THE NATION'S DISCONTENT

February 25, 2011

Today our TV screens are full of the unrest in Wisonsin and elsewhere across the nation. One does not need to be a seer to understand the connection between these events and the causes of the Great Recession of 2008--unfettered greed, unregulated financial institutions, lack of government oversight, and Congressionalcomplicty. But today the perpetrators and guilty parties on Wall Street—and the super-wealthy elites--are still functioning in the same way and are doing fine--the market was up on Friday.

As Noam Chomsky puts it: "The population in the United States is angry, frustrated and full of fear and irrational hatreds. And the folks not far from you on Wall Street are just doing fine. They're the ones who created the current crisis. They're the ones who were called upon to deal with it. They're coming out stronger and richer than ever. But everything's fine - as long as the population is passive."


Yes the populance is apathetic and passive. The poor average "Joe and Jane" somehow continue to identify with this shadowy group of oligarchs. Perhaps they simply do not know who the perpetrators are. These passive citizens must be accosted thus. "No you fool. You are not one of the superwealthy! Why do you think that you are an elite? Because you and your wife both have full time jobs and perhaps both scramble (slave)at a second job and take regular overtime when you can get it--just to maintain the status quo? So perhaps you pull down enough income to buy a big car and a wide-screen TV (on time)and maybe send your eldest off to college? That does not put you in a class with these elite folks. They don't live here. You don’t see them in our town. They don’t buy food in our supermarkets, or appliances, or products in the local Sears, Walmarts or Targets. They are not part of our local economy. They do not spend money like we do. Wise up dummy!"

There is much discontent and too much passivity, alas caused by ignorance. The elites and superwealthy—the oligarchs—who caused our pain, they live on untouched by it. With their excessive wealth they control the story-line the media and the Congress---and with their wealth continue to garner more political power. They pursue their greedy, short-term goals with their wealth. But these self-serving motives do not serve the nation well and are not coincident with the aims of those who would make try to make this nation a better place to live a full life, to raise our children to aspire to the American dream.

But the brutal “solutions” the oligarchs and their paid minions propose do have an ulterior motive.

It’s clear what the Republicans are doing in Wisconsin and elsewhere. They are attempting to break the back of the unions, undermine laws which might restrain their efforts to maximize profits and, of course, to decrease their taxes. Their actions and motives are regressive. They attempt to move us backward--into the 19th century. They dig us deeper into the financial and political hole we find our selves in today.

In regard to the events in Wisconis: Just when we desperately need a better-educated workforce to compete globally—the Republicans want to fire teachers, crowd school classes, eliminate essential educational programs and literally gut the nation’s school systems. Their actions will not make us a stronger, wiser, more prosperous nation. But it is very likely to make the top 10% of wage earner the ones that now garner nearly two thirds of the wealth of this nation, richer and even more powerful leaving the bottom 90% of the population with only one-third of the nation’s output in wages to scramble over.

Get the picture?

Think about it!
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