Yesterday's loss in Massachusetts was not the great rebuke of President Obama as the so-called "pundits" are saying it is.
The loss yesterday was a victory for the Republican Establishment. They are truly good at what they do. Great, maybe. Despite the worst 8 years in our nation's history, despite the fact that the party which is supposedly better at protecting us failed (see 9/11), despite the fact that the party for less government created more than any president in our history (see The Department of Homeland Security), despite the fact that the party supposedly better at creating jobs via their endless tax-cuts (see "zero job creation since December 1999"), Americans have very, very quickly forgotten that it is these same tired and failed Republicans who have spent all of 2009 lying about the benefits to be gained from health care reform--and most recently, the proposed tax on the massive bank bonuses.
They are disgusting. Oh, and the dems are ball-less. Absolutely, utterly ball-less! If the shoe was on the other foot and it was the republicans seeking to pass health care reform (one that would certainly only really benefit insurance companies) do you really think the republicans would have decided not to force through passage of health care in the 15 days it will take to certify these election results? Never! These fascists would, as they did with the largest tax-cuts in world history, have already voted yesterday. Actually, they would have already passed the legislation via reconciliation, which needs only a simple majority.
Ball-less-ness
Instead, the dems again, in an act of political good-will and making yet more efforts to be bi-partisan have stupidly, ball-lessly already promised that no legislation will be put to vote until Mr. Brown is sworn in. Disgusting!
President Obama came to office and immediately, with the power of a mandate in hand, started to reach out to this republican colleagues; while at the same time, he politely reminded them that it was he who had the mandate for change, not they. But, par for course, when the interests of our nation conflict with the interests of party, the republicans always choose their party; and, really, they are only looking after the interests of a small, neo-fascist, ant-life, anti-choice, weirdly-born-again-Christian and financially reckless arm of their constituency.
Goose-stepping together throughout the entire year, regardless of what Obama put to them for passage, regardless of how in need the nation was, all they did was say "no" and obstruct. The stimulus bill, which was way too small and we all knew this back then, was the first attempt Obama made to work with the republicans. He listened to their concerns and even made compromises--1/3 of the stimulus is in the form of tax-cuts.
The stimulus has worked and without it we would be more screwed economically today than when W was president, but, it needed to be more aggressive and larger. "They" were against it, however. Not because they had a better plan--except for ever more massive tax cuts--they simply were and are against all Obama has done because if he succeeds, then it is Democrat success also and this would prove bad for their party.
Republican Establishment: lies and thievery
The past year was a year during which Republican Establishment so successfully planted the words like "socialist" in the minds of the lumpen proletariat. Sadly, 99% of the people using this word don't know what it means. These people tune into Fox "News" and failing to realize that their elected officials are "missing in obstruction", they blame Obama for trying to lead our nation--something that hasn't been done for 8 years--firstly back into the modern world and secondly, back to its prominent place of world leadership.
He brought to our nation a health reform package whose costs would be off-set--our future, national wealth would not suffer but actually increase thanks to the bill--and what did the republicans do? Nothing. Passage would doom their chances for regaining seats so, once again, against America, they fanned the embers of lies into the American psyche via Fox and the oxy-addict Limbaugh and a blaze took shape. No one in the media dared pursue them for their flip-flop: they said they wanted a bill that would not cost us money, they got it but all promised to vote no, anyway.
The GOP is a party of inaction, lies and theft. The medicare reform bill that was passed under W is pure and true theft of our national wealth. Payment for this bill comes straight out of the till. Nowhere is it offset by decreased costs, taxes or anything. Instead, the doctors and insurance companies actually make a killing on this bill and the American taxpayer is screwed--by whom? Yes, by the republicans; who is paying for that one war and the occupation of Iraq? Yes, those same taxpayers.
And what is not being paid for? The upkeep of our nation's infrastructure for one. Schools are losing their funding. We are already falling educationally behind all major nations and with nothing left in local governments to pay police and firemen, communities all across the land are cutting education. California's system, one of the best in the world and an oasis in the desert of neo-conservative mind-rot which has taken over our nation since January 20, 1981, is being cut to shreds for the state is bankrupt.
We are screwed...
Nothing good for America will come from yesterday's loss. A lot of good will come to the republican party, though. And, the beleaguered worker, taxpayer with no health care, will only have himself to thank when the bottom falls out. And, amazingly, thanks to the incessant propaganda of Fox, Limbaugh and the nation's media, the republicans will not be blamed for collapse. Instead, they will find another enemy in a desert and send another 200,000 troops to wave flags and shoot guns and remind us all of the dying empire we once were.
