law". [read more]

THE APE-MASTERS HAD not disappeared, not even in the United States.

They could no longer wear their robes and crowns here, they could no longer hold court here, they could no longer abuse the populace by direct force, but they were still here.

They began to use other tactics.

They realized that money was power.

They invented the idea of Big Business—of large-C Capitalism.

If they could no longer own slaves, they would rent them.

If they couldn't lord it over the populace at large, they would lord it over their employees, and make certain that there were enough unemployed waiting for their jobs to keep them desperate and subservient.

If they could no longer own the government, they would learn how to use their wealth and power to control the government.

They went underground. [read more]

SEVERAL POSTS AGO, I suggested that many current events make better sense in a broader context.

It's been awhile since I last posted, and you may have lost the train of thought, so I'll bring things up to date before moving forward.

The current events I mentioned included the revolutions in the Mideast, the Republican Jihad against worker's rights here at home, the nuclear crisis in Japan, the Citizens United case in the U.S. Supreme Court, the Bush tax cuts, and the current recession.

The list could easily go on.

I suggested that, instead of viewing these events through the lens of this year, this decade, or even this millennium, we should ask ourselves about the long view—how do these events fit into the journey we have been on as a species, since we first became human beings? [read more]

SO FOR THE LAST FEW THOUSAND YEARS we served the ape-masters in various hierarchical, ape-like cultures: Jericho, Ur, Babylon, Ancient Egypt, Ancient Israel, Rome, and Medieval Europe, to name a few familiar to those of us in the west.

Each of these cultures used the same techniques to enforce an ape-like hierarchy on their citizens:

1. Economic dependence,
2. Violence,
3. Religious control of the world-view and morality of the culture, and
4. Constant warfare to ensure fear and loyalty.

But humans are not apes, and we never stopped undermining and struggling against the system. [read more]

LAST TIME WE looked at the first major event in human history—our separation from other apes: the period in which we became human.

That division, the event which separated humans from our animal cousins, can be partially described, in modern categories, like this:

Ape culture had been a dictatorship, where the wealth and power was concentrated at the top, and those at the top coerced everyone further down the line into obedience to their whims.

Human culture broke free of that pattern.

We established a society of shared power and freedom and wealth, where people cared for each other, respected each other, and granted each other autonomy.

But that doesn't mean there weren't still freeloaders and bullies around. [read more]