We have suffered no meteor strike which has reduced the surface of our country to that of the moon. Nor are we fighting off foreign invaders intent on reducing us to slavery. Yet our urban landscape is being reduced to rubble and our people wander the streets aimlessly and pointlessly looking for income. This isn't Pearl Harbor, this is Valley Forge, a long slow, cold, twilight campaign intent upon reducing the armies of workers through poverty, loss and despair.
Were these invaders lead by a pot bellied despot or lectern pounding dictator it would be far easier to focus our anger and national resolve. This is a national campaign, this is war! Whether you realize it and understand it, this is a conflict for the soul of this nation. No different than that conflict fought in 1861, it is a battle to determine who will run this country and who shall be its slaves.
These issues are not new, they are old. The European pioneers who flooded America's prairies did so to escape the land barons, the feudal potentates and the prospect of perpetual grinding poverty. They chose rural sod houses over city stone tenements. This is a continuing perpetual battle between capital and labor this is the anti New Deal, the same old raw deal. Free trade was sold to the public as an opening up of nations when it is a realignment of nations. America aligning itself with sweat shop nations and a third world wage scale. Aligned with China, Mexico, Indonesia and Vietnam. The American worker was told by Republican and Democrat alike that Free Trade was good for us. Then we were told that it was a done deal, get used to it and get over it.
We live now in a Machiavellian nightmare, where funny things happen during elections, not once, but repeatedly. In 2000, a lawful recount was stopped by order of a Federal Court. In 2004 irregularities in Ohio, the public begins to get antsy. The public demands a clear winner, to prove the integrity of the system. Out of the mist a stealth candidate emerges, a quiet guy, good speaker, without much of a record to gauge his political standing. He faces off against a grumpy, angry three time Republican loser who openly avows that he wishes to continue the policies of the Bush regime.
Thus we were given the choice of the new and improved laundry detergent over the bargain brand. The choice should have been so simple, but as the campaign reached the summer conventions the bargain brand was still in the running. What did the Madison Avenue king makers do? How could they put new and improved over the top? They gave America another reason to dislike the bargain brand, they chose as his running mate a dolt and a bubble head.
The media falls in line to praise the dolt, she's very popular in Alaska. Then the dolt can't answer simple questions like "what newspapers do you like to read? The importance of creating a phony narrative is critical to the illusion of really having a choice. Without the good cop, the bad cop is ineffective. To create a hundred faux issues to obscure the actual policies. Birth Certificate, Muslim, Bill Ayres, The Guiding Light, General Hospital, the Hulk versus Andre the Giant. Red meat to feed the partisans, to whet their appetites for the main event. A preliminary for the staged Wrestlemaina still to come.
What would John McCain do about health care? Health insurance exchanges for the poor and tort reform! What would John McCain do about energy? Nuclear power and drill baby drill! What would John McCain do about the economy? He'd freeze spending and cut social programs! What would John McCain do about the phony war on terror? He'd send 100,000 troops to Afghanistan and increase the size of the army and he would continue the Bush domestic terror campaign.
So America bought the new and improved soap but received... more of the same old soap. America was sold a ringer and a fraud. After two terms of compassionate conservatism America gets a compassionate conservative Democrat who cares about the people. The populace rejoices in a public spectacle on the Mall while the ringer wears his suit of humbleness and compassion. We have our clear winner! See the system really works for us! Democracy à ¼ber alles!
The ringer picks a Federal Reserve protegee as Treasury Secretary, a career CIA operative as defense Secretary and Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State. What exactly are Mrs. Clinton's credentials for that job? A Goldwater conservative, college leader of the young Republicans who grew up to become a lawyer and sit on the board of Wal-Mart. These people are constructs, supermarket cardboard cut outs. They are whatever they say they are. As the policies never change, as the workers grow poorer and weaker, as their cities collapse and their schools decline.
Huey Long once proposed a tax scheme where the highest bracket for the rich was 100 percent where the poor received a subsidy. Where health care and colleges were free to the public. Long was assassinated, funny thing, in this country when you advocate causes for the people you better keep your life insurance paid up. Long's tactics have left his legacy scared with the names like demagogue and dictator. Ronald Reagan didn't play by the rules either and he is remembered as a statesman and great leader. Just more of the narrative, a once upon a time fairytale, the old show biz.
Under Reagan, taxes for the wealthy declined dramatically and the deficit exploded. Under George W. Bush, taxes for the wealthy declined dramatically and the deficit exploded! What's the ringers position? I'm going to keep the Bush tax cuts in place for the middle class, you know couples who earn up to five thousand dollars per week! You know, the middle class! But by god he's going to draw a line in the sand over America's wealthiest 2 percent! Then in a carefully scripted stage play. The ringer cries out "they got me!" and falls to the floor of the stage just as he did in the health care debate. Those dastardly Republicans have me over a barrel, I must give in to their demands of tax cuts for everyone, darn it all, shucks!
Then the ringer wearing his coat of responsibility, the coat of many odors, announces that we must rein in the budget and tighten our belt. Short term memory loss perhaps? Sixty days after the grand give away to the rich, we must cut Pell grants and home heating subsidies to the poor? This thirty days after saying America need 100,000 new teachers to remain competitive? A year after tens of thousands of school teachers lost their jobs the ringer says we need new ones?
The ringer host committee's in the White House on jobs and competitiveness led by the CEO's of the Fortune 500.
"The American people know from a four-year record that today there is only one entrance to the White House--by the front door. Since March 4, 1933, there has been only one pass-key to the White House. I have carried that key in my pocket. It is there tonight. So long as I am President, it will remain in my pocket." Franklin Delano Roosevelt
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