Rise of The Red Star – Part 3

Continued from Part 2

DT: You’re telling a story about very noble people who are saddled with leaders who are obviously not worthy of them. What is it about the people of the URRS (and by allegory, the former USSR) that you think accounts for this?

CG: As Maya says in issue 3, “All the leaders of the world…they are all liars. Petty lords with petty schemes…” I believe this. I believe that not only in Russia, which is an extreme example, but most statesmen of the world are self-serving liars that represent the worst possible strata of human experience from which to draw leadership. Not only in our current time but throughout history. However, to speak of the immediacy of history, there is a great example for us to look to. As it stands right now, the Electoral College will most likely put George W. Bush in the White House. This is yet another example of a leader who is not worthy of his people. There is a lot of nobility in our country, and yet there is enough utter stupidity to put a buffoonish figurehead in the seat of power. The Red Star, in this case, does also gain its inspiration from the internationalist mindset of the early Russian Revolutionaries. No story about the Soviet Era could be complete without giving due time to agitation. How the theme of populist agitation is handled by the author in question has much to say about the stance of said author. As far as I am concerned, and I know Bradley feels the same way, our voices stand for radical political upheaval. This political stance is one of the most subtle inspirations for choosing the material we’ve chosen. Within this facet of our work lies the core of the story: What is to be learned from the Cold War? Why did this institution of paranoia exist? Why is our nation’s hegemony over the world failing to offer the majority of its citizenry the utopian lifestyle we were promised if ever we were able to ‘overcome the threat of communism’? We feel very strongly about these questions, and these beliefs expose what might be called our thesis; the greatest irony of the 20th Century is that in outlasting the Soviet Union, the U.S. is not liberated from any struggle against it, but is only revealing its own tyrannical nature. Further, that with every corporate merger, with every sweeping deregulation made possible by the fall of its greatest economic rival, our country continues along a path of reckless economic centralization heretofore comparable in the modern era only with Lenin’s Russia.

BK: I think it’s the same machinery that allows us as Americans to continually place leaders in office who do nothing in the way of furthering the will of the people while continuing a forceful propaganda stating the opposite. It is all the parts of complacency, fear, and selfishness saddled with a runaway system that was never intended for rule by, for, or of, the people that allows those in power to stay in power. It is no accident that nine out of ten elections in this country go to the candidate who spends the most money on the campaign (this is for all levels of office). Where does that money come from? Special interests, i.e.. corporations. What do they want in return? Enough legislative freedom to mete out the most biased of profit making schemes. The Russian people in the face of a democracy are no different, indeed many US heads are responsible for, and have benefited from, the unprecedented capital flight that has taken place in the former USSR.

DT: What do you think there is, other than propaganda, in the American system that leads so many to believe that it is a government by, for and of the people, and in your own mind, what would a truly democratic or representative government look like?

BK: Complacency. It’s not that people believe that our American system ISN’T for the people, it’s that the American people by and large don’t think about it. They would rather have their minds lulled by Jerry Springer and Survivor than to engage in any sensible argumentation about our legislature, say. And if they are thinking about it, they are not doing so with any sort of depth or understanding. People are happy with their choices of consumer goods and equate this with freedom, equate this with a government FOR the people. They have been lulled to sleep.

Our present state of affairs is dire: Multinational corporations are getting away with grave injustices at an unprecedented rate and neither the government nor the people do anything to stop them. Indeed it is our own people that are complicit in the multinationals’ behaviors. If everyone (the People capital P) stopped purchasing Nike brand tennis shoes, then Nike wouldn’t be able to get away with paying struggling and often times under aged Indonesian workers 11 cents a hour with no benefits. It’s disgusting! Yet the People would rather ‘be like Mike’ than be concerned with another’s welfare, even if that someone (thousands and thousands of someones really) is thousands of miles away in a foreign country. I may be rather cynical about this, but I see more idiots wearing Nikes than I see intelligent people speaking out against such atrocities as I have mentioned.

Okay, onward. What would a truly democratic representative government look like? To tell the truth I don’t really know. I don’t know how to bake a cake, but I do know that putting bleach in it is probably no so great. We have to change the system we have in increments. First-corporate finance reform (the real kind) is invaluable. We must take representatives of the People out of the pockets of the robber barons that currently run this country. Next, we must pass laws that will restrict the multinationals in their current laissez fair status. If a corporation pays overseas workers less than one tenth of one percent of the total cost of manufacturing an item (ahem..Disney) then the government should be able to step in and say, “Well Mike, you just can’t do business anymore until you stop this behavior.” We need representatives that have teeth and aren’t powerless to use them against those that would move against the will of the People.

Continued in Part 4