Symptoms vs. Causes

This is a comment I posted on the Truthdig site, in response to a column by Robert Scheer in today's SF Chronicle:

My fervent wish is that Mr. Scheer and other "liberal" columnists and pundits would stop whining about symptoms and start writing and talking about the actual causes of our present dilemma. To wit: The largest crime family in the history of the world, headed by Bush Sr. (aka: George I), primarily through the Carlisle Group (a holding company which owns large stakes in Halliburton, Bechtel, and hundreds if not thousands of the companies reaping huge profits nowadays), has succeeded in brainwashing (perhaps it should be called "brain-dirtying") the American public and much of the rest of the world into accepting an ideology that is nothing less than a Social Darwinist eugenics scheme.

This ideology "went public" via Ronald Reagan in 1980, but has been nurtured continuously since the Robber Baron era in the late Nineteenth Century. Most, if not all of its major adherents are devoted disciples of Ayn Rand's philosophy of pathological individualism. I like to call them "Econopaths." Their primary tools are tax cuts for the oligarchs and their "dogs in the manger," de-regulation (economic anarchy!), privatization (a euphemism for institutionalized white collar crime - the systematic theft of our common wealth by greedy oligarchs) and excessive military adventurism (thus justifying massive handouts to the Military/Industrial complex).

Anyone who thinks this juggernaught can be stopped by clever arguments, columns or books is not paying attention. What is desperately needed is a new incarnation of Gandhi/Martin Luther King Jr. to mobilize those who feel powerless (despite their substantial numbers), and those who know in their hearts that we are on an immoral, impractical path to ruin, to generate non-violent civil disobedience sufficient to bring this cabal to its knees. As the world's (supposedy) premier democracy, we should expect nothing less.

Is it too much to ask, Mr. Scheer, for a few columns on what we might DO to effect meaningful change? You must know that our so-called "Representative" government has been hijacked by this evil ideology, Democrats no less than Republicans, so voting has become a futile exercise. Is there no hope at all?