Exits and Elections

When people don’t have access to power, they don’t have power.

The Preservation Society neglected to include this proposition in Ruling Class Axioms. In many ways this principle lies at the heart of ruling class society. Elections, whether for presidents or Brexit, are more or less founded on the idea that the rank-and-file are of the belief that they decide who is to be in charge or what direction to go in, yet the average individual has no access or connection to Washington or the EU’s capitol in Brussels, never mind (local) London. Nor do most have any idea what to do in the event that power acts against their wishes. In other words, the masses have no access to power, ergo, they have no power. That’s what it comes down to.

Real democratic power might as well be a figment of the imagination. Nothing more than a nice tradition to feel proud of. Voting is an exercise that satisfies the desire to be free and autonomous. But what individual of the unprivileged masses wakes in the morning, eats their corn flakes and thinks about getting to work on a few needed changes to their nation? Exits, like Brexit, and elections give the individual a vicarious and fleeting experience of democratic power.

Brexit is not difficult to support from a common sense perspective. If the British masses have little influence with the corporate British ruling class, what makes the rank-and-file pro-EU factions believe that bureaucrats and bankers further removed, sitting in another country, are going to be any more accessible to them?

Of course we are talking about Establishment Liberals and Conservatives here. Many further on the left and right oppose the EU for good reason and erroneous ones. They are, for better or worse, in the right. With the label-loyalist of the Established Order, it’s another matter. Brexit is an excellent case where labels, determined by the relevant label authorities, are accepted wholesale despite common sense and facts. Liberal authorities labeled Brexit as a movement by racist, xenophobic nationalists. And presto! So it was. But unknown to most Americans perhaps, many British workers voted to leave.

The liberal refrain on Brexit had it that opposition to unfettered “immigration”, in this age of austerity, is racism. More ironic to the Preservation Society is the notion that “labor rights would worsen without the EU”. It is strange to hear a sovereign people speak with such dependence on a foreign power for which they did not vote. It seems strange that a “free” people must look to another government to protect them from their own government. One might ask the Liberal why labor is better protected under the EU? Especially when one of the main points of the EU is cheap labor. Nevertheless liberal label authorities have concluded that, “while it may have problems”, the EU is good.

The case of Greece tells us just how good. (read anything by Michael Hudson on Greece or Brexit). Brussels and Germany, who mainly runs the EU, twisted the debt screws on Greece mercilessly — debt creditors knew Greece could never pay back. German taxpayer money was “loaned” to Greece to “buy” exports. Then when they went into debt because they produced little themselves (through EU agreements), Greece was “loaned” more money so that they could give it right back to Germany and other creditors, only this time to banks and not taxpayers. But the problem is far greater than just Greece.

Says Michael Hudson, “[a]s with the United States and indeed nearly all countries, EU “aid” is largely self-serving – a combination of export promotion and bailouts for debtor economies to pay banks in Europe’s main creditor nations: Germany, France and the Netherlands.

The austerity imposed on Greece would make free-markets ideologues everywhere salivate. The “Cradle of  Western Civilization” was forced to sell ports, services and even islands for a song. This is not a secret. According to the Guardian, “The great Greece fire sale”, a German tabloid put out an article with this headline: “Sell your islands you bankrupt Greeks! And sell the Acropolis too!” The agenda is not too hard to see here.

This should not be a surprise given that the EU was largely a CIA creation. Ambrose Evans-Pritchard writes in The Telegraph, “It was Washington that drove European integration in the late 1940s, and funded it covertly under the Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon administrations.”

This coveted EU schema even cuts out the capitalist window-dressing of investment and production. Loan out sums that can’t be repaid and collect on that “fire sale”. Kind of mob-like. Unemployment shot up in Greece. Suicides and poverty soared. Is that something Liberals and Conservatives want to be attached to? Apparently it is. The EU has been turned into a positive meme for both factions. The label makes the nasty bits disappear like magic.

In a necessary contrast to the bleeding-heart Liberal, the Conservative label comes down on, predictably enough, immigrants, or more accurately on war refugees from the Middle East and Africa. Refugees, not powerful corporate executives and bankers.

But in the end, no one really knows how a Brexit will play out. It is quite a large and complex system. Predictions are very speculative. But, then again, Brexit’s importance in and of itself may be overstated. The biggest factor determining how it goes is how the ruling class responds. What will the UK ruling class do? So far, with the resignation of Cameron, it looks like they will stall for time, which helps erase memory. Many in the ruling class, including the Preservation Society the hope that everybody forgets Brexit, and it just goes away. Then there are bigger questions. Will the UK be punished for their impudence? Will there be false flags for that reason or, to justify EU logic in some way? Be on the lookout.

Equally important are the masses. How will they react? Will they rise up and take over? Highly unlikely. Like We said, the effects of Brexit may be overstated. This point is central to the Preservation Society. We believe Our arraignments will not suffer an existential crisis. The ruling class will still be in charge. Most policies favored by the Establishment will still be in place — and that’s what counts.

So why do both Conservatives and Liberals leaders love the EU? Because it serves their ruling class masters. From a big business standpoint, management of a centralized bureaucracy of countries is easier than management of many countries and languages. It may be messier in terms of democracy and rights, but that is not the concern of the higher orders. A larger population is inherently less democratic, and keeps the ruling class safely at a distance from the average individual. With a United States of Europe, domination of markets is easier and more efficient. Costs of labor, and therefore wages, decreases with competition from poorer countries. Those are some of the superficial ruling class interests involved. At the same time, the EU project is bringing economic decline, austerity and right-wing groups to the fore. This ought to be symptomatic of an increasingly sick society. The Preservation Society supports Brexit, though publicly many of Our members vigorously support the EU.

The British exit complements the recent elections including the US race. It is more evidence of a status quo breaking down. Like Sanders and Trump, and their respective parties, Brexit is putting a serious beating on the British Established Order, not to mention the EU. But while Brexit is in the right direction toward restablizing British and European society, the US election offers the wrong direction, with the same old trajectory toward the cliff. Another successful election.

From Our perspective, looking down from the heights, these exits and elections are over dramatized, an elaborate drama played out for mass consumption, and the benefit of the ruling class. The masses are not talking about revolution, they are helping us toss a political football around. The ball goes from the EU to Brexit, the Democrats keep it. The dance goes on. Distraction accomplished.

Instead the masses should be holding Our feet to the fire, and demanding more for themselves. The masses need to evolve to properly respond to their ruling class betters. They must learn as a matter of course that the ruling class wants to keep them from evolving. Caught up in the drama and labels, they don’t yet grasp that the hype behind exits and elections obscures their own impotence, and the fact that their democracy is rather undemocratic. It’s common sense after all. And exceedingly simple. When people don’t have access to power, they don’t have power.