{"id":1702,"date":"2013-08-04T09:18:20","date_gmt":"2013-08-04T13:18:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/masspirates.org\/blog\/?p=1702"},"modified":"2013-08-04T09:18:20","modified_gmt":"2013-08-04T13:18:20","slug":"you-aint-sht","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/masspirates.org\/blog\/2013\/08\/04\/you-aint-sht\/","title":{"rendered":"You Ain\u2019t Sh*t"},"content":{"rendered":"

How changing the conductor doesn\u2019t move the train tracks.<\/strong><\/p>\n

In my \u201cWhy the Pirates\u201d post, I\u2019m dropping some ancient wisdom. In the Tibetan Buddhist script,\u00a0A Guide to the Bodhisattva Way of Life,<\/i> Acharya Shantideva writes;<\/p>\n

Through being, attached to living beings<\/p>\n

I am completely obscured from the perfect reality,<\/p>\n

My disillusion (with, cyclic existence) perishes<\/p>\n

And in the end I am tortured by sorrow.<\/p>\n

Shantideva goes on to essentially say that we are filthy bags of meat that shouldn\u2019t obsess over other people as if they are special, because we ourselves are nothing special. While written over 1,300 years ago, his observations still hold a lot of merit. (Bear in mind, I\u2019m summarizing from a dense, confusing, and ancient script and I am using it to pursue a political point).<\/p>\n

Maybe you\u2019ve become disillusioned that change would come if you hoped with Barrack Obama<\/b>, or you fear the Ron Paul <\/b>revolution will never come to pass. Perhaps you were raging against the monied interests with Ralph Nader <\/b>or you simply wanted America to be America again with John Kerry<\/b>. Whatever your particular bent, the fact is people-politics has failed us<\/em>. More often than not it has become about the person, not ideas, the sound bites, and not the political process. What has resulted is the hardly veiled fact that we are not well represented. Obscured by popularity contests every four or so years, our political systems are ancient, unjust, unbalanced, and primarily serving those who can control it.<\/p>\n

It is this very reason that has drawn me to the Massachusetts Pirate Party. Unlike the other parties, big-2 and 3rd<\/sup> parties alike, the MPP is not approaching issues that matter to them solely from the perspective of people-politics. Voting for John Pirateson will not save you, sorry. While the MPP\u2019s strategies and short-term goals are to run and win seats of power in government, it is by no means their final goal. You won\u2019t ever hear, \u201cif only our candidate had won, X would be so much better.\u201d There is a bigger picture. Changing how politics is done at a system level. The platform is innovative, revolutionary, participatory and most importantly it uses the Internet for more than just fundraising!<\/p>\n

The MPP is the party of open. It is not the party of ____your name here<\/span>____ , and I like it that way. When the MPP succeeds it will be more resilient to the perversion and corruption we\u2019ve seen happen to the message (but most often the messenger) of person-politics.<\/p>\n

The MPP is running it\u2019s first batch of candidates for local and state office this coming year. If you are in any way, shape, or form interested in assisting or even running in a campaign please reach out. Don\u2019t worry if you don\u2019t think you are good enough. I already think you aren\u2019t.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

**As a note, the author is down with the RPrevolution, Free State Project, Startup Cities, and sees the MPP as a pragmatic and worthwhile endeavor.**<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How changing the conductor doesn\u2019t move the train tracks. In my \u201cWhy the Pirates\u201d post, I\u2019m dropping some ancient wisdom. In the Tibetan…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":93,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1702","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-copyright"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1W8mg-rs","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/masspirates.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1702","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/masspirates.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/masspirates.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/masspirates.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/93"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/masspirates.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1702"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/masspirates.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1702\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1705,"href":"https:\/\/masspirates.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1702\/revisions\/1705"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/masspirates.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1702"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/masspirates.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1702"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/masspirates.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1702"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}