Matewan

The Matewan Massacre in 1920, as depicted in John Sayles' 1987 film, Matewan, represents the struggle between corporate power and human rights. Any American who carelessly condemns socialism as evil should perhaps take the time to see this film, which is readily available in video rental shops or from Netflix.

The Matewan story speaks for itself. However, I believe the neoconservative movement within the Republican Party in the U.S. still represents the powers of blind greed and materialism which cause poverty and human misery in too many American lives today. Today's free-market capitalists are the descendants of the coal magnates who used economic subjugation and violence to maintain their profits.

They work through trading rooms on Wall Street, while their minions slash payrolls with massive layoffs, export jobs to easily subjugated labor markets and manipulate U.S. government officials to avoid regulation and taxes. They begrudge universal health care for their own population. They prop up wealthy banks and insurance companies, while those duped into buying into their schemes are turned out of their homes. They are the new aristocracy, Social Darwinists who feel they are inherently better than those they exploit. They are about winning, not about sharing.

Equality

Equality as a human right begins in the mind of the individual.

Getting married does not make a gay man equal. Adopting a child does not make a lesbian equal. Going to Harvard does not make a black man equal. Running for President does not make a woman equal.

These are simply the outward signs of equality according to human law and convention.

I made myself equal in my own mind and heart when I revolted against a violent and domineering family. I was twenty at the time. It was the beginning of my adulthood and the beginning of my individual practice of personal evolution. I said "No!" to violence, insults and constant attempts to control my life by my parents. Until then, I was depressed, confused and impotent, just the way my family liked me to be.

No amount of mimicking or sincerely imitating an oppressor will give you your own equality and subsequent freedom. This has been the mistake of many conservative political movements for change in the status of minorities. The wealthy heterosexual elite in American society derive great pleasure from these attempts at being like them. But they will not surrender their power and oppression without fear of the consequences of not surrendering those evils. They fear one thing: Loss of money, whether it be in the form of personal property, corporate assets, political power or social power.

The only protection of human rights is constant protest of their abuse in the face of the abusers, those in power. The human rights of all will not be assured until the weakest among us are protected from violence, oppression and poverty. The core of that protest is each individual person's actualization of his/her personal equality. That begins with saying "No!" to those in one's life who hurt, oppress and impoverish.

Military

The problem with the military mind is its lack of ability to see its narcissism. It can only see war as necessity to justify its oppression and brutality. Peace keeping, another term for oppression of demands for human and economic rights by the poor and undereducated, in the 21st century can be achieved without hundreds of thousands of exploited underclass citizens being amed with lethal weapons.

The military-industrial (corporate) complex needs to process these underclass men and women to control them, disable them or route them into underclass jobs after their service. If they were not controlled in this fashion, they might well form an army of revolution against the status quo.

This is the old reality behind armies and wars.

If wealth were not hoarded and passed on by the rich, there would be ample financial resources to spread peace, rather than just keep it. Schools, clean water, healthy housing and more could be afforded to the poorest of our brothers and sisters worldwide. Armies guard the rich at the expense of the poor. Armies, like the violence they perpetrate, are evil without exception.