They will pass more pro--guns laws, more Americans will be senselessly slaughtered like happened yesterday in Virginia (a 39-year old white guy. I will bet a dollar that he is a republican and voted for W twice!); they will pass more anti-abortion laws, seek to cut more taxes and shift more of our nation's wealth into private hands--something the communists did in the Soviet Union until finally the whole things collapsed. Sadly, a plight not so inconceivable in our nation (see Vermont independence movement, see Alaska independence movement, etc.).
History will look back on this era and mark it as the end of the American empire, our fall. We are living during the fall and we have the president to stop it and instead, we would rather ride around blissfully ignorant in big, gas-guzzling cars, in ever-hotter and colder (global warming is actually global weirding) weather, blaming taxes, dems and ever worshiping Ronald Reagan.
Who would've imagined that in the first decade after the start of the 2nd millennium , after a century with the most amazing technological developments in world history, we would actually have a government that was ritualistically denying the facts of science; purging the national record of statistical and scientific fact about global warming just so it could preserve the massive wealth of its tiny coterie of backers? This too, is what the communists did in the Soviet Union.
History will show Reagan as being the president who launched our collapse; and, thanks to the Americanization of the world's consumption habits, it will be looked at as the period when the world turned to corner to its final and tragic end.
And, when it is almost over and we are dead or dying, some republican will surface and demand ever more tax cuts to get the nation back on track.
Dry-heaves
I will vomit but only once because I am sincerely considering no longer giving a damn about the future of the greatest nation on earth. I am sincerely considering doing what the republicans have mastered: giving a damn only about my own personal gain and screw anyone or anything--like national interest--that should interfere in my getting as wealthiest as possible.
Oh, what a sick and sad existence that will be.
Yes, for me yesterday's loss is one that goes beyond health reform. It is the one that finally makes me realize that my country is no longer the country I imagined it to be. We have become really, really stupid. Historically, conservative politics are usually based on emotion, little thought, manipulation of fear and
Showing posts with label Reagan is dead. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Reagan is dead. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Fox: The Dumber the Better
There once was an American creed which, to paraphrase, stated the following: to those who rise early, who are honest and who respect their neigbors, the fruits of their labor will bring them rewards.
And then, the era of corporate welfare began in earnest; the era of hysterical governing in which a tactic often used by "communists" in Russia was employed to such a degree that still 15 years later we are stuck in this quagmire of "ungovernability."
The deke used with such amazing success by the hysterical-right (HR, hereinafter) is a simple one: lie about one's enemy with passion, believe your lie, and then force him to disprove the lie, nevertheless however, the stain will be on the dress (thank you Monica for saving it). This has been an amazing tactic used for nearly a century by Russian communists and now today's so-called democratically-elected governing party. In Russia, and in other low-trust societies, you lie and he who has the money to spin that lie and make it "reality" is the ultimate victor for the other guy expends all his energy disproving the lie.
Not My Concern
Russia, however, is not my concern. Despite living here for many years, I have learned one thing: keep your mouth shut in this society. You can have a negative opinion but just don't try to apply that to action or else very quickly you will be identified, isolated and expelled or arrested.
My concern is what I see happening in our America. Yes, we have always had an emotional and slightly hysterical bent to our politics. George Washington hated the media and the opposition so much when he left office he secretly feared that America couldn't last if new rules for governing weren't instituted. Not much was done, though, and today we still see similar tactics being applied by the media and the opposition.
The danger, however, lies not in these tactics but in the collaboration of these tactics. When the media becomes the opposition then we set out into swamps only traveled by the likes of Nazi's and Communists. For 15 years, all media in Nazi Germany were slipping into all aspects of their reporting, from weather forecasts to sales of lady's pantyhose, that Jews were "vermin." Guess what? During the immediate de-Nazification era after the war, Germans from 15 to 30 years of age were absolutely convinced that Jews were vermin. Fed lies by the mass media for over a decade, the lies became the truth.
Under Communism, for 70 years, lies (propaganda) were spilled across every aspect of society: from newspapers, to radio, to TV, to subway walls to park benches, the glory of communism was extolled. True, many knew that these "glories" were not so great. Yet, to this day, there are entire generations who are convinced that it was the American army that committed atrocities during WWII against Germans and Jews; that the firebombing of Dresden was genocide; that presidents are chosen by elite committees behind closed doors and so on. Now, the current system is again spoon-feeding the nation lies, opinions and creating for modern-day Russia, it's reality.
Hysteria for Power's Sake
The HR, the GOPCON Party and Fox-"News" are taking plays from the playbooks of some very dangerous and destructive parties. No good can be gained when a major network news program, with the resources of not just a TV station, but countless internet sites, newspapers and magazines, so vociferously creates a false reality for to the nation about politicians it does not feel fall in line with its political views.
Fox's behaviour is traitorous. The support of the HR for Fox's tactics is based on greed and immediate political gain. The GOPCON wants power so they can go back to ruining our nation through their inherent mismanagement; go back to bankrupting our nation through their ridiculus corporate welfare (tax cuts); so they can return to making America dumber by NOT investing in education, by making it less likely that working Americans can get student loans, by perpetuating our obsession with fossil fuels which leave us stuck in the go-nowhere economic muck we are currently in.
