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By Timothy V. Gatto
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
liberalpro.blogspot.com
April 14, 2010
I’ve heard from many people since I wrote my last two articles which were “We are all Accountable” and “The U.S. is at a Precipice”. I was astonished at the feedback that I received, not only from “liberal/progressives” but from those that support the “tea-party movement”. In thinking about the things I have been told by others, I’m convinced that Americans of all political persuasions are seeing beyond what the media reports and what our government wants us to believe. It’s extremely difficult to compare the rhetoric of President Obama and most members of Congress and the reality in today’s America.
I could write multiple books by describing what has been said and comparing it to what has been done. From George H.W. Bush and his “Shining city on a hill” and his “New World Order”, to Obama and his “Healthcare for All”, what we see is not what we get. The last nail in our coffin to date is a health care bill that has been gutted by corporate interests that seem to have all the control they need to influence the people we have elected to work for “the people”. The people were nowhere in sight when this final bill rammed down the throats of liberals and conservatives alike. On the progressive side there is no universal coverage or even a viable public option. On the conservative side, government interference into the health care of families and taxes on “The Cadillac” health care plans that unions have managed to acquire for their members. This, the Democrats contend, is just the beginning. From what I have seen done in the name of trying to insure all Americans, I see a health care bill that only enriches those that offer health care insurance, the huge pharmaceutical industries and the health care insurers.
Still, in my opinion, healthcare is only a side issue to distract us from what is really important in this nation. Our right to live our lives without governmental interference, our right to send e-mails and talk on the telephone without worrying about “warrantless electronic eavesdropping”, our free speech under the First Amendment and the right to bear arms under the Second, “preventive detention”, the scrapping of “Posse Comitatus”, are all under attack.
The issues of lesbian and gay marriage, immigration, abortion and the like are in reality issues that can and should be dealt with by the individual States. These are the same issues thrown out year after year to divide us and to turn us away from the things that many Americans are truly concerned with. Some of these issues are the out-sourcing of American jobs overseas, our dwindling manufacturing base, massive bail-outs to predatory financial institutions and our endless wars overseas and our ballooning defense budget that has now topped the spending we did at the height of the “Cold War”. With the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan and the 700+ military bases we have overseas along with the funding of 14 different defense spy agencies we will spend about 1.4 Trillion dollars this year on our defense budget. We account for 47% of the entire world’s defense spending while Russia and China spend about 6% each. What does the average American receive from all of this spending on defense? The answer is nothing.
There are other concerns many of us have like the median income of the Middle Class falling by $2,000.00 each year. Heads of household’s working two part-time jobs with no benefits to replace the full-time jobs that they lost. Young people saddled with debt in order to obtain a degree or shut out of the educational system altogether.
Many average Americans don’t understand how this all came about, but many Americans are coming to the realization that the people that are supposedly representing us in government are not placing their constituents first. Our political system (The Democrats and Republicans) relies on corporate campaign contributions to keep their seats in government. I have always maintained that campaign finance reform is “The reform that enables any type of real reform”. As long as it is the corporate world that finances the campaigns of our elected officials, then it will be the corporations that they will be responsible to.
No matter how you slice it, we have entered in a kind of “Corporacracy” with the corporations in tandem with our elected officials that run this government. There is another word for “Corporatism”, a definition that was given by none other than Benito Mussolini; he called it “Fascism”. Another definition of fascism is when the elite of a society run the government. This is what we have in America today. No more, and certainly no less.
As I said earlier, I could write volumes on the things that are bothering the American people. From the left to the right, from the liberal to the conservative; our rights, our financial well-being and most of all our future is what is of concern to all of us. There are now more issues that should pull us together than issues that should drive us apart. Selling this nation’s future away to the highest bidder is something that no sane American wants. They fill our heads with myths like the myth of “American Exceptionalism”, as if there is a divine presence that makes America somehow different than all the empires before. That we can continue to live beyond our means and watch the government squander away our wealth and treasure and have no repercussions’ from this behavior. That because we are somehow “exceptional” we can ignore basic economics, and continually expect other nations to accept fiat money and U.S. Treasury notes for all of our imports. Sooner or later this “ride” we all seem to be on will end. We can’t continue to consume more than we produce, or spend more than we have.
There is really only one way out of this predicament we all find ourselves in, and that is to take back the power we have given to our elected representatives. The answer is a revolution. This revolution can be achieved by force, or it can be achieved through peaceful means. I can say with much certainty that most of us in America would rather see a peaceful revolution. Only a fool would want a violent revolution and only a fool could say with any certainty what kind of government would surface after the fighting was over.
America needs to return to basic respect of the law as it was written before the Patriot Act, the Military Commissions Act and the Re-Vamped Fisa Act. To do this people must start to tear away from the box in the living room and start to read. Not Sarah Palins’s book, but books like “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man” that shows how the IMF and World Bank really work to suck the life out of developing countries. We can’t afford to sit in front of the “boob tube” and swallow the major media’s government view of the world.
