| For those of us trying to hang in and do what's right, things are beginning to feel a little shaky here at home. While the corporate/government interlocutors scheme to steady that "invisible hand" over their coffers, the raging malcontents are strategizing to take back America - getting "illegals" out of the country, poor people "out of their pockets," and Obama out of the White House. Some are vowing 2nd Amendment assistance as needed.
The millions mired in debt and hopelessness are finding they have few friends - 53% of a recent survey blamed borrowers for their plight. Payday predators hawking two week loans at 390% interest, and slick brokers duping the poor into skipping the fine print and signing the dotted line get a pass. When the financial institutions abuse their freedom, they get rescued from their free-fall by taxpayers and the victims they swindled take the rap.
1.2 million people just lost their extended unemployment benefits, and the number is projected to grow several hundred thousand a week. There are 6 applicants for every available job, and criminalizing poverty is on the rise. Cities are cracking down on sharing food with the indigent, and many have laws against "lying, sitting or loitering on the streets." Limbaugh's recent quip to hungry children: "There's always the neighborhood dumpster" is straight out of Dickens.
For years, undocumented workers have grown the wallets of the wealthy. Their nightly swim across the Rio Grande brought down wages for American workers and built fortunes on Wall Street. These "wetbacks" who risk their lives to feed their starving families and whose kids are fighting and dying in our wars are now targeted enemies.
It's undeniable that cheap labor has eroded decades of progress for American workers - their dreams crumbed before them - but stoking a xenophobic frenzy by pitting victims
of economic policies, directed by NAFTA, GATT and the World Bank, against each other is a dark and cynical enterprise. We need to look behind the curtain where modern day robber barons work their alchemy.
The militant wing of the "fix America movement" is widespread and growing. The Southern Poverty Law Center report shows militia groups grew 300% the first year of Obama's presidency. They're now organizing on Facebook, My Space, Twitter etc. - all fueling fires of insurrection.
Oath Keepers, the group said to be the hub of the anti-Obama movement, was founded a year ago by Yale-educated lawyer and ex Ron Paul aid, Stewart Rhodes. He and others at the helm are reportedly "savvy and smart." The core members are uniformed men and women who recruit military buddies and stash weapons for a showdown when Obama declares martial law - which they are convinced he will do.
Well, here we are, another year older and oh so lost, mad, and scared!
We're a fractured nation in need of honest introspection. Have we, as was recently charged, "stopped being citizens and started being consumers?" Have we abandoned in our hearts many of the ideals our country so proudly proclaims? Are we really committed to the common good? Do we really believe in "liberty and justice for all?" Or, are we coming to think this is passe pap being kept alive by what Gingrich calls "Obama's secular-socialist machine?"
Surely, we must know, somewhere deep inside, that much going on in our country is both morally indefensible and practically unsustainable. That we have the highest inequality of wealth in the industrialized world and the highest in our nation's history should surely give us pause. We the people are accountable after all.
We'd better love democracy more than we hate each other - if not, the consequences are unthinkable.
Happy Birthday, America. |