The dangers of letting Fox mangle the truth by inseminating it with lies is that since the birth of Fox, a generation of youth have come to age. These youth now believe these lies to be the truth. Class assaults that under Reagan would have been considered impeachable offenses, thanks to the hysteria and lies stoked by Fox, are today reasons why Republicans get elected in many states. And, the danger lies in the simplistic world of dichtomies: good versus evil, us v. them, black v. white, Yankees v. Phillies. The simpler the argument, the easier it is for people to understand.
Fox is for Dumb People
If we were to look at the places where Fox is considered the Gospel, we would notice that these parts of America are the least educated. The more outrageous and simplistic the lie, the easier it is to understand, the less worry a politician has about his hysteria and lies being questioned by an informed electorate.
Last year in Russia when the chess-genius Gary Kasparov tried to run for president, his followers were beaten and jailed. Why? Because he is smart and his platform was simple: are we better off today than we were 8 years ago? And then, the smart, well-spoken and well-respected, if not adored by many Russians chess champ merely laid out the problems that have gotten worse under Putin. He was chased out of the country. The goverment/party-controlled mass media made him out to be a drug-using, child-molesting lunatic--all lies, but, the truth was created by a the ruling party's media.
Putin feared Kasparov's intelligent and rational critique would result in smart voters, the majority being concentrated in St. Petersburg and Moscow, not turning out to vote on election day. So, he silenced rational, unemotional opposition and he kept the voters in the dark; instead they spent months pondering whether it could be true that their chess hero was really a heroin-addicted pedofile. And, Medvedev won by a landslide. He created emotional responses where none should have been and manipulated them against his potential opponent.
Some Questions
Finally, I would like to ask some questions of my sane and educated breathren on the other side of the political pendulum: can you really think any good will come out of joining the GOP with Fox-News? Can you really think any good will come from making our electorate dumber so they will question less? When will you return to the core values that made our nation strong, sustainable and great?
And then, the era of corporate welfare began in earnest; the era of hysterical governing in which a tactic often used by "communists" in Russia was employed to such a degree that still 15 years later we are stuck in this quagmire of "ungovernability."
The deke used with such amazing success by the hysterical-right (HR, hereinafter) is a simple one: lie about one's enemy with passion, believe your lie, and then force him to disprove the lie, nevertheless however, the stain will be on the dress (thank you Monica for saving it). This has been an amazing tactic used for nearly a century by Russian communists and now today's so-called democratically-elected governing party. In Russia, and in other low-trust societies, you lie and he who has the money to spin that lie and make it "reality" is the ultimate victor for the other guy expends all his energy disproving the lie.
Not My Concern
Russia, however, is not my concern. Despite living here for many years, I have learned one thing: keep your mouth shut in this society. You can have a negative opinion but just don't try to apply that to action or else very quickly you will be identified, isolated and expelled or arrested.
My concern is what I see happening in our America. Yes, we have always had an emotional and slightly hysterical bent to our politics. George Washington hated the media and the opposition so much when he left office he secretly feared that America couldn't last if new rules for governing weren't instituted. Not much was done, though, and today we still see similar tactics being applied by the media and the opposition.
The danger, however, lies not in these tactics but in the collaboration of these tactics. When the media becomes the opposition then we set out into swamps only traveled by the likes of Nazi's and Communists. For 15 years, all media in Nazi Germany were slipping into all aspects of their reporting, from weather forecasts to sales of lady's pantyhose, that Jews were "vermin." Guess what? During the immediate de-Nazification era after the war, Germans from 15 to 30 years of age were absolutely convinced that Jews were vermin. Fed lies by the mass media for over a decade, the lies became the truth.
Under Communism, for 70 years, lies (propaganda) were spilled across every aspect of society: from newspapers, to radio, to TV, to subway walls to park benches, the glory of communism was extolled. True, many knew that these "glories" were not so great. Yet, to this day, there are entire generations who are convinced that it was the American army that committed atrocities during WWII against Germans and Jews; that the firebombing of Dresden was genocide; that presidents are chosen by elite committees behind closed doors and so on. Now, the current system is again spoon-feeding the nation lies, opinions and creating for modern-day Russia, it's reality.
Hysteria for Power's Sake
The HR, the GOPCON Party and Fox-"News" are taking plays from the playbooks of some very dangerous and destructive parties. No good can be gained when a major network news program, with the resources of not just a TV station, but countless internet sites, newspapers and magazines, so vociferously creates a false reality for to the nation about politicians it does not feel fall in line with its political views.