I am a liberal democratic socialist. I know that that is anathema to the people in the Tea Party and those on the right. Yet I’m going to put a link in this article from “Truthout” that makes my case against American Capitalism. You would be wise to read the nine simple statements in this article to get a real handle on where we are compared to the rest of the world. It’s here: Nine Myths about Socialism in the US By Bill Quigley. I believe it will open your eyes.
I could go on. I’d like to end this by saying that the ”Tea Partiers” were not the first people to see our government going to the corporate and financial moneymen. We on the left have been decrying this for years. I guess it took a Black Democrat to make the majority of brainwashed Republicans understand that the government is dismantling the Constitution step by step. Good for you, at least you woke up. One other thing, it has often been said that “The enemy of my enemy is my friend”. Just remember the Republicans are in collusion with the Democrats. They have a lock on the political life in America and won’t let anyone who doesn’t fit their template in.
Sinclair Lewis said “When fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in a flag and carrying a cross”. It looks like there are many out there that believe that that would be just the ticket. John Burke also said “Patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels”. Think about that.
timgatto@hotmail.com Read Tim’s Political Book “Complicity to Contempt” and his new fiction Novel “Kimchee Days or Stone Cold Warriors”.
see
We Are All Accountable By Timothy V. Gatto
The U.S. is at a Precipice By Timothy V. Gatto
Nine Myths about Socialism in the US By Bill Quigley
Noam Chomsky: Ridiculing the tea party shenanigans is a serious error
Three Cheers for the Tea Party! by Sean Fenley
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Ariel — woman stepping into their power as evolution and balance ? it wont work . the idea is for men and woman to both renounce worldy power and to love the human race . the power differencial in the Lanaian sense is the problem . Patriarchy is an alliance . ..RoN and Nancy Reagan . How many single men live in suburbs? the alliance of true Patriarchy ( male-female matrix) is what feeds the American Empire and its quest for global and Eurasian Hegemony . I agree with you about the problem , but not the solution .
do we really want another Maggie Thatcher ? we already have Nancy Pelosi, who is about as evil as her male counter part was George W. Bush , and her contemprary , Barak Obama . Both are clearly war criminals . And congress gave them the purse strings to fund these wars .
The issue is not gender or race , it never was . that is a dodge. the issue is humility , and truth . You dont have to wait until woman come into power . they are in power . they are firing weapons right along with the boys . The solution is to put down the guns , and start serving the human race , no matter who you are.
the power with a peoples tribunal is we end up with another reighn of terror and Robbesphere.
i recommend that people change from within first. all of us . we ned to look at the criminal under our own hat first. a wise man once said ” he who is without sin , cast the first stone ”.
this does not deny that the American Empire is evil . it sure is . i like Ghandi’s approach : non cooperation .
good one Tim . Oscar Wilde said it the best ”patriotism is the virtue of the vicious ”.
We are all in this together couldn’t be more true, but we is even more inclusive than just Tea Party corporatists or progressives. We is everyone in the world, and it includes all the people living in other countries who are subject to the war plans of the U.S. military. Yes, Americans need to take back the country from the wealthiest and most powerful individuals. Yes, it can be done, but they’re prepared for revolution, so don’t waste your time even thinking about a revolution; it will serve their purpose and justify even further crackdowns. Why, these architects of U.S. global hegemony have been engineering color revolutions to create civil unrest in other countries to gain even more control. What we really need is evolution and women stepping into their power to balance out what the boys are up to. I’ve been realizing that men who lie are little better than boys who lie as long as it works to get away with whatever they want to do and escape punishment. So really, we’ve got little boys running the world today, lying right and left to everyone. Vicious little boys, the kind of boys who pull the wings off flies and shoot birds for fun. I can see clearly the way to turn this around. It’s going to take holding these men, and they’re almost 100% men, accountable for their actions. And that’s going to take some kind of people’s tribunal because the existing judicial structure only serves the interests of those in power. I’m working on an article on how we can evolve through a new kind of flower power, redefining it, and I’ll address the steps that can be taken to return power to the people.
Thanks for your commentary, Ariel. Look forward to reading your next piece.
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Glad you got feedback, you did have a good point worthy of applause (excepting the part about anyone aligning with the teabirthers.
If there ever was a crazed irrational cult, an enemy of sanity and reality, red-meat-munching gunmongering spongiformed brains, they are it!
No equating this crew with the present admin as if it’s truly two sides of the same coin. It’s bogus & bewildered vs. truly evil and ugly. which would you rather have in office, McBomb/Impalin?? Remember they almost won! (Thanks to this very same confederate sickness we see this day, hence their hostility, it’s a race thing).
But, regarding the above piece, and all due respect, none of this is relevant to the atrocity we’re all “responsible” for, and which we are as we speak about to be complicit in ramping up by $billions yet again.
We have NO RIGHT to follow the depraved press and their quest for cold-blooded ratings and advertizing sales, their hypocrisy of abetting the manufacture of a bogus, manufactured ‘movement’ of irrational ‘death-panel’ button-pushing liars while they themselves were each and all individually complicit in the Iraq war and the senseless war-criminal ‘surge’ in Afghanistan.
