Greetings, Earthlings!

Allow me to introduce myself. I blog as Realist on blogcritics.org, usually but not exclusively under the Politics section. I also occasionally write reviews of music and books there. But enough about that. You can look me up there when you decide to know more.

Why am I now writing on The Populist Manifesto? America as we all know it is in great danger. We all tend to agree on this. Where we differ is in the nature of the danger, what it means, and -most importantly- what to do about it.

Those who consider themselves conservatives feel that their traditional values are under assault. They aren't wrong in this belief. But because they aren't wrong, they have gone immediately into attack mode and are not interested in the subtle nuances of why their values are under assault, or by whom or what. They don't care about nuance. They want things the way they have always been and that is that. Either you stand with them against change, or you are the enemy. There is no in-between.

For those of us who consider ourselves anything OTHER than conservative, our values have been under assault for decades. We who believe in fairness and equality have had to watch powerless as privilege and social class connections dominate. We who believe in equality have watched as the defenders of privilege and connection coalesced into a quasi-white-power collection of "traditional" elitists. We who believe in the dignity of labor have endured repeated assaults both on our rights as labor and our economic opportunities, continuously pushed both by our employers and their elected lackeys into "voluntarily" surrendering our rights in order to remain employed. Yet we had too long trusted that this was still the America where differences in opinion and action were respected by those who disagree. We allowed ourselves to be made into lesser beings with diminished rights and power.

There is no need to recite the numerous instances which demonstrate that our particular traditional America is now merely a historical artifact. It is sufficient to note that the effects of this do not just affect the US. They also affect the world.

Because we have been eating ourselves and our nation from the inside, consuming our future in the contest for control, we have allowed our status as a world leader to deteriorate to the point that many nations are now vying to be our replacement. China is the dominant player in this game, but the others (with whom China is attempting for form more formal alliances) include Russia and India. China is the one rival which deserves much more attention from Americans, but our media doesn't present the issues in a sports-like format that would keep our attention long enough to learn something. That, however, isn't going to stop me from trying. China will be a regular topic here.

Domestic politics is going to also be a frequent subject. I do not belong to either the Democratic Party or the Republican Party, for they are but two-faces of the American Corporatist Power Party, owned and operated by interchangeable and shifting rival factions of the American commercial interests. With the "debate" over the abomination that is presented to us as "health insurance reform", we all can see just how much control over events the corporations wield. They don't even bother to hide it anymore. They know they have the power and that there isn't much We, the People can do about it.

Where this is going to lead and what it will likely mean are going to be the themes of my posts here. I hope that you find them worthy of reading, commenting upon, and referring to others as you deem suitable.

Onward.