The Problem

- is multifold, but essentially, the Big Lie underlying and enabling the others, is that although we are told from the day we are born we live in a "great democracy", in fact, we live in a plutocracy - a plutocracy becoming ever less "benevolent", insofar as that appelation ever was appropriate through the 50s, 60s, early 70s. It is not "We the People" who govern this country, but "They the Corps". There was a period of time following WW2 when there was a sort of equality beteen the two factions, and We the People, with populist leaders like Tommy Douglas, Diefenbaker and Trudeau, made some fairly impressive strides in achieving things like the Canadian health care system, still one of the better ones in the world and immeasurably better than what they have in the US - but all of our gains during that period were placed under serious attack from They the Corps beginning in the 1970s and gaining steam in the 80s, with the election of the first true corporate puppet government in our history and the first true corporate puppet "PM" Mulroney, and the introduction of a group of policies later to be termed the "Washington Consensus", a new economic paradigm based on deregulation, privatisation, "free" trade, and minimal taxes leading to minimal government spending on We the People, that replaced the Bretton Woods plans for the world economy drafted following WW 2 - plans which were not perfect, but were still moving things in more or less the proper direction until the trolls decided that they were leading to altogether too much democracy and independence in countries around the world they wanted to control - the Washington Consensus was as much a plan to place these countries in eternal debt slavery as anything else, and also to roll back the advances made in countries such as Canada during the post-war years in that direction.

Since those days, the 1970s, as part of putting a stop to the emerging democracy of We the People, the They the Corp side has quite deliberately taken control of "our" government - the only actual word for it is corruption - and with very, very few exceptions, every bit of legislation passed since then has been for the benefit of They the Corps rather than We the People - and it shows in the crumbling infrastructure, the deep problems in our health care system, education system, etc and etc. And of course neither the politicians nor the media can talk about this out loud, as one of the central fictions of modern Canadian "democracy" is that we do NOT live in a plutocracy, but We the People elect "representatives" in fair and open elections in which anyone is allowed to compete, and these reps then meet in the national parliament, and through a more or less open and honest process they formulate policies to govern us, based on what we want them to do.

You will not find these ideas written in the school text books or the Canadian corporate media - that makes them no less true - you have merely to examine the legislative activities and priorities of the governments of the last 20+ years, from so-called "Free Trade" and WTO treaties which are essentially Bills of Rights for corporations (i.e. NAFTA's Investor "Rights" - A Corporate Dream, A Citizen Nightmare by Mary Bottari; The Case Against NAFTA; or Council of Canadians on Trade - several good articles), to the completely fraudulent "National Debt Scam", which the government has used to steal over a trillion dollars from Canadians, and, outrageously claiming poverty after this theft of our money and redefining the entire idea of "adding insult to injury", to roll back every progressive social program to protect Canadians and enrich their lives.

And until people understand this, that the country is NOT being run by "us" for our benefit but by "them" for theirs - nothing else can change. How can you fix something if you do not understand the nature of the problem?

This is the first and most important step From Here to There - small but oh so important - acknowledging the real nature of the problem. Morpheus had it about right - it's a total mind changer, a Paradigm Shift sort of moment. But transitory steps on the path from childhood dependence to adult independence are usually like that. Losing Santa was a bad day for most of us - but then look how much smarter than the little kids we felt. The next one works the same way. Only bigger and better.

And most Canadians, it seems, are still in some sort of denial about this problem, for various reasons. If you who are reading here understand that this unawareness of the fact that we are NOT in control of our country is indeed the central problem we must deal with before things start to improve - then you will also understand your role in making things better.

Get out there and start talking.

Be the future you want to see.