Fox's behaviour is traitorous. The support of the HR for Fox's tactics is based on greed and immediate political gain. The GOPCON wants power so they can go back to ruining our nation through their inherent mismanagement; go back to bankrupting our nation through their ridiculus corporate welfare (tax cuts); so they can return to making America dumber by NOT investing in education, by making it less likely that working Americans can get student loans, by perpetuating our obsession with fossil fuels which leave us stuck in the go-nowhere economic muck we are currently in.
The dangers of letting Fox mangle the truth by inseminating it with lies is that since the birth of Fox, a generation of youth have come to age. These youth now believe these lies to be the truth. Class assaults that under Reagan would have been considered impeachable offenses, thanks to the hysteria and lies stoked by Fox, are today reasons why Republicans get elected in many states. And, the danger lies in the simplistic world of dichtomies: good versus evil, us v. them, black v. white, Yankees v. Phillies. The simpler the argument, the easier it is for people to understand.
Fox is for Dumb People
If we were to look at the places where Fox is considered the Gospel, we would notice that these parts of America are the least educated. The more outrageous and simplistic the lie, the easier it is to understand, the less worry a politician has about his hysteria and lies being questioned by an informed electorate.
Last year in Russia when the chess-genius Gary Kasparov tried to run for president, his followers were beaten and jailed. Why? Because he is smart and his platform was simple: are we better off today than we were 8 years ago? And then, the smart, well-spoken and well-respected, if not adored by many Russians chess champ merely laid out the problems that have gotten worse under Putin. He was chased out of the country. The goverment/party-controlled mass media made him out to be a drug-using, child-molesting lunatic--all lies, but, the truth was created by a the ruling party's media.
Putin feared Kasparov's intelligent and rational critique would result in smart voters, the majority being concentrated in St. Petersburg and Moscow, not turning out to vote on election day. So, he silenced rational, unemotional opposition and he kept the voters in the dark; instead they spent months pondering whether it could be true that their chess hero was really a heroin-addicted pedofile. And, Medvedev won by a landslide. He created emotional responses where none should have been and manipulated them against his potential opponent.
Some Questions
Finally, I would like to ask some questions of my sane and educated breathren on the other side of the political pendulum: can you really think any good will come out of joining the GOP with Fox-News? Can you really think any good will come from making our electorate dumber so they will question less? When will you return to the core values that made our nation strong, sustainable and great?
Sunday, April 5, 2009
In 1979
In 1979, despite having just come off the embarassment of the Vietnam failure, America was still the beautiful, the skies for the most part were spacious and the grain was amberish from sea to shining sea. And, a little of 1/3 of the world's economic might was concentrated in the collective hands of the US nation--it's people and it's government.
And then, he came to town. With a mix of Andy Griffith meets Timmy and Lassie; Laverne and Shirley grit mixed with a dash (a big one I might add) of The Walton's, Ronald Rea--GUN, as he was so lovingly known to many of his droids, set forth the downfall which has led us to where we are today: the end of the Post-World War II era, the end of the American Century; the end of Pax Americana; the end of our empire of good-will and common-good and good-manners and good-wine and good-music, and, well, everything that could be "good"...good riddance, I say.
Many today who support President Obama as he tries to revive our nation after the worst 8 years of governance since the 4 years of missing leadership under James Buchanan, our 15th president and the last president before our nation was pulled into the vortex of Southern emotion, hate and rascism that led to the premature deaths of over 1,000,000 (direct battlefield deaths of soliders were around 618,000), believe that Reagan was a great president.
Nutshell
Let's assess in a nutshell. Ronald Reagan took office and immediately began to cut social programs that he complained had been bankrupting America; our so-called welfare state, the least developed of all industrialized nations, was creating a culture of poverty: those born into poverty would remain poor because the "system" wasn't giving them the needed stimuli to "pull themselves up by their bootstraps" so they could pick up and get out of the ghetto.
In order to give America its winning edge back, Reagan started to cut back on federal funding of this "welfare system." His cutbacks, really, were quite small compared to what would happen under W.; however, the demon seed under Reagan was the combination of increased goverment spending on things like defense and the massive tax-cuts that his economic witch-doctors had proposed to feed the hunger of the voodoo-economic's swamp-thing.
Ronald Reagan's appeal to the masses was similar to an Amway meeting; in some random Hyatt ballroom, hyper-hair-sprayed southerns with names like Robertlee Davis and his sparkling wife Crystal Maryjoy would take the stage and start telling stories to crowds of lower-middle class followers of "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous" about how they had flown to this meeting (which each Amway member had to pay $35 for attendance) in their "own private jet!"
To hoots and hollers and high-fives between people whose rating in Amway were based on the rareness of stones--the gem level, the diamond level, the rock level, etc.--the Davis' would brag about their worldly possessions while deftly sprinkling in words of gratitude to the greatness of "our Lord Jesus Christ" and, of course, to the American way.
