If the truth is actually now an option open for consideration in the public arena, activists on both sides of the political divide recently revealed the real problem as being not left to right on wedge issues or along racial or geographic lines, but instead the result of a completely corrupted economic paradigm as exposed in the recent GameStop controversy. Hedge-fund parasites and private-equity pirates inhabiting Wall Street, along with the corporate oligarchs, have owned the agenda and the offices of the politicians promoting exclusively the aggressive upward redistribution of wealth for four decades.
For forty years it has been about nothing but the extraction and accumulation of mountains of unearned investment wealth for the economic aristocracy. Ten percent of the population receive almost 90% of this unearned investment income, much of it resulting from the systematic devaluation of the American worker. Your 401(k) is not even on the radar. The propagandists incite many to scream “socialism” when Bernie points out that three—yes, three individuals—have more income than the bottom half of this country’s population. Please, with an open mind empty of tribal allegiances, wrap your head around that reality for a minute.
The middle class and American Dream have been destroyed not only through outsourcing and technology, but also through intentionally neglecting to fund monitoring and enforcement at the southern border, allowing a brown wave of cheap labor across to achieve the GOP objective of destroying the unions, representing over 30% of the workforce in 1981, now 5%. The hypocrisy of a faction of the Republican Party now demonizing the same brown folks who helped achieve their objective of aggressively devaluing labor is staggering. Imagine agriculture in Idaho today without Hispanic labor.
In the endless tug-of-war between labor and capital, capital prevailed, convincingly, but at what costs? A country that produced and delivered the requisite materials for global conflict across oceans and continents on time, and put boots on the moon, could not muster the logistical competence to deliver and administer a vaccine during the pandemic. But man-oh-man, can we manufacture billionaires!
From Business Insider: “As it turns out, it is red states that are overwhelmingly the Welfare Queen States. Yes, that’s right. Red States—the ones governed by folks who think government is too big and spending needs to be cut—are a net drain on the economy, taking in more federal spending than they pay out in federal taxes. They talk a good game, but stick Blue States with the bill.”
Idaho is one of the less dependent of the red states, receiving $1.21 in return from the feds for every $1 in revenue contributed to the collective. As a taxpayer, I am fine with that, and want our precious public lands to remain public, not the private preserves of the oligarchs. The foundation on which this great country was built is agricultural. With a global population projected to be 10 billion by 2050, requiring a 60% increase in food production, Idaho is critical to meeting that demand. I’m just glad I’ll be dead by then!
Rupert Murdoch, Peter Navarro and the oligarchs on the right attempted to exploit the election of Donald Trump and a Republican Senate to convert our constitutional democracy into a fascist dictatorship, an even more efficient system for the upward redistribution of wealth than the parasitic, crony capitalism of the past four decades. As accomplished propagandists, they also manipulated the xenophobic inclinations of many on the right, and exploited associated fears to perpetuate a profit-privatized, risk-socialized economic paradigm emphasizing tax avoidance for the economic aristocracy… $750 in taxes annually for a real estate billionaire?!
Don’t take my word for it. Google “rutger bregman davos 2019” for the most comprehensive, four-minute video clip providing the truth regarding both the problem and the solution, and listen very closely.
For forty years, working Americans have been played for complete fools by the oligarchs and the political class they have owned, Citizen United codifying this corruption of democratic principles and political processes by money. “Trickle-down” is simply a less menacing euphemism for “fascism,” the primary characteristic being the merging of state and business leadership. It has failed miserably, for everyone except the 1%. Time to try something else. The propagandists on the right will again scream “socialism,” but over 70% of Americans believe it is time the economic aristocracy pays their fair share.
And in conclusion, beating a cop almost to death with an American flag on a pole IS NOT patriotism.
William F. Hughes
Hailey, Idaho