Image by Jonathan Greenaway.
If one should find themselves lost in the wilderness and unsure of how they got there, they cannot rest on their laurels for deliverance, nor will brilliant rhetorical skills make any difference at all. Unlike in a midlife crisis, the only way forward is to forge a new path, which demands reflecting on where one went astray. Reassessing their values, correcting heretofore unknown errors and miscalculations, and by suffering, growing to find the grace acquired through hard-won modest-humility and struggling to assimilate newfound wisdom. The long journey of finding your way back home forever memorialized in epic poetry, and of which all patriots are now obliged to traverse for the sake of our progeny’s future.
How is it that America now ranks 125th in the world in literacy, falling behind Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kazakhstan? Considering that we once led the world in public education efforts, established tax-supported, tuition-free public schools, and by the 19th century had one of the highest literacy rates in the world. But now have devolved into being the least informed people in the developed world. What gives? Did our decadence occur naturally, or by design? Assuming the problem lies solely in pedagogical practices overlooks the root cause and driving forces, an approach championed by our elite’s many subservient and beneficiary acolyte mouthpieces in government and media.
It’s a long, convoluted story that our unlearned victims, of course, strategically fail to understand, which I’ll try and briefly relate. Starting by observing that: ‘they don’t have all these right-wing think-tanks just for show, ya’ know’, where they formulate their corporate agendas. Many progressive scholars and writers have a deep understanding of exactly what transpired but they’re only reaching the already converted—by corporate design,—while those in most need of understanding this story are living in a right-wing, propagandizing bubble of misinformation, misdirection and hate-mongering polarization. Which is also occurring on the left: for woe is Trump, a complete waste of time and energy that’s only hindering our collective growth. For he’s not the problem, only an inevitable symptom of our dysfunction—a diabolically lawless villain straight outta’ central casting.
Corporate elites in the ‘70s drew upon an economic plan initiated by the Powell Memo, which brought us trickle-down economics, neoliberalism, deindustrialization, tax evasion, economic disparity, gig economy, mass poverty, and present working-class unrest. That oddly now looks to an authoritarian billionaire president, preaching fake populism, and his wealthy cronies for salvation. Conmen and religious charlatans easily deceive and exploit the uneducated and naive: and therein lies the heart of the matter! In other words, ‘ya’ gotta keep ‘em dumb and in the dark to fleece them of $36 trillion and skyrocketing’, while promoting the fantasy that it’s God’s will, God Bless America!
Superb scholars and writers in progressive publications and media, regularly explain in thoughtfully wise, discerning detail, the flagrant deception, normalized malfeasance, degeneracy, and systemic incompetence to their readerships. But their outstanding works aren’t appreciated and heralded by mainstream corporate media outlets who examine the trees—devoted to corporate ratings and profits,—while intentionally failing to comprehend the forest, focused on combative rhetorical debate instead. Because Americans love competitive sports and are thereby trained to love divisive political theater too; which explains why independent journalism is essential to democracy. While corporate journalism, as designed, misguides, misinforms, and dominates the masses, ignoring the poverty, misery and struggle of the vast working poor, so one has to doubt all of their narratives.
Nearly a century ago the backlash to the blatant corruption, avarice, inequality and poverty of the Gilded Age—the wicked ways of power—and the Great Depression led to New Deal and Great Society progress of the working class, through union building, social programs, and corporate oversight and regulation, which turned America around 180 degrees, creating a government of, by, and for ‘we the people’. The oligarchs of the Gilded Age, the businessmen who’d benefited, and their stooge Rep politicians, then attacked New Deal policies and Dems who believed in FDR’s populist reformation of America. Their strategy soon evolved into demonizing Dems as “communists” in their fabricated ‘50s witch-hunt, which Nixon and Joe McCarthy used to indecently rise to infamous glory, shamelessly ruining many liberal’s lives prior to their karmic own. Sure, there were a few spies, but there always are, especially during wartime.
Segue: Nixon, in response to liberal opposition to his expansion of the Vietnam War into Laos and Cambodia, after deceitfully getting elected on a platform of ending it (sound familiar), initiated the insane war on drugs in order to criminalize and punish the young people who’d dissented and demonstrated against the fabricated war—LBJ said on tape that the Gulf of Tonkin attack was a ruse. Reagan later escalated the war on our partying youth which led to our having the highest incarceration rate in the world today—the land of the free, yea right! As Nancy Reagan starred in a ad saying “Just say no to drugs,” while hypocritically addicted to pain killers herself.
After the crazy right-wing paranoia of the Red Scare passed, as well as the ensuing ‘60s counterculture revolution—stymied by the war on drugs and J. E. Hoover’s maliciousness and racist brutality—corporate powers found themselves at their weakest point, alarming Lewis Powell, future S.C. Justice. So he designed and initiated an elite revolt that consolidated corporate forces, the Chamber of Commerce, the Republican party, etc., and over the course of the next 50 years, slowly reversed the New Deal and succeeding progress. Eventually nearly eliminating government oversight, regulations and taxes; and now their dominance is secured, owning nearly all the self-serving politicians—demonizing the others,—also the courts, and through their media, naive American minds too.