Yes, this was the effect that Ronald Reagan has had on Americans who formerly knew pretty much where they would end up on the economic side of life: middle-middle class (or lower-middle class), happy with a set of kids for whom some government funding would be made available to send those kiddies to college; a job in some factory or company and some very limited health care; and, of course, a pension from their employer and an SS check each month. But, Reaganway told us that extreme wealth was just around the corner for all: just need to cut taxes and live as if we were all Donald Trumps.
So, given that we are all potential Trumps, such a "welfare state" would've been simply too generous. They also felt that our streets had too few weapons so by manipulating a so-called heartfelt respect for the Constitution, they claimed that being anti-handgun was the same as being anti-American. What it really meant was real big profits for their friends the gun manufacturers. What it has meant for us future Trumps is not just the deaths of over ten of thousands of Americans each year from handguns; but, now on our boarder we have a northern state in Mexico adrift in chaos as a result of unprecedented violence thanks to weapons that just pour south from Americans whose only moral compass is the bottomline: oh, yes, and the "Lord Jesus Christ."
As the foundation for the economic and moral bankrupting of our nation was laid, Reagan made it acceptable to "hate" and "ridicule" anyone who sought any kind of federal support or protection. Support and government investment in the infrastructure and the people that really seemed to fall so obviously under the lead of a federal government, were suddenly squeezed from federal budgets until eventually everyday, American life for us, the average, struggling, working Joe's became like a walk through the Atari game "Pitfall." If you don't know the little secrets, then you fall through the cracks.
The newly-Christened-enactors of his "revolution", people who desparately needed those "Happy-Day-esque" emotive umbrellas like "Evil Empire" and "culture of povety" started to dismantle any government oversight whose chief task was to have ensured that middle America could live in a safer, cleaner and happier America: eating breakfast can be as dangerous as Russian roulette nowadays due to the missing-in-inaction Food and Drug Administration.
And then, he came to town. With a mix of Andy Griffith meets Timmy and Lassie; Laverne and Shirley grit mixed with a dash (a big one I might add) of The Walton's, Ronald Rea--GUN, as he was so lovingly known to many of his droids, set forth the downfall which has led us to where we are today: the end of the Post-World War II era, the end of the American Century; the end of Pax Americana; the end of our empire of good-will and common-good and good-manners and good-wine and good-music, and, well, everything that could be "good"...good riddance, I say.
Many today who support President Obama as he tries to revive our nation after the worst 8 years of governance since the 4 years of missing leadership under James Buchanan, our 15th president and the last president before our nation was pulled into the vortex of Southern emotion, hate and rascism that led to the premature deaths of over 1,000,000 (direct battlefield deaths of soliders were around 618,000), believe that Reagan was a great president.
Nutshell
Let's assess in a nutshell. Ronald Reagan took office and immediately began to cut social programs that he complained had been bankrupting America; our so-called welfare state, the least developed of all industrialized nations, was creating a culture of poverty: those born into poverty would remain poor because the "system" wasn't giving them the needed stimuli to "pull themselves up by their bootstraps" so they could pick up and get out of the ghetto.
In order to give America its winning edge back, Reagan started to cut back on federal funding of this "welfare system." His cutbacks, really, were quite small compared to what would happen under W.; however, the demon seed under Reagan was the combination of increased goverment spending on things like defense and the massive tax-cuts that his economic witch-doctors had proposed to feed the hunger of the voodoo-economic's swamp-thing.
Ronald Reagan's appeal to the masses was similar to an Amway meeting; in some random Hyatt ballroom, hyper-hair-sprayed southerns with names like Robertlee Davis and his sparkling wife Crystal Maryjoy would take the stage and start telling stories to crowds of lower-middle class followers of "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous" about how they had flown to this meeting (which each Amway member had to pay $35 for attendance) in their "own private jet!"
To hoots and hollers and high-fives between people whose rating in Amway were based on the rareness of stones--the gem level, the diamond level, the rock level, etc.--the Davis' would brag about their worldly possessions while deftly sprinkling in words of gratitude to the greatness of "our Lord Jesus Christ" and, of course, to the American way.
Yes, this was the effect that Ronald Reagan has had on Americans who formerly knew pretty much where they would end up on the economic side of life: middle-middle class (or lower-middle class), happy with a set of kids for whom some government funding would be made available to send those kiddies to college; a job in some factory or company and some very limited health care; and, of course, a pension from their employer and an SS check each month. But, Reaganway told us that extreme wealth was just around the corner for all: just need to cut taxes and live as if we were all Donald Trumps.
