STOCK MARKET WATCH -- Tuesday, 12 June 2012

[Demeter]

70. Joe Costello: What 21st-Century Democracy Looks Like

http://www.alternet.org/story/155789/joe_costello%3A_what_21st-century_democracy_looks_like?page=entire





Many a right-winger, and sadly, even some self-styled liberals, accuse those on the left of not loving America. Blogger and organizer Joe Costello loves America, and he loves it so much that he is willing to shout from the rooftops to wake us up to its awesome heritage and formidable potential – the potential that is being stolen away by a rapacious financial industry and its pocketed politicians.

Costello has been involved in communications, energy and political economy for three decades. He was communications director for Jerry Brown's innovative 1992 presidential campaign and was a senior adviser for Howard Dean's effort in 2004. He has compiled his riffs on our economy and political systems in new book, OF, BY, FOR: The New Politics of Money, Debt & Democracy, in which he calls for the American people to reclaim their rights and responsibilities.”

AlterNet caught up with Costello to find out more about what that means and how he envisions the quest for 21st century democracy...

"I found as I looked through history, as Larry Goodwyn says in his excellent book The Populist Moment, Americans have a lot less democracy than they're led to believe, and then further as Gore Vidal says, self-government is an historical anomaly.

Finally, over the last couple decades as all the new, call it quantum or information technology evolved, I concluded that democracy, or distributed order, is in fact necessary for the stability of the system. For example, we're having important lessons regarding that with the financial system right now.

People should have power over their lives, not imposed by large centralized forces. It's a lot more interesting that way. John Lydon put it best a few years back, saying he didn't want large impersonal forces fucking up his life -- he was completely capable of that himself, thank you very much. That's a good and humorous democratic ethic."

"we have a legacy of institutions of self-government. The problem is they became stuck in time. We don't need to overthrow them as much as reform, revitalize and evolve them. For example, I advocate people getting involved in government at the local level, because many of the changes we need will be decided there. Once people get involved there, they'll find how much power has been lost or never gained, and that whether they're in Omaha, Chicago or Birmingham, they're up against the same large nefarious impersonal national and global forces.

We need to literally re-form government...What the left doesn't come to grips with is the growth of DC was not just instrumental, but a necessity in the growth of the mega-corporation, while the “right” doesn't acknowledge the growth of the mega-corporation necessitated the growth of DC.

What we all have in common is that this process has completely corrupted our politics and made us all less powerful, less equal, and less involved as citizens."

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