by C. A. Jones
Not exactly a “founding father,” Thomas Paine is considered by many the “patron saint” of American patriotism. His lofty rhetoric was famously inspirational in its day, and still inspires. Beyond stirring the blood of revolutionary ardor, he rallied the fighting spirit of colonists horrified by the grotesque carnage of war. “These are the times that try men’s souls.” “The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country, but he that stands it now deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.”
By the time Paine was writing The Crisis, it was clear that a sustained ordeal lay before the revolutionaries, opposed not only by the crown but by Tories, “elitists” of the day, who were busy cashing in on the war by over-charging for goods and services. Paine believed that the chief measure of patriotism was willingness to sacrifice “in proportion to means.” “Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigues of supporting it” (1777). For those of means, that meant sacrifice in proportion to their wealth. “Patriotism” meant putting the collective good before private profit.
We’ve come a long way. The mantle of “patriot” has been assumed by our right wing. Republicans, buoyed by the “Tea Party,” stand behind flags and lapel pins, demanding freedom from taxes and promoting homeland security from the immigrants that fuel our economy. While calling themselves “patriots”, they spread lies to justify a collective philosophy of greed that brings riches to themselves as the nation wallows in daunting problems. While millions are without homes, jobs, healthcare, decent education for their children, the rich demand excuse from even the most trivial of patriotic sacrifice. “Freedom” to them means preventing the government from placing any restrictions upon their prerogatives to siphon resources up from the lower classes. Balancing the budget for this constituency means financing our endless welfare for the rich programs by cutting welfare for the poor and middle class.
The Republican plan, which ignores the needs of the poor, will deny them the resources necessary for a decent life for themselves and will lead to a rising tide of crime, or anarchy. This will be well-armed by they guns that these same Republicans champion the rabble’s right to amass. Meanwhile, the plan assures that our moneyed class will continue to accumulate staggering fortunes.
In the last fifteen years, and leading into the crash of 2007-08, the “financial services” sector has become our fastest-growing and largest industry. What exactly does this industry do to “earn” its enormous profits? This industry does not generate wealth. It’s not like Bill Gates or Steve Jobs, creating things that drive our economy. It produces essentially nothing. These “industrialists” redistribute wealth. While income (adjusted for inflation) over the last 30 years among the bottom half of wage earners has increased by about 11.5%...(that’s less than 0.5% per year), income among these financiers has skyrocketed. Recent stats for California are much more alarming. In any case, these people control vast sums of monetary assets. Individuals and groups within the industry from time to time devise investment instruments such as credit default swaps and co-lateralized debt obligations, which come down to little more than complicated insurance schemes. These people are essentially salesmen, selling portfolios of insurance to back up risky investments. And who stands behind these policies? The public. Our government. The tax payer. Our children and descendants. The public assumes the risk! These financiers agree among themselves to create assets, sell them to each other and naïve investors, including foreigners, generating huge commissions. Then they reward themselves with extravagant salaries and bonuses, fueled by stock options that don’t appear on profit and loss statements. This money, my friends, is all siphoned from the economy.
We chortle and call Robert Rizzo, City manager at Bell (California), a crook… He is minutia in the big picture. Our financial sector has been fleecing this country for decades in the same manner. Government regulatory agencies are supposed to protect us from this kind of thievery, but they have been emasculated---by deregulation of the eighties, by apathy during the boom times of the nineties, then in a conspiracy between government and industry during the bubble times of the last ten years.
But the problem goes far beyond one of neglect. We have one party---half of our government---operating in tandem with these thieves. And this is the essence of the Republican platform. The GOP opposes all efforts to prevent the financial services industry from “doing their thing.” Beyond that, in return for paltry investments into the political system (bribes), they insist that these crooks shouldn’t even have to pay taxes on their booty.
Do you think this is an exaggeration, or the problem is confined to the financial sector? Our entire economy is riddled with such schemes. For example, the endless drug ads that foul our airwaves every night are for drugs, most of which don’t work. “Even a glance at medical journals shows that once heralded studies keep falling by the wayside.” Pharmaceutical companies now have the enormous resource of the “human genome,” available for research. By taking an active agent and sort of scatter-shooting at the genome in a laboratory they can find positive results somewhere. Oh sometimes they may have to invent a disease, but hey, that works for us. If they can work some test results to show efficacy, then the government gives the manufacturer fast-track approval. Advertising produces demand for these expensive, new drugs. But when subsequent, control-based studies prove a drug to be ineffective, which they usually do, it takes two years longer to get it removed from the market than it took to get it approved in the first place! During these several years, the drug companies continue to pilfer money from our healthcare system, driving up health costs. We could save $200 Billion annually from expensive, ineffective drugs by spending $50 Million on manufacturing placebos in a variety of colors and shapes, which would work just as well. Government should protect us from such schemes but it has been put to sleep by politicians, party to the conspiracy.
The vitality of a nation, friends, lies in the partnership between informed citizens, willing to make an honest contribution to society (patriots) and good government. We now have a significant, controlling faction in the government which uses lies and deceit to get out its message. Through its propaganda arm, Fox News, the GOP leads a campaign of misinformation that sabotages our system. It renders effective political integration of the public impossible. It uses our ignorance, naiveté and anger to manipulate us. The Republicans have forsaken “the people” on behalf of the moneyed elite which fuels the propaganda campaign that keeps them in power. And the health of our society has gone into freefall.