So, given that we are all potential Trumps, such a "welfare state" would've been simply too generous. They also felt that our streets had too few weapons so by manipulating a so-called heartfelt respect for the Constitution, they claimed that being anti-handgun was the same as being anti-American. What it really meant was real big profits for their friends the gun manufacturers. What it has meant for us future Trumps is not just the deaths of over ten of thousands of Americans each year from handguns; but, now on our boarder we have a northern state in Mexico adrift in chaos as a result of unprecedented violence thanks to weapons that just pour south from Americans whose only moral compass is the bottomline: oh, yes, and the "Lord Jesus Christ."
As the foundation for the economic and moral bankrupting of our nation was laid, Reagan made it acceptable to "hate" and "ridicule" anyone who sought any kind of federal support or protection. Support and government investment in the infrastructure and the people that really seemed to fall so obviously under the lead of a federal government, were suddenly squeezed from federal budgets until eventually everyday, American life for us, the average, struggling, working Joe's became like a walk through the Atari game "Pitfall." If you don't know the little secrets, then you fall through the cracks.
The newly-Christened-enactors of his "revolution", people who desparately needed those "Happy-Day-esque" emotive umbrellas like "Evil Empire" and "culture of povety" started to dismantle any government oversight whose chief task was to have ensured that middle America could live in a safer, cleaner and happier America: eating breakfast can be as dangerous as Russian roulette nowadays due to the missing-in-inaction Food and Drug Administration.
Because the fire lit by Reagan and stoked by Bush-I and then set ablaze across the West Texas prairie by W, America has lost its true moral compass. FDR said in his second inaugral address (to paraphrase): a nation needs to be economically moral. Wealth is not a virtue.
The Collapse
From Reagan until this most recent and final collapse of our economic way of life, wealth had become virtuous. We were not economically moral. The "virtual wealth" that had been driving our economy for the last 20 years has so rapidly lost it steam, that the government was forced to seek ever new places for savings; eventually, with the poor safely off the political radar screen, the GOP began manipulating and attacking the backbone of America: the middle class.
Today, being in the middle-class is such a rarity that it is almost comporable to being in the upper-class 100 years ago. And the criteria for being poor and thereby "not virtuous" have been so expanded that many who had traditionally been middle class are now at best "the working poor."
Over the past 28 years (except for the 8 under Clinton) our government has inflicted an economically amoral way of life upon our nation. The virtue of wealth as they see it, which should be gained at any cost regardless of what it takes from our nation and regardless of how it enriches other nations, has driven the vast majority of widget-manufacturers to seek cheap labor elsewhere. At the same time, the elected officials, usually republicans, have repeated like a mantra: tax cuts, tax cuts, less government, less government, more guns, no abortion, no family planning, war, war, no immigrants, no head-start for kids in poverty, less government, eavesdropping on Americans (the Patriot Act, Orwell at his best!), etc.
The drive for virtuous wealth has made American businesses more myopic than ever and today despite still so many brilliant ideas that are spawned in America, our industrial infrastructure, with the ability to create jobs for Americans and to refortify the disappearing middle class, is so weakened after these 28 years that again it is Asia, not just China, which will lead the next economic revolution. The republicans under the guise of Reagan's revolution have weakened our nation in every possible way for their own personal gain. We are an economically amoral nation.
A perfect example is the lack of federal response to Katerina. This was because the Bush White House had no privately-owned, politcally-reliable company that could move fast enough to get into New Orleans and clean things up. There had been no time for funneling billions in rescue efforts to crony-companies because no one expected the hurricane to be so bad. Because the government and its ability to respond to crises had been so stripped of any resources it might need, FEMA, run by an incompetent with no prior experience in any such organization (a Party man), just sat (an in some cases flew) and waited for the waters to recede. This is the nation that is ours today and 11 weeks of Obama hasn't changed this.
That natural disaster showed us why Reagan was wrong; why all of these Reagan-worshippers are not true patriots but selfish and even anti-American. They would rather guarantee their own wealth and comfort and America be damned! It is exactly this kind of love/hate that the Communists in the Soviet Union had for the Party and country--they loved the party because it made them wealthy but hated their country. This relationship led many of them to abandon their Party when it stopped enriching them and then their country, the USSR, collapsed.
America's refusal, let's say, the Republican refusal, from Reagan onward to take responsibility for its citizenry is treacherous. If in a wealth beach-front neighborhood, homes are damaged by hurricane seas, the Army of Engineers, using tax-payer money, will rebuild the beaches to not only return the lost value to the wealthy but even increase the value of that property. What is New Orleans today? Why is it still so abandoned and bleak? Because those people, the sufferers, are not wealthy and therefore, they are not virtuous.
We the People...
As Americans, we should all be ashamed of ourselves. We have not been true to those who lost their lives on the beaches of Normandy in 1944. Those boys did not leap into cold and violent seas to charge machine-gun nests for what we have become today. The boys whose lives have been lost in all of the wars, except for those who fought for the CSA (Confederate States of America) did not die or kill for this loss of economic morality.