What began as oligarchs increasingly pulling covert strings from the shadows for the past 50 years—their unlimited bribery of politicians legalized by Citizens United—has evolved, and their corruption become so normalized that today’s broligarhs openly bribe and stand by a venal president at his inauguration, proud of their undemocratically accumulated wealth and the power they wield. ‘You can concentrate wealth and power into the hands of a select few (oligarchy), or you can practice democracy, but not both.’ For democracies are dedicated to ‘the common good’, not to maximizing corporate profits and allowing monopolies and oligopolies to form that economically dominate our economy, destabilize government and society, and systematically pillage the public, while stashing their ill-gotten gains in offshore tax havens.
It’s unconscionable for the wealthiest nation ever to have the highest child poverty and homelessness rates in the modern world, the highest general poverty, subsequent crime, and incarceration rates too. The billionaire tax evaders and cheats who bribe politicians into subsidizing them, enabling their irresponsible avarice, and thereby ignoring our accumulated problems and antiquated infrastructure, should all be ashamed of themselves, but are rather exceedingly proud. Meanwhile, these harsh realities that Americans broadly suffer, 75% living paycheck to paycheck, are virtually ignored by corporate media who strategically hype, sensationalize and exploit disaster, tragedy, drama, silly, relatively unimportant bullshit, and sow divisive polarization—divide and rule.
How our economy is systematically controlled by wealthy elites—regardless of which party’s in power—must include an understanding of the birth of the Federal Reserve Bank. Woodrow Wilson regretted signing the Federal Reserve Act into law and later conveyed regret over the concentration of power in the hands of a few individuals within the financial system. “I am a most unhappy man, I have unwittingly ruined my country,” he said. “A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men.” And that was the genesis of the corruption that led to the ruination of our long-fictitious democracy. It’s theorized that both Lincoln and Kennedy tried to assert government control over monetary policy and crossed the wrong men, the real, covert “deep state.” Adding to the mix of suspects, including the Mob and CIA, who’d previously collaborated in Cuba.
These few men at the Fed later instigated the market crash of ‘29, selling off their shares prior to, then enriched themselves by buying up much of the traumatized market for pennies on the dollar, facilitating and ensuring their enduring economic dominance. Akin to what recently occurred in insider trading when Donald Trump’s firm earned $415 million in a single day, while White House employees made billions, after Teflon Don recently pulled the plug on his tariff threat and markets rebounded. “He made $2.5 billion, and he made $900 million! That’s not bad!,” Trump bragged in the Oval Office, pointing to financial investor Charles Schwab and NASCAR team owner Roger Penske. Previous presidents hid the realities of wealth’s dominion over D.C. but Trump unscrupulously bares all, and clueless Reps couldn’t care less, as designed, while he runs the country like a Mob boss.
In recent history as poverty steadily increased, worsened, and became more widespread, the richer billionaires became, naturally; this is a devastatingly unsustainable, dystopian, neoliberal nightmare 50 years in the making. The present rhymes with past history, so we can easily appreciate, after the Gilded Age and Great Depression, why socialism looked so appealing to many, as too did fascism, because democracy had failed them—déjà vu. And we wonder why our kids are disoriented, misguided, isolated, demoralized, depressed and suicidal, as we rely on chemical antidotes instead of addressing the root social injustices, iniquity, and lies that form the basis and integrity of our ruling class.
Which demands that Dem politicians begin to get their shit together, arrange their priorities, and maybe by employing some humility, empathy and focusing concern on we the people—rather than on saving face, opposing Trump and getting re-elected,—can reverse the zeitgeist and reestablish our lost democracy. But must first assume accountability and prove themselves reliable to the general public—by speaking truthfully for a change—who increasingly can’t afford rent and the skyrocketing cost of living. Exacerbated by predatory private equity firms buying-up everything, as if at a fire sale, and exploiting suffering poor folks—who can’t afford to move-out—into paying exorbitant rents.
Through Dem politicians overcoming their misguided pride, shameless self-interest, lack of understanding and social responsibility, they should earnestly begin to establish government services to administer real “family values” programs—instead of fake Rep populism and self-exalted lip service. Such as universal healthcare, affordable housing, elder and childcare, livable wages, and the promotion and availability of healthy foods to everyone. In the process, replacing the obesity inducing, ultra-processed foods that cause chronic disease and illnesses which enrich ruthless price-gouging healthcare and pharmaceutical oligopolies.
We need to provide nutritional universal school lunches—so poor students aren’t shamed—and equal educational opportunities for all our kids by equally funding schools—creating an equal playing field and establishing true meritocratic practices—and prevent pedagogical dictates by sociopathic religious extremists and demagogues. Taxing the ultra-rich and wealthiest corporations to pay for it, rather than our continuing to subsidize their avaricious amorality, cruel inequality and shameless injustices. These are basic government functions that other civilized democracies focus on, unanimously support and deliver, that remove stress and anxiety from families which produces happiness, contentment, and thus actual national security, suffering few mass shooters, with kids fed, at ease, and ready to learn in school, without their phone’s distractions.