There is no sense to any of this ‘news’, it’s just planted political porn. Where was all this implanted activism when Botch begat his criminal $3 trillion war?
Where were they when he cut taxes on the hedge-funder finance-brats, investment-banksters and ceo corporatists, piling another $trillion on the debt these people now kvetch about when the debt and the collapse was entirely their own doing?
Where were they when Pelosi & Reid truly were evil, criminally complicit by taking impeachment off the table??
We are slaves of the very media you decry if we buy into this bogus racist birther BS and their obese gluttonous manufactured false ‘anger’ and the press’ insistence that they have anything to do with activism, energy, influence or roots (grass or otherwise), or even liberty, or freedom or rights.
Gatto hits the nail on the head … What we have is velvet glove fascism …
The PTB are using the Tea Party as another tactic of fear for the left. The PTB have already usurped our rights reading our emails, our financial data, listening into our phone conversations … They can even enter our houses while we are gone and not tell us. Anybody they interrogate or ask for records can’t tell us we are being investigated or be charged themselves …
The PTB are using the Tea Party as another tactic of fear for the left. They will use this fear so that we demand a police state be invoked. They want us to ask to be shackled, they want it to be our idea … That way it will be a Democratic decision we all made in our best interest!
Yep, all very good points.
What is PTB? Pass the Buck?
Listen, these right wingers are EXACTLY the ones who worship corporatism. Glen Beck is their deranged spriitual leader, his rhetoric is bizarre, irrational, disingenuous, and they love it. But one thing stands out abouve all, Glen Beck is an evangelical CORPORATIST!.
To him, corporations are people, with every right to make a buck. Their entire stance remains the Reagun trickle-down nonesense. Don’t imagine for a minute these people are coming around just because they suddenly protest government solely because a black man is in office (and these people are convinced Obomba, of all people, is a socialist!!)
It was the raygun revolution that co-opted and politicized the televangelist cultists of the bible-belt and the midwest and manufactured a bogus popular movement that’s been muscling us down this gamblind-addicted bloodthirsty amerigoon exceptionalist path.
And who cares whether they listen to your phonecalls? Anyone can watch anything now. It’s arrogant and paranoid to think they care.
Besides they may learn something! This is not McCarthyism, nor fascism (rule by the rich is an aristocracy not fascism, this is NOT A POLICE STATE! People watch too much Prison Planet).
Once again, to parrot this poop that we live under fascism is a huge afront to those who really did live under fascism at our very own behest. Remember our man in Chile, Pinochet? If this was a police state, Tom Feely would be in estadio chile having his fiingers broken, and DS would have long ago disappeared.
Don’t buy into prison planet, it’s militia mania. The problem is indeed greed and corporatism, which is our nationalistic , dominionist right to abuse for personal and corporate profit at the expense of everyone and everything else, and which is exactly what the Tea Party believes in (as G-d is their witness, any complaints about it and obomba is all of a sudden Stalin, and out comes the confederate flag).
Ultimately what this is all about is the Civil War, the right to own slaves or whatever ‘liberty’ they desire in order to make money.
It was Botche’s war on terror which begat the ‘patriot act’, and it’s precisely these tea-birthers who voted for and religiously devoted themselves to Botch’s lies. Remember??
It is a myth to imagine these birthers are genuine, truthful, patriotic or legitimate or even have a logical point in any way. They are precisely to blame for the debt, the tax breaks for the rich, the wars and the waste of all of our lives since raygun.
These people need an intervention, they need to be forced to face their fraud and hypocrisy for aligning with Botch’s born-again BS, accessory to mass murder. If they were legitimate they’d be complaining about Botch, yet not a word about Cheney’s warcrimes!
They ALL voted for McBomb Impalin. You fool yourself to imagine there’s some sort of Alex Jones paranoid third party of militia maniacs emerging there, it’s just a proven lying lynch mob of activated republicans entirely backed by FOX PR and republicon money.
Anyone suckered into thinking its genuine is a following some blind belief that anything that looks like activism is a progressive or fighting for your rights.
We are NOT in this together, we are fighting the same crazy cult of reaganists we were back when they were hell-bent on incinerating the world in the name of the end times, until which time the wealth was supposed to ‘trickle down’ while militarily making the world ‘safe’ for our addictive, gluttonous greed.
(Sorry to say, the stats are in: the TPP are virtually ALL republicans, all white, mostly overweight, all greedy, all gunmongers, and all ugly and ALL voted for Botch, TWICE, and then for McBomb, and now they WORSHIP IMPALIN STILL!
They are each therefore ALL personally responsible for the economic predicament and the wars and blindly believing in this BS only worse than ever, thus violating their own best interest– Bad batch of baby batter, welcome to the demented reagun era that will never go away).
The USA, as it turns out, never deserved America the Beautiful. Just look what Americans turned into.
PTB may mean Powers That Be.
A peaceful revolution is difficult if the other side is trying to make it violent.