The Republican plan for America, all along, was Banana Republic.
A nation of poorly educated renters and workers, ruled by their betters — the wealthy five percent who own everything worthwhile, control all the capital, rule over the government, dictate laws in their own favor, stack the courts with their own judges, and send out the police and army to enforce those laws.
The Republican plan for America is the Five Percent Solution — move all money and power into higher, tighter, whiter, righter hands.
What Grover Norquist and the GOP really want to drown in the bathtub is a free people. They need renters, they need peons, they need blind believers, they need economic slaves.
They are succeeding in their quest.
Peak Oil is upon us. Cheap energy is now an oxymoron. We will never pump more oil than we do right now, and the price of everything touched or served by oil will rise from here on — yet every economy, company, and living human being on Earth wants to grow, every coming year, from now on. It won’t happen because it cannot happen.
Yet, at the very moment in history when the American people need to pull all together to redefine and reprioritize as a nation, need to move from planetary policeman to an energy independent nation that sees to its own people before its global empire, these Republicans have Americans deeply divided.
They use immigration as a bogeyman while they reduce every working American to the status of immigrants.
They use faith-based social services to break government services — and when those government services are thoroughly broken they will stop funding faith-based services.
They starve and constrict the public school system to break it, driving people toward vouchers for religious schools — and when that public school system is thoroughly broken, they will stop funding religious schools.
They use Christianism to break Christianity, turning it into a State religion for control of the restless poor, just as Emperor Constantine used it in 325 AD to control the restive masses and hold on to a failed and fading Empire.
They use corporate deregulation and self-regulation to rape the environment, despoiling the very air we breathe and the water we drink and the food we eat for the further profit of a few. That air, water, and soil will belong to your grandchildren, and we allow it to be permanently poisoned for the sake of one corporation’s profits in one fiscal year. That fiscal year matters more than our grandchild’s health and happiness?
And we, the people, are to pay for it all, as with the Savings and Loan scandal, as with the Vietnam War, as with the Iraq War, as with the next war, and the next.
Making off with government pensions, corporate pensions and Social Security by bankrupting corporations, local governments and the Federal government itself is the Republican plan.
Keep moving moolah to the top five percent of the population, the five percent who already own over half the assets and capital of this nation. Go forth to tell the public to live in fear, tell the public they are being attacked from without and within, tell them outright lies, but just keep moving that moolah to the top five percent.
The Five Percent Solution is upon us, yet we sleep, eat, and work, and think it cannot happen here. We march to the nearest Diebold voting machine now and then to cast our sacred vote into the whirlwind, never to be counted or to count again.
We cannot bring ourselves to believe that they are after our freedoms and funds and future — and after us. Not us. Not we, the people.
They’re just a political party. They’re not gangsters, thugs and thieves. Surely they do not mean us any real harm. Surely it cannot happen here. This isn’t Argentina.
Yet.
Excellent diary, and highly recommended.
As the Democrats grope towards a platform, they would do well to realize that clean, renewable, affordable, decentralized alternative energy sources positively reinforce the empowerment of the people, just as an oil based economy has reinforced plutocracy and militarism.
Is it any wonder that the preferred alternative power sources of the administration are things like nuclear power and conversion of coal? It’s more of the same centralization of power, both political and energetic, with just a tad skimmed off in each transaction to keep the system in place.
I just bought my 12-year old son Addicted to War.
http://www.addictedtowar.com/
I tell him the government wants to harvest him when he turns 18. They want him to die in the sand somewhere to increase their profit and power.
He says he isn’t going, and none of his friends have any intention of doing that, either. “George Bush is going to jail,” he says. “Not me.”
I bought my 18 year old “College in Canada for American Students.” Told him that a handsome, personable lad like him could surely find a Canadian woman – or man – to marry.
Precisely. Every element of the Republican platform is intended to further this goal. The whole pro-life movement, for example, is based around a desire for larger families and couples having children earlier. Which means less access to education, and more pressure to get a low-paying dead-end job now rather than waiting and improving yourself to qualify for a better job. The endless foreign wars are intended to provide that quick, dead-end employment. The tax cuts are intended to create the illusion of prosperity while destroying the basis for that prosperity.