They’ve taken over our judiciary (see Bush vs. Gore, Citizens United). The Republicans have scuttled our legislative process with filibuster. And now we have recently rewarded their treachery by returning them to legislative majority! Republicans used the political strength of unions as rationale for Citizens United. Now we see in Wisconsin that once in power (for two months), they will try to destroy the unions. Two months!
And who are “they?” The GOP’s constituency is an unlikely partnership between an angry middle class that can be mobilized by their clever propaganda and ironically, the moneyed elite that preys off of them. The GOP champions the very concepts which they attack: “family values,” “morality” (whatever that is). They mobilize their angry constituents with fear: “terrorism”, illegal aliens, homosexuals. They pander to us with promises to reduce our taxes while their moneyed elite cheat us blind, depriving us of the income and property that they have promised not to tax! Meanwhile, the rabble has been convinced by the propaganda that “liberals” are responsible for their plight, rather than their own “partners.”
Aside from sabotaging the system from within, the GOP uses a “scorched earth” policy obstructing all legislation proposed by Democrats. It doesn’t matter how sound the policy is, or even if (inconveniently) they used to champion it. The full force of the right-wing propaganda arm is thrown against the legislation, in total disregard for the benefaction of our country. Power is the objective of the Republicans, not effective, public policy.
The current GOP legislative target, “Obamacare,” is a perfect example. In 1993, the Clinton Administration tried to push through comprehensive healthcare reform. Republicans did all they could to derail that effort, in part by proposing two alternate bills. Senator John Chafee (R RI.) introduced the Health Equity and Access Reform Today Act, co-sponsored by such influential Republicans as Bob Dole, Richard Lugar, Chuck Grassley and Orrin Hatch. Republicans also proposed the Consumer Choice Health Security Act, supported by Jesse Helms and Trent Lott. Both plans included an “individual mandate,” as does Mitt Romney’s Massachusetts plan. Everyone needs healthcare eventually; the system won’t work if people are allowed to buy in after they contract significant illness. Neither of these bills went anywhere, of course, because the Republicans weren’t serious about the issue; they only wanted to de-rail the Clinton effort. But it tied individual mandate to Republican healthcare thinking.
As recently as June, 2009, Chuck Grassley told Fox News that Republicans favored individual mandate. After all, individual responsibility is a central theme of Republican sloganeering. President Obama, who first opposed this provision, was encouraged to endorse it to enlist bi-partisan support. But once the Democratic bill was on the table, Republicans saw this very issue as the handle to challenge it. It doesn’t matter that it’s rational policy, or even if it’s a bastion of Republican ideology. The CBO has calculated that Obamacare will save the government over $200 Billion over the next ten years. Isn’t that a Republicans priority? Well, no; Republican strategy is to block all legislation coming from Democrats. (When a Democrat does this it’s called “flip-flopping,” and that’s grounds for sending that Democratic offender to political oblivion.)
On the environmental front, the GOP has completely repudiated its heritage of environmental responsibility (Theodore Roosevelt, even Richard Nixon). They are the party of “No,” No to science, No to any kind of restrictions on industry, their wealthy benefactors.
Nature rewards collaboration, my friends. Generally, the waste products of every species provide nutrients that foster other life. Species that don’t co-operate end up extinct. Of some 50 million species on this planet, our greatest transgressor, by far, is man! Republicans tell us that “God” gave us this world to exploit, and that God will keep it healthy. Combine unspeakable arrogance with laughable stupidity and unlimited greed and we have the Republican formula for---disaster. Here again, with lies and clever catch-phrases, they combine greed from the industrial polluters with bitterness and despair of the lower classes who care not about posterity, to muster support.
One half century ago a charismatic president invoked the true challenge for a patriot: “Ask not what your country can do for you---ask instead what you can do for your country.” The nation stood in awe and approved. How far have we descended? The Republican Party panders to us for votes and money. They tell us we need give nothing---that being a good citizen means buying guns and resisting any drive to support your neighbor or your community. It manipulates us with fear and hatred---enemies in our midst: aliens, poor people, liberals! Then they hypocritically plant “fascist” labels on their opponents! Their objective is to keep us so ignorant that we will continue to vote for them…It’s sort of a national invocation of the “Stockholm Syndrome.”
Our next election cycle promises to be one of the most fascinating, if not pivotal in our history. Beyond the fate of the Obama Presidency, we will discover the fate of this circus: The Republican Party.
Throughout history a succession of nations have risen to the pinnacle of power and influence: China, Greece, Rome, Carthage, Spain, Netherlands, Britain… We are only the latest in the line-up. The longevity of these successive empires has grown shorter as the centuries have passed and the pace of civilization and technology has accelerated. There is a familiar course that leads empires to their demise. Arrogance, complacency, laziness, declining industry and the assumption of the inevitability of dominance lie its heart. The mantle is passed on to those people with enough industry and discipline to assume power. For the last 30 years our government has imposed its will by military might. As successive “rogue states” achieve nuclear power, our options dwindle. And as we allow each successive president to continue pouring mountains of resources into weapons instead of education, innovation and research, we doom ourselves to the dustbin of empire.
C. A. Jones is a Robbinsense staff writer
