It’s election season and the rhetoric is flying fast and furious. Most of it is just a lot of noise with real issues taking a back seat to slogans, lies and innuendo. Politics as usual, right? But we are living in unusual times, so it is our duty as citizens to cut through all the noise and at least attempt to discern what’s really happening and how it will affect us. And then we must go to the polls or fill out our mail-in ballots and do everything we can to get this country on track. But first, we need to see the tracks and where they lead.
For nearly two decades now, we have suffered severe fractures in our civil discourse and those fractures have grown steadily worse. So much so that we have come to a point where we have candidates for major offices who advocate taking up arms against the government if things don’t go the way they want. I’m talking about Sharron Angle in Nevada. This is a woman who believes that fluoride is a Communist plot, who wants to abolish the Department of Education, privatize Social Security and get rid of any social safety nets we have in place. Her supporters vociferously defend her while lining up to sign up for the Social Security and Medicare benefits that she wants to abolish, while the children of Nevada receive the worst educations in all of the fifty states, putting them on a lifelong road to nowhere. Then there’s Richard Iott, Republican candidate for Ohio’s 9th congressional seat. For fun and a bonding experience with his son, he dresses up like a Nazi SS officer and re-enacts WWII scenarios. He claims it’s just a historical interest in the second World War but you’ve got to ask yourself: Why the SS? He couldn’t have re-enacted Allied activities? There’s Carl Paladino, running for governor of the great state of New York. Carl likes to send out racist emails depicting the President of the United States of America and the First Lady as a pimp and his ho. He actually circulated a video of a woman having sexual congress with a horse and shrugs it off as the result of his being in the construction trade, so what’s the big deal? Meg Whitman, running for governor of California, never even bothered to register to vote until 2002 and now she thinks she’s qualified to run a state. Her television ads are flat out lies regarding Jerry Brown. I moved to California when Brown was governor and I know how it was. The state had a surplus, it was well run and people liked Brown enough to vote him in for two terms. Whitman has made a big political stink about illegals and then we found out that she had an illegal working for her – and she knew the woman wasn’t legal – for nine years. So Meg turns around and tries to blame Jerry Brown when it all came out on the news. Whitman tries to make voters think that she’ll be able to do something about the ridiculous mess we have in Sacramento by telling people she’ll propose that if the budget isn’t passed on time, those lawmakers won’t get paid. Gee, sounds great. But it’s just a PROPOSAL. In other words: empty words. If you want action, there’s Proposition 25 on the ballot, which provides for a simple majority to pass a budget vs. a 2/3 vote and if the budget isn’t passed on time, the legislators will permanently forfeit salary and reimbursement for expenses for every day until the budget is passed. And by the way, Whitman DIDN’T propose that proposition. Then there’s Christine O’Donnell, who though she seems like a nice enough woman, doesn’t have a clue about what’s going on in the world or any idea of how to be effective except to tell people they shouldn’t masturbate, that China has inserted functioning human brains into mice and that she isn’t a witch. We have a Supreme Court that made it possible for foreign corporations to insert money into our electoral process. No matter which side of the political spectrum you’re on, I think it’s safe to say none of us want Dubai or China or any other country, friend or foe, to have a say in who runs our government.
There are people in this country who don’t believe that separation of church and state was a founding principle. That concept is intrinsic in the First Amendment of our Constitution where it states Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof… There are people who don’t “believe in” global warming as if it were a ghost or some nebulous idea. They choose to ignore the preponderance of scientific data in favor of a tiny percentage of scientists who tow the Right Wing line that climate change isn’t a threat nor is it caused by human activity. There are people who think that humans and dinosaurs walked the earth at the same time and they think that science and God are diametrically opposed, although I’ll bet a lot of them wouldn’t know the meaning of the word diametrically.