Then maybe we could even morally evolve to cease our habitual support and funding of fraudulently and/or needlessly instigated wars; a bloody racket that’s needlessly murdered millions of children, only ever benefited the heralded MIC which Ike unheededly warned us about in 1961, and hasn’t won a war since! Giving our youth some reasons to be proud of us for a change, instead of blaming us for fucking-up their world, being distracted by self-absorption and consumerism, ‘cause that’s what happened, folks! Misguided by unenlightened self-interest and corruption at the apathetic helm.
You can’t tell me that our reactionary corporate media hacks—whose purpose is to hold power and wealth accountable rather than uselessly analyzing Trump’s petty antics—don’t understand these things as they obediently act-out their roles in this Machiavellian charade of diversionary, oligarchic political theater that enthralls an ignorant, unwary, abused and traumatized public kept in the dark. Which is obviously the cause of the cluelessness pandemic at the heart of our societal ignorance, decadence and dysfunction. So just how do they sleep at night as we descend deeper into the darkness of Dante’s frigid hell.
Bill Maher’s description of his visit with Trump at the White House, a few weeks ago, revealed that Captain Chaos is always performing whenever he’s in front of a camera. Apparently he’s strategically acting like an unhinged maniac so that his opponents and enemies are fearful of what he’s capable of doing, per Nixon’s Madman Theory.” An 11-year-old spoiled brat who has the understanding of an infallibly unenlightened child.
While some Dems now believe it expedient to appease the right and find common ground, moving towards the center, doesn’t history warn against it, especially when dealing with racist and bigoted fascists? Considering that that’s what Clinton did in co-opting corporate Rep’s NAFTA and WTO agreements, and in doing so, joining Reps in betraying the working class, also lionizing Wall Street. Revisited after the ‘08 fiasco when Obama bailed out and protected criminal Bankers while the victims suffered the heartbreaking aftermath of millions losing their homes—the audacity of hope? Please.
And since Reps are so much better than Dems at uniformly controlling their deceptive and diversionary narratives, hyping culture wars, lies, and conspiracy theories, they’ve avoided blame for their corporate master’s plan to exploit cheap slave-labor in Asia, Mexico, etc., by offshoring 90,000 U.S. factories—creating huge trade deficits,—along with the consequences and mass suffering—and China’s not to blame.
Thereby, these crazy, right-wing extremists, who label sane progressives as “radicals,” have since successfully demonized Dems as being responsible for working class abandonment, disenfranchisement, impoverished, demoralized depression, opioid and substance abuse, along with related problems, instead of themselves who’re actually to blame, and shamelessly claim to be the new ‘working-class-hero party’. It’s total fucking lunacy!, after their opposing and obstructing, for 50 years, everything that Dems did and attempted to do for the working class. Many whom suffer historical amnesia and have voted against their own economic interests for the last half-century, duped by Reps who tactically inflame their emotions and incite hatred for liberals, as championed by Fox’s tabloid, propagandist journalism and the like.
So it’s evidently imperative that we now set the record straight, own-up to our own misguided failures, and hone a concerted message against corporate fascism and freedom of oligarchs to pursue unfettered capitalism—further disconnecting from any remaining obligations of citizenship, like taxes, oversight and regulations. As we must inform a clueless public about the diabolical Rep corporate agenda, deceit and lies, begun with Reaganomics and instigated by the Powell Memo, i.e., the trickle-down economics that plagues us still. To them, life’s no more than what’s obtainable in business transactions, having no deeper significance than shortsighted materialism, selfishness and wealth accumulation, damn the consequences and the poor,—the values and ideals of Mammon.
Dems prior lack of honor, courage and resolve only led to fascist Rep’s persistent reversal of democratic principles, in order to subsidize themselves with our tax-dollars while evading paying taxes themselves. Running-up deficits for 50 years to pay for it, and robbing our Treasury of $36 trillion more than what they annually pilfer—the largest heist in human history. Commonly the decline of empire is a phenomenon caused naturally by decadence, complacency and ignorance; though in our case, it was accompanied by a well-crafted, evolving, think-tanked plan hatched 50 years ago. Now fully realized without question by a foolish and unenlightened mainstream media focused on relative bullshit and knaves swallowing it whole, with an anarchical-philistine and megalomaniacal madman currently piloting our ship of state.
Which obliges Dems to now struggle to regain our lost democratic values and begin to fight for our sacred honor and beautiful country, ecologically desecrated by sanctimonious knaves and thieves, now in reckless overdrive. For in the end, what else has any comparative value other than our love for others which drives us boldly forward towards victory and the dawn of universal love and understanding. ‘Tis surely America’s and mankind’s destiny whose day approaches, so keep the faith, for time, and the arc of moral justice, are on our side, my friends.
