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CounterPunch
January
30, 2003
The Last Hurrah
of Religious Imperialism
Class Warfare
Against the Poor
By DR. GERRY LOWER
The Bush administration has done everything possible
to enfranchise their constituency, the already-too-rich, with
tax cuts to make them even richer and raise them even higher
above those who must work for a living. It has also done everything
possible to disenfranchise the working poor by providing them
little relief and little hope for a return to fairness and equality
in American life. In other words, the Bush administration has
been the primary source of the policy decisions which have fueled
notions of class warfare in America.
Yet, when those who still favor the values
of honesty and fairness speak out against the Bush administration
pograms against the working class, Bush comes back with claims
of "class warfare," along with reminders that the rich
invest their hard earned money to exploit natural resources,
create goods and services, and provide jobs for the people. It
follows that rich investors ought be revered and not criticized.
Implicit in this stance is an utter lack
of empathy in the notion that the working poor are unjustified
in their grievances, a bunch of whiners, much like Osama bin
Laden who, we are told by the Bush administration, is just envious
of American capitalism and our "freedom" to exploit
and capitalize. Given Bush administration policies which nourish
class warfare, and given the absolutist, infallible JudeoRoman
world view which the Bush administration imposes upon the people,
it is simply characteristic of the right wing to defend itself
by chastising the victims of its policies, as if the poor have
no one to blame for their situation but themselves.
This is simply the JudeoRoman tradition
at its worst, re-emergent now in America. St. Bernard, while
gazing upon the glories of the Church, once commented, "Thus,
wealth is drawn up by ropes of wealth, thus money bringeth money
... O vanity of vanities, yet no more vain than insane. The Church
is resplendent in her walls, beggarly in her poor. She clothes
her stones in gold, and leaves her sons naked."
Does "class warfare" exist?
Well, of course is does. Indeed, class warfare would be what
much of the past two millennia of western cultural evolution
has been all about. It is, indeed, the story of western cultural
evolution that power was originally placed in the hands of the
despotic few under the values of JudeoRoman religion, only to
be ultimately and legitimately placed in the hands of the people
under the values of Democracy. That this evolutionary outcome
in America has been compromised out of sight by the values of
JudeoRoman religion and crony capitalism only points to the class
warfare that has existed in America from the start, and to the
fact that America currently occuppies an ideological position
precisely 180 degrees removed from the position which birthed
it.
In terms of the proper placement of power
in America, it remains a conflict between the Revolutionaries
and the pro-British capitalistic Tories, with the Tories now
in control and only doing their thing by exploiting nature and
dominating the people in the name of enriching and empowering
themselves and their despotic agenda. Jefferson did, in fact,
warn the people in 1816 about the emerging corporate aristocracy
which was already stealing power from the people. He summed it
up with the comment that "Merchants have no country. The
mere spot they stand on does not constitute so strong an attachment
as that from which they draw their gains." American democracy
has, in fact, been highjacked by the rich.
Arnold Toynbee has pointed out in his
"History of the World" that one common denominator
beneath cultural revolutions is the nature of the gap between
the "haves" and "have nots." When this gap
becomes too large, revolution narrows it again. Today that gap
in America (built as it was on capitalistic notions of fairness
and equality) has become the largest in the history of the human
race. We have people in America worth many billions of dollars
and we still cannot find a way to get a living income and a little
respect to working people, we still cannot find a way to get
educational and medical needs to the people that make America
work. We stand alone among the western democracies in achieving
this despotic result.
Is there a conspiracy among the rich
to feed off the poor? Well, of course not. There is no need for
a conspiracy when large numbers of rich people think similarly
and support leadership in no one's interest but their own. By
now, the Republican notion of "supply side" and "trickle-down"
economics is well ingrained in America's rich, to the extent
that they think it sacred ground. It is not so much a group conspiracy
but more a cultural conspiracy, launched millennia ago by those
living in a despotic Biblical world, those who made despotic
political philosophy into a religious way of life, now imposed
upon the world once again by the Bush administration.
It is, indeed, a cultural thing, the
people being coersively manipulated by the Bush administration
according to a despotic Biblical world view which the people
had no part in authoring and certainly have no obligaton to follow.
That being the case, it is clear that this last hurrah of religious
imperialism will have to play itself out before the people will
have another opportunity to define their own reality.
Human culture consists of the ideas,
words and actions we use to define and control ourselves and
the world we live in. If we are ever to eliminate the culture-driven
class warfare which has flared back up in America, it is back
to the values and principles of democracy that we must return.
We must rethink these values on purely human terms, disallowing
influence from the JudeoRoman and crony capitalist values and
viewpoints which have momentarily stifled democracy in America.
Class warfare is a given in post World
War II America, now perpetrated against working mothers as well
as working fathers, nevermind the detrimental impact on America's
families. As citizens of the modern world's first democracy,
it is given that our only real duty is to maintain and implement
the values we purport to hold. It's called growing up, a mature
acceptance of our responsibilities as thoughtful, caring citizens.
Dr. Gerry Lower
lives in Keystone, South Dakota. He can be reached at: tisland@enetis.net
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