Predatory lenders “work to bankrupt the countries that received those loans so that they would be forever beholden to their creditors, and so they would be easy targets when we needed favors, including military bases, UN votes, or access to oil and other natural resources.”
– John Perkins, author of “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man”
I’ve been on the side of underdogs ever since I heard the biblical story about little David and the giant Goliath. My support for underdogs was strengthened during my childhood when I found myself always cheering for whichever baseball team was playing against the powerful New York Yankees in the World Series (usually the Dodgers) during the era when the Yankees dominated major league baseball. And when I first read Lord Acton’s famous aphorism, something resonated with me. Acton said: “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” To me the saying wasn’t just about brutes, bullies, dictators, the “divine right of kings”, drill sergeants, tyrannical politicians or fascist militaries.
To me, Acton was talking about every kind of dominative power one could think of (as opposed to the non-dominative power of love, mercy, forgiveness and compassion), which would include economic, corporate, racial, religious, and sexual powers that are wielded by therapists, exploiters and assorted tyrants of this world, goliaths who invariably use their often illegitimately-acquired power to oppress those who are unable to defend themselves.
That is why I have opposed violent military power like the United States Pentagon and CIA wields. That is why I think that true patriots should be working hard to overturn Citizens United and why I am heartened by the courageous truth-telling of presidential candidate upstarts like the Green Party’s Dr Jill Stein and the Democratic Socialist presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, both of whom are willing to raise issues that threaten the powerful and the entrenched powers-that-be.
Why Real World Citizens Should be Rooting for Greece