Here’s what I think. I think we’re in trouble. I think the educational system in this country has failed us to such a degree that people are no longer able to think and to assimilate information. I think it’s all been planned by those who would return us to a feudal system. People like the Koch brothers, who have more money than God and they don’t want to share a penny of it with the rabble. The rabble in this case would be you and me. They pour money into dumbing down the culture so people will rant and rave against their own best interests. Why on earth would people demonstrate FOR health insurance companies that have raised their premiums, refused to insure them, withheld treatments because they were too expensive and then, when they were needed the most in the case of catastrophic illness, drop those who have faithfully paid those inflated premiums over the years? Why would people get indignant when the President of the United States tells BP Oil that it will have to pay for the mess it made in our waters and on our land? Why? Because education has been cut in favor of tax cuts for the rich, so people are easily fooled. Because our jobs have been shipped overseas to workers who work for pennies on the dollar of what an American worker USED to earn and now the unemployed are afraid for their futures. They’ve lost their homes to predatory lenders while the rich have profited from their losses. So they’re scared, which makes them easy to manipulate. Because they feel powerless, it’s a simple task to incite their hatreds: of gays, of people with brown skin, of people who practice the wrong religion, of a black president.
Think about it. The rich have theirs. And they have yours as well and they’re taking more of it every day. They have the best medical care money can buy and they’ve got plenty of money. They don’t care if you drop dead because there are plenty where you came from. They get on their high horses and preach against abortion but they also want to take away birth control. Think about it. If they do that, there will always be people to exploit even if the average life expectancy goes down. Because people will continue to have sex and continue to procreate, providing a never-ending stream of workers (perhaps serfs?) to collect the trash and work in the hotels and restaurants and provide the services that only the rich will be able to afford. Think Charles Dickens and A Christmas Carol and you’ll start to get the picture. If you’re not aware of it, that story was a political statement for the times, as was The Jungle by Upton Sinclair a political statement regarding the plight of a family of Lithuanian immigrants working in the Chicago meat packing industry at the turn of the last century. When you hear candidates on the Right talking about how they’d like to return to the way it used to be, take some time to actually find out how it used to be. It wasn’t so great. In fact, it was downright terrible for the working class in this country.
There is a movement afoot – a very covert movement cloaked as a populist uprising – to turn back the clock in this country and return us to the days of the robber barons. They would have you believe that Socialism and Communism are synonymous. But they aren’t. I’m not advocating a full out Socialist Republic. I firmly believe that Capitalism is an engine that drives innovation and is what has made this country great. But I also believe – no, I KNOW – that we can have a healthy capitalist economy AND a social conscience. The two are not mutually exclusive. We can have an educational system that actually educates, a health care system that actually makes people healthy, regulatory systems that rein in the abuses that brought us to the brink of financial disaster and achieve a booming economy at the same time. But we all have to contribute and if you’re one of the fortunate few who are wealthy, you can afford to contribute a puny three percent more of anything you earn over $250,000. It won’t shut down factories. It won’t send anyone to the poor house and it won’t cause the collapse of American society. It will, however, put an infusion of money into our badly damaged economy and help to drag us out of the mess that resulted from gross fiscal irresponsibility. As for adding to the deficit, remember that old saw: You’ve got to spend money to make money. Why was it okay to run a deficit during the Bush years – Cheney sneered at everyone that deficits were actually good – but now, when we need so badly to spend in order to dig ourselves out of this hole, all of a sudden it’s verboten?
When did we forget that our government was set up to be BY, FOR and OF the PEOPLE and not corporations? Instead of complaining about the government, take the reins and remember that your ballot counts. Stop listening to the poison spewed by the lackeys of those whose only motive is the profit motive and think about what is best for the average everyday American: Security in our homes, in our ability to find meaningful work, to put something aside for our children, to know that if we get sick we won’t lose everything, that when we get old we won’t be dumpster diving for our dinners. We ARE our brother’s keeper and on a societal level, that means we must all pitch in for the good of the whole. Because when the whole is healthy, so is the one.
I have heard we can’t afford to change over to a green economy. We can’t afford to invest in infrastructure. We can’t afford to make certain our citizens have universal access to health care. We can’t afford to insure a dignified old age. We can’t afford to raise taxes on the rich. The list of things we can’t afford is long when one talks to the Right.
My list is short. We can’t afford to do nothing. We can’t afford to go back to the same policies that brought us to where we are now.
We must go forward. So when you cast your ballot, ask yourself what kind of America do you want to live in? Where fear, vitriol and hatred holds sway or one where we all work together to make the greatest experiment the world has ever seen grow better and stronger every day? It’s our country. It’s our choice. It’s your vote. Use it well and use it wisely.
I’m just saying…
