Phil Rockstroh is great!

"I am a member of the entropy party. It's the only party with an honest platform."

"The American Empire is done. You can stick a fork in it"!

Ditto!
Finally someone who distills the charade down to its molecular level.
Phil is great... for anyone who hasn't read, see his article - 'The Bigot-Whisperers...' today on CD.

'Democracy' as it was known, and almost practiced in the US had it's metaphorical head blown off one September 11, 2001.

The fatal shot was fired on November 6, 2000.

Any questions?

Non Serviam - I will not serve.

The Elite make decisions based upon their agenda. What they lack in organization can easily be remedied through money.

The rest of us have agendas. We are not organized but we do have money (collectively) to organize ourselves and we have voting power.

This is a fight between humanity and a psychopathic sect of humanity (what they call rugged individuals) that cares about themselves only.

I believe that the Elite will destroy themselves and we need to be ready to provide the moral strength to form a new base for the collapsed society.

Chomsky has said; stop waiting for a political, economic or religious hero to save you. That takes too long. We need to work together to save ourselves, now.

Remember Dylan's question in (when are we going to get the) Keys to the Mansion on the Hill; "How long you gonna waste your time, waitin' on the bus to take you to the welfare line?" with the chorus answer of "You ain't ever gonna get shit" unless you plan and work to take it.

The reason there are welfare lines is because we do not fight against Elite policies that create those welfare lines.

This was a good interview but just like all of these news segments except for maybe democracynow.org, the guest is given only a few minutes to describe an immense topic. Phil Rockstroh had so many ideas going on in his head that he tried to cram them together into five minutes so his interview came out a bit jumbled, rushed and confusing. RT is starting to do a good job at delivering real news but they should give guests like this more time to cover subjects that are in depth. People who know little about this type of perspective probably are not able to understand the points that Phil Rockstorh was trying to make, so he preached to the choir and also spoke on deaf ears at the same time.

The most formidable obstacle to protest and the promotion of independent action in this country are not those "stuck on the couch" but those who were "made uncomfortable enough to go from hippies to yuppies."

Today's would-be authentic protesters in this country are unlucky in their adversaries.

That is, back in the 60s, protesters were fortunate in that their strongest enemies were comically square, ham-handed grunts who in effect probably did more to advance the protesters' particular cause than the protesters did.

These days, the most formidable enemies of authentic protesters are highly thoughtful, politically savvy and sophisticated co-opted progressives, liberals and the rest of the fake left.

They are quite capable of acting independant, but not acting independently.

Through conscious and "unconscious accomodations to power" this ex-left snuffs out any real challenge to power before it even gets started. And in its stead, they promote "working with" those in power to change from "within."

The effect is to eliminate independent action and crowd out any real challenge to power based on principle.

IMO the best cultural & historical reference for Phil Rockstroh is Eric Hoffer, whose words of wisdom contained in 8-10 small books he would do well to read, and so would all others on CD.

Phil is bouncing around and gesticulating wildly a concept of a =True Believer= [man manipulated by mass psychology to obedience and role playing], wasting good time on something that does not need to be reinvented (and wrapped up in words of 5 syllables or metaphors of 12 words), but certainly can use updating to the citizens circumstances since the Pandora's Box of the microchip, loss of privacy, theft of democracy and priapic capitalism.

That, however, would need to be done by an optimist.

From where I sit, Phil is short sighted. The death of the American Empire is but a subset of the nihilist POV that the experiment of Nature with H. sapiens is a compleat, utter and dismal failure.

IMO the fatal flaws of our species are not tinkerable to science, though Stephen Hawking wishes them so, in his new book =The Grand Design= in which he introduces the deus ex machina he calls M theory.

CD readers ought to read and begin debate of this work and this theory in, say, December.
--Trylon

It looks like I'll have to subscribe to "Russia Today" to get an honest view of the United States' political situation tomorrow.

-TIA

Wonderful articulation, Phil, of the current situation of free-expression in the U.S.A. When I was on campus in the Sixties students were much more candid in their expression. Today's PC (politically correct) speech seems to have thrown a wet blanket on criticism of "the powers that be."

One comment. You said, "Government is there to serve corporate power."

I wonder, however, is this the case, or is it rather the case, as John Perkins ("Confessions of an Economic Hitman") suggested, that the same guys, The Corporatocracy, control both the major corporations and the federal government?

By the way, your clip is now posted on FreedomFriends.com.

Maybe it's just the interview process/format that does it, but didn't we just get an example of what Phil said about limiting the range of debate? Writers above note this, and I concur.

Slice and dice. Like 1984, and Cat's Cradle...we proles can't be allowed to carry a thought more than 30 seconds.

The most effective way to change this system is to not participate in its basic assumptions while it self-destructs.

Think.

Remember.

Given the enormity of the task, it may be escapism, but I see a statistically valid chance that Nature may resolve this issue for us.

Excellent, cogent analysis, but I don't think he really appreciates or articulates the true gravity of the situation, which is generally the case with all progressive commentators. I mean, our peace activists are operating in a false paradigm to begin with, one which presupposes the existence of democracy in America, in which their voices actually matter. Even when we have pulled off some large demonstrations, they are largely tame and subdued, as if marching around in a circle carrying signs and chanting some slogans will make any difference whatsoever.

What the United States Government is doing around the world is so reprehensible, so shockingly immoral, illegal and wrong, it requires a much more vigorous response. I think that perhaps our current reality is so difficult to comprehend and appreciate, people actually prefer to pretend that there is still some functioning democracy, so they continue to operate within this false paradigm and promote the same non-solutions. If it is not electoral politics they advocate, it is "grassroots activism", both of which, in my opinion, are obsolete and utterly ineffective. Elections are rigged and activism makes no difference in the way things are actually run.

Think about it. We have had activism, elections and protests for as long as anyone can remember, right? Well, then why is it that everything just keeps getting worse? I'm not saying that the answer is to do nothing, but if the goal is actually improving the status quo, I would say that apathy and inaction are just as effective as electoral politics and grassroots activism.