Resetting our moral compass will not be easy and a lot of people who are now realizing that the last 28 years of our nation's history have been the single most wrong period of our development might just become sore loser's and do something foolish.
I say, beware of the the losers; beware of Dick Cheney; beware of anyone who says Ronald Reagan was a great president. These people don't have America's true interests at heart.
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Reagan is Dead
I really want to know what is wrong with trying to make our nation a better, safer and healthier place in which to raise families? I really want to know why so many people, and they are usually people who are doing financially "ok" (unless they are dumb and white and from the South), think it is wrong to want to make our nation truly better?
America used to have limitless resources. America used to lead the world in pretty much everything. We were usually on the right side when fighting a war outside of our national borders. For long periods we have tolerated policies that were not in any society right ones; that were not in the bible right ones, that were morally very, very suspect (slavery, hangings, no justice for blacks, segregation, anti-immigrant laws, corruption, etc.); yet, we have always somehow righted the clock's mechanism and time would go ticking onward, taking us from the past and present and into an ever brighter future.
However, I can honestly say that after Ronald Reagan came into Washington, despite his mild-mannered way of whispering sweet-nothings into our living-rooms about an America that conjured up visions of Capra-esque Anytown, USA, America's lost vision of herself, thanks to a drawn-out and lost war in Vietnam and a run on the Constitution by Nixon, was restored. Sadly, however, that vision was more like the one that D.W. Griffith silently laid out before aghast audiences in "The Birth of a Nation" in 1915.
My genuine dislike for Ronald Reagan stems not from the fact that he did do some good by bringing the Soviets to the table (although, most of Reagan apologists know nothing about the man Mikhail Gorbachev and had Reagan not had Gorbachev those troops cuts would never have occured); but, from the fact that Ronald Reagan finished the conversation that Richard Nixon began with the silent majority--and, he gave them the right to be really, really noisy.
And, with that boisterousness, came school-yard bullying of anyone and all not in agreement with those who fell in awe of Reagan's masterfully painted vision of small town USA: a place where whites were the kings and the upidy blacks knew their place; where taxes were minimal and charity was supposed to cover all of the gaping holes in a social safety net (charity is good but when it is THE system, it will keep the givers always economically and socially above the takers); where women were supposed to be at home and pregnant and where "girls were girls and men were men"; in a society where even the "old LaSalle ran great."
Much of what Reagan painted for us, in a very Seurat meets Rockwell way, sounds really nice; but, in that same fantasy, I am walking in from church to the smell of baking bisuits in the kitchen, the electric knife is slicing off pieces of roast beef and my Uncle Albert is sitting in a haze of smoke reading the Sunday Press. My grandmother is wiping her hands on her apron, my dad takes his chair and my grandfather offers up a cranky greeting to the five kids that have just invaded his house for another Sunday dinner.
In other words, the lovely scene that Reagan gave the US, and to which his followers still cling today is of an America that a) is no more; and, b) an America that never was. America has been a place of bigorty and greed and close-mindedness and hatred but at the same time, the principles inherent to our national experiment have always forced someone, an American, to challenge those with hatred and greed and bigorty and eventually, goodness has always won. The Reagan freaks hang onto that America that did not right itself and still honors bigotry, deception and even theft of our common resources.
The Reagan cult, not unlike personality cults in other nations of historical relevance, is so against any kind of government support for the expansion of the American dream to all corners and walks and races of life, that they have sought (and continue to seek) the complete bankruptcy of our nation.
They make up enemies in every corner of the globe; talk about how dangerous it is to travel outside of the US (I recently heard a hard-core republican say that it was too dangerous to travel to Rome because of all the terrorists!!); if any money is spent by the government on anything other than tax cuts or military then they go crazy and start shouting about socialism; they would rather see a city with the cultural richness of New Orleans wither away than support it rebirth (probably because most of those who would have received help were again, "from the other side of the tracks in their Reaganesque world-view"); despite their so-called fiscal conversvatism, they advocate the accumulation of massive societal debt so as to enrich those who resemble themselves and to build bigger armies and more secure gated communities; and, they advocate extreme lassez-faire economics which has led us to the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression.
In their small town, "we are always on the right side of the moral issue", they can justify the invasion and occupation even of other nations. The consequences of Iraq, the lies by their president, the abuse of the Constitution and the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent people including soon to be 5,000 American soldiers, on our economy will be felt for generations; and, then today, when a president comes to town, a man who is truly leading our nation like it has not been led since the time of the Roosevelt cousins, they can only pull out their tired and worn out visions of Reagan's anti-America.
We are a better nation than the one that Ronald Reagan gave them. We do not hate those who don't look like us. We don't hate foreigners or immigrants; we don't believe in Church and State mixing; we believe that everyone should be allowed to be who they want to be, with whom they want to be; we believe that in any market based economy NOT EVERYONE can be wealthy so society MUST provide a safety net for a substantail minority who will end up below the poverty line.
