History is the story of small groups of people appropriating for themselves the lions share of power, wealth, health, and security -- with moments of great beauty where the will of the people says "enough" and small progress is made and sometimes endures and sometimes evolves into greater good for a greater number.
Over the last 25 years progress has been defeated and reversed -- not beaten back to feudal times, but enough so that in an age where these things do not have to be, 45 million Americans have no health insurance, around 15% to 19% of us live under the very meager definition of poverty, productivity nearly doubled yet for 80% of us our share of the growing value we create remained stagnant or declined while CEO salaries zoomed from 50 times the company median wage to (for a while) over 500 times.
Then GWB comes along with his long list of "crimes" and "accomplishments" -- a narrative that includes insider trading while at Harken, awol from military service, collapse of shareholder value at every firm he joined, drunk driving and purported cocaine use, and profit (his only "win") from sale of his share of the Texas Rangers, a profit that amounts to an appropriation from small landowners (who lost their property to eminent domain) and taxpayers (who subsidized building the stadium that Bush and cronies owned).
From this GWB managed to become Governer of Texas, his only qualifying governmental experience prior to his pResidency, a state he managed to make a haven for corporate robber-barons, creating the brownest state in the union, which amounts a socializing of enviromental costs while the increased profits remain private. Where does Texas rank now in terms of quality of life -- in measures of health care, environmental and occupational safety, education, wages, etc.? Bush was a disaster for the many while a friend to the few, something he did for Texas and is doing to the entirety of the U.S. now.
Turn to the 2000 campaign, the "compassionate conservative" who would improve the "moral atmosphere" of the White House. It took Tom Delay's brownshirts in Miami and fixer James Baker's spin and backroom arm twisting to stop the vote count that would have given the election to Al Gore, the VP who along with Clinton reigned over one of the stronger economic runs this century -- all this leading, of course, to the infamous day our already weakened democracy died, December 12, 2000, when the SCOTUS in one of the most repugnant and hypocritical decisions ever stopped the count and handed Bush the Presidency.
I'll leave it there (we all know the disaster that has followed since). But, just as Republinazi's used to say about Clinton when they lynched him, what do we tell our children? What kind of example of justice and morality and equality and liberty have we seen unfold? What will these little brain-sponges soak up when witnessing this "magic formula" for success?
Recall these words from George Kennan, the father of post-WWII(US) foriegn policy (this from PPS 23, 1948):
The US has about 50% of the world’s wealth but only 6.3% of its population. In this situation we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity without positive detriment to our national security. To do so, we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and day-dreaming, and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives.
We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford the luxury of altruism and world benefaction. We should cease talks about such vague and unreal objectives as human rights and raising of living standards and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better.
Unhampered by ideals and slogans, the USG has (successfully) endeavored to secure and sustain the great imbalance, an imbalance that primarily benefits the owning class. We don't invade Panama, escort a leader out of Haiti at gunpoint, mine the harbors of Nicaragua, lie ourselves into an illegal invasion of Iraq, or 50 other such tragedies (see Blum's
Crushing Hope) because anyone perceives them, in themselves, to be a geniune threat. It's all about crushing the example of alternate models. The capitalist says Greed is Good in one breath and whispers apathy is better in the next -- all the more easy to exploit others when they have no hope for a better future!
Surely each of us, when we stare at our face in the morning mirror, tell ourselves, well, our government means well, we try only to advance freedom and liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We comfort ourselves with this lie while those without morals and with the appetites of monsters pursue their personal gain.
Again, look at Zinn...meet the new boss, same as the old boss...same as it ever was...
The illusion of freedom in America will continue as long as it's profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way, and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theatre.
--Frank Zappa, 1977
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