I used to think that the struggle of good and evil was between black and white and the solution to the vexing issue of injustice could only be found through politics and ideology. After a mean mugging by reality, I have been jarred into realizing this one overriding axiom. Even though the tree of injustice has many branches, at the root the battle is between the powerless and the powerful who lord over them. Actually, calling it a battle is to distort the truth beyond recognition. The powerful, who are a tiny fraction of humanity, have declared a total economic war upon the rest of this world’s population.
If you want to know how this is possible—how a couple of thousand people trample and swindle nearly eight billion globally—look to tribalism and the artificial constructs too many of us self-identify with and you will find the source of our collective subjugation. We have been splintered into a million tiny pieces; we find pride in race, religion, ideology and the endless forms of self-identification all for the sole purpose of separating ourselves from the whole only to suffer individually. Labels serve as blinders; as long our focus is on what we are instead of who we are, we end up squabbling with each other instead of uniting to defend our common interests.
Of course, this is why the aristocracy invest billions of dollars to further social segregation by way of separable grievances. There is no need for Jim Crow or apartheid; why use brute force and laws to tear people apart when we ghettoize ourselves willingly. They divide us, we conquer ourselves. You would think people would wake up to this most insidious form of social Balkinization after being bamboozled by the same playbook of factionalism for centuries. Sadly, we learn the complete opposite lesson at every turn; we keep being programmed to believe that the way to overcome injustices fueled by tribalism is to form yet another tribe.
This is why demagogues are paid handsomely by the plutocracy; the job of people like Trump, Obama and the endless stream of bipartisan actorvists is to convince us that our pains are greater and that our experiences are different from others who suffer just like us. Tragically, we are so wedded to our political and social idols that we suspend logic all the time and contort ourselves into human pretzels in order to defend the very people who are stepping on our collective necks. I don’t mean to be pious here; not too long ago, I too did my fair share of idol worshiping. It seems we humans have a predisposition to bow before the rich and famous even though their wealth usually comes at our expense.
As we blindly follow wolves, we keep disregarding the shepherds. Every time prophets rise to speak against these divisions and try to rally the public for the cause of universal justice, they are silenced by the same system of capital greed that is inflicting strife upon humanity. The lessons sojourners try to impart before they get taken out is always lost on us. Too many refuse to understand that monopolize pains and diminish the suffering other people go through is actually playing into the hands of oppressors. There is no “us versus them” when it comes to the bottom 99% of humanity; though our adversities might diverge, the root of our struggle is identical. The middle class is disappearing, the working class are being driven into dependency, the poor are being thrown to the streets, alas we are too busy bickering to realize that we are all being broken by economic terrorism that is being waged by the uber wealthy.
The cause of most of society’s ills can be traced back to economic inequality and the way the riches of the world are hoarded by a few in order to induce artificial scarcity. Excuse my language, but you can discount every Hollywood star and media personality who take to the podium to talk about social issues as assholes who are intentionally distracting us from realizing the source of suffering if they don’t shine a light on monetary policies that give rise to the injustices they self-promote themselves over. From crime rates, gun violence, broken families, drug use to mental issues; most of these issues can be reduced significantly if people were not shrouded in an omnipresent sense of hopelessness that poverty and lack of opportunity induces in people’s souls.
Do not let class fool you into thinking that only the poor are impoverished. Even people making six figures are living at the edge of economic viability; most Americans and people throughout the world are one or two paychecks away from losing everything and sleeping on concretes—I write on these things from personal experience. The man made constructs of working class, middle class and upper class are rendered meaningless when the average life saving of Americans is near zero. All levers of power, from our government down to local municipalities, have been hijacked by the wealth and influence of globalist oligarchies. This is why Amazon paid 0% in taxes last year while a working mother at Comfort Inn had to fork over a third of her paycheck as she struggles to feed her children. Disregard all talk of class and social constructs, there is only a dichotomy: the few who prosper through inflation and fiat currency and the rest of us who are bled by them. Click To Tweet
We have let our incessant need to be different lead us down the path of self-nullification. Our strength is our numbers; sadly we have turned our advantage into fragility by letting our differences be bigger than the hopes and struggles we all have in common. We better wake up and do so quickly; there is another storm on the horizon that will make the Great Recession of 2008 look like a calm April breeze by comparison. When that day comes, we can let identity and ideology once again hoodwink us into fighting over trivial differences and petty politics or we can say enough and refuse to let thieves make off like bandits yet again while the rest of us are told to eat Monsanto sponsored cakes. #SerfinUSA
“The world has enough for everyone’s need, but not enough for everyone’s greed.” ~ Mahatma Gandhi
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Check out the Ghion Cast below where I talked about how unity, from Haiti, to Ethiopia to the American Revolution, has always been the key for the oppressed to overcome tyranny.
DMV Event: How Overcome Can Overcome Oppression
If we are to bend the arc of history towards justice, we can only do so through inclusiveness and by speaking truth to power without political, identity or ideological blinders. That is the aim of the event I’ll be hosting next Wednesday,April 4th, at Kaldi’s Social house. The event was inspired by one of the most widely read articles here at the Ghion Journal titled “Greater than Wakanda”. Click HERE or on the picture below to RSVP.
Lij Teodrose Fikremariam
Originally from Ethiopia with roots to Atse Tewodros II, Lij Teodrose is a former community organizer whose writing was incorporated into Barack Obama's South Carolina primary victory speech in 2008. He pivoted away from politics and decided to stand for collective justice after experiencing the reality of the forgotten masses. His writing defies conventional wisdom and challenges readers to look outside the constraints of labels and ideologies that serve to splinter the people. Lij Teodrose uses his pen to give a voice to the voiceless and to speak truth to power.
Latest posts by Lij Teodrose Fikremariam (see all)
- Ethiopia’s Choice: Poverty through Grievance or Prosperity through Unity - September 9, 2019
- Bloody 60s: the Decade that Aborted Leadership in America - August 22, 2019
- A Matter of Life or Death: We Cannot Afford to Ignore Mental Illnesses Any Longer - August 17, 2019