In Bedford Falls, big business lost and the little man won. The bastardized, flag-whipping ways of Reagan's followers are anachronistic. They too have become irrelevant and so now, so soon will their politics.
America used to have limitless resources. America used to lead the world in pretty much everything. We were usually on the right side when fighting a war outside of our national borders. For long periods we have tolerated policies that were not in any society right ones; that were not in the bible right ones, that were morally very, very suspect (slavery, hangings, no justice for blacks, segregation, anti-immigrant laws, corruption, etc.); yet, we have always somehow righted the clock's mechanism and time would go ticking onward, taking us from the past and present and into an ever brighter future.
However, I can honestly say that after Ronald Reagan came into Washington, despite his mild-mannered way of whispering sweet-nothings into our living-rooms about an America that conjured up visions of Capra-esque Anytown, USA, America's lost vision of herself, thanks to a drawn-out and lost war in Vietnam and a run on the Constitution by Nixon, was restored. Sadly, however, that vision was more like the one that D.W. Griffith silently laid out before aghast audiences in "The Birth of a Nation" in 1915.
My genuine dislike for Ronald Reagan stems not from the fact that he did do some good by bringing the Soviets to the table (although, most of Reagan apologists know nothing about the man Mikhail Gorbachev and had Reagan not had Gorbachev those troops cuts would never have occured); but, from the fact that Ronald Reagan finished the conversation that Richard Nixon began with the silent majority--and, he gave them the right to be really, really noisy.
And, with that boisterousness, came school-yard bullying of anyone and all not in agreement with those who fell in awe of Reagan's masterfully painted vision of small town USA: a place where whites were the kings and the upidy blacks knew their place; where taxes were minimal and charity was supposed to cover all of the gaping holes in a social safety net (charity is good but when it is THE system, it will keep the givers always economically and socially above the takers); where women were supposed to be at home and pregnant and where "girls were girls and men were men"; in a society where even the "old LaSalle ran great."
Much of what Reagan painted for us, in a very Seurat meets Rockwell way, sounds really nice; but, in that same fantasy, I am walking in from church to the smell of baking bisuits in the kitchen, the electric knife is slicing off pieces of roast beef and my Uncle Albert is sitting in a haze of smoke reading the Sunday Press. My grandmother is wiping her hands on her apron, my dad takes his chair and my grandfather offers up a cranky greeting to the five kids that have just invaded his house for another Sunday dinner.
In other words, the lovely scene that Reagan gave the US, and to which his followers still cling today is of an America that a) is no more; and, b) an America that never was. America has been a place of bigorty and greed and close-mindedness and hatred but at the same time, the principles inherent to our national experiment have always forced someone, an American, to challenge those with hatred and greed and bigorty and eventually, goodness has always won. The Reagan freaks hang onto that America that did not right itself and still honors bigotry, deception and even theft of our common resources.
The Reagan cult, not unlike personality cults in other nations of historical relevance, is so against any kind of government support for the expansion of the American dream to all corners and walks and races of life, that they have sought (and continue to seek) the complete bankruptcy of our nation.
They make up enemies in every corner of the globe; talk about how dangerous it is to travel outside of the US (I recently heard a hard-core republican say that it was too dangerous to travel to Rome because of all the terrorists!!); if any money is spent by the government on anything other than tax cuts or military then they go crazy and start shouting about socialism; they would rather see a city with the cultural richness of New Orleans wither away than support it rebirth (probably because most of those who would have received help were again, "from the other side of the tracks in their Reaganesque world-view"); despite their so-called fiscal conversvatism, they advocate the accumulation of massive societal debt so as to enrich those who resemble themselves and to build bigger armies and more secure gated communities; and, they advocate extreme lassez-faire economics which has led us to the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression.
In their small town, "we are always on the right side of the moral issue", they can justify the invasion and occupation even of other nations. The consequences of Iraq, the lies by their president, the abuse of the Constitution and the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent people including soon to be 5,000 American soldiers, on our economy will be felt for generations; and, then today, when a president comes to town, a man who is truly leading our nation like it has not been led since the time of the Roosevelt cousins, they can only pull out their tired and worn out visions of Reagan's anti-America.
We are a better nation than the one that Ronald Reagan gave them. We do not hate those who don't look like us. We don't hate foreigners or immigrants; we don't believe in Church and State mixing; we believe that everyone should be allowed to be who they want to be, with whom they want to be; we believe that in any market based economy NOT EVERYONE can be wealthy so society MUST provide a safety net for a substantail minority who will end up below the poverty line.
In Bedford Falls, big business lost and the little man won. The bastardized, flag-whipping ways of Reagan's followers are anachronistic. They too have become irrelevant and so now, so soon will their politics.
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