As Knoxville says, they’re all about centralization and concentration of power at a time when every indicator says we need more decentralization and distribution of power. It’s a time of change, and we need flexibility, not doctrinal rigidity.
In fact, it is US policy. It would not be pragmatic for politicians of either party to oppose this any more than other policies, and with regards to this particular one, the politicians of both parties are either in the 5 per cent or within easy reach compared to most of their devotees, so opposing it would not be in their own best interests, either.
You do not get into Congress without many millions of donated, private dollars for a big media campaign.
The money comes from wealthy investors, corporate investors, lobbyists, and highly partisan PAC’s. All of them let their wishes be known before, during and after their contribution hitting your campaign coffer.
If you want to be reelected, you better dance with the one who brung ya, and not with the unwashed multitudes.
Since corporations became ‘people’ with individual human rights, they have become Giant People. Giant Wealthy People, whose vote counts for way more than a mortal American.
Congress is of the corporation, by the corporation, and for the corporation.
Congress has made itself into a hollow facade of what the Founding Fathers intended it to be. It has made itself irrelevant especially in foreign policy and the forging of international treaties.
We mortals pay taxes, but are not fairly represented or served.
You have written an excellent summation of my take on our government – any ideas on what to do to change it?
A Constitutional amendment defining a corporation as a fictional legal entity for the purpose of limiting financial liabilities to its investors, AND NOT A GENUINE ENTITY WITH ALL THE RIGHTS AND PRIVILEGES OF LIVING PERSONS such as free speech, or any other right accorded to citizens or human beings.
The amendment states clearly that donating money to political causes is not in any way to be considered free speech. Only written, typed, painted, spoken, sung, or choreographed movement by an individual human being, living or dead, may be defined as protected free speech. Donating money to political causes is not free speech.
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A Constitutional amendment that provides for PUBLIC FINANCING ONLY of all Federal elections for the House, Senate, Vice President and President. A pool of money not to exceed one-percent of the gross income tax revenue from the year preceding the election year shall be equally divided among all offices, except that the Executive Branch race shall receive ten times the amount of each Congressional race.
Qualifying for Federal candidacy shall consist entirely of the populist hurdle of obtaining one million independently verified signatures on a candidacy petition. False or compensated signatures are subject to criminal prosecution and severe penalty, and to disqualification of the candidate.
The amendment specifies that all Federal elections shall be public and banking holidays, and that all voting be on paper ballots only, and that the counting of votes shall be performed in a public space by citizens chosen by random lottery one week before Election Day.
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A Constitutional amendment recognizing that a free and fair press is as necessary to the functioning of our democracy as the three branches of Federal government. For this reason, no media corporation or individual investor therein, using the public airwaves, may own or operate more than one-fifth of the print, broadcast or other news media in any definable market.
Airtime for political advocacy must be balanced by airtime for opposing views, for the purpose of presenting the entire spectrum of opinion and information to the public at all times.
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This will put Congress back to work for we, the people, and bring us clean elections, and an informed electorate. Only humans can get involved in politics, and only humans who can win the support of an informed electorate can get to the hustings.
I am currently reading Gangs of America: The Rise of Corporate Power and the Disabling of Democracy by Ted Nace which explains how we got here.
The chapter on Fighting Back is very slim. The final chapter is titled “Intelligent, Amoral, Evolving.” Haven’t read it yet, but sounds rather chilling.
Your amendments are really wonderful. Thank you for taking the time to respond. I would love to see them become the Second Bill of Rights.
But, how do we get these amendments proposed and through the amendment process with a government of the corporation, by the corporation, and for the corporation?
If we have morphed into a corporate-state (with ever-growing totalitarian qualities), how do we get it to change?
Medical treatment as a basic human right, not a commercial product
Right to Housing, ditto
Abolition of the Minimum Wage in favor of a Living Wage (tied directly to congressional salaries)
Equal protection under the law. (I know it is there already, but maybe if it is there twice the idea will get through that equal means regardless of sexual preference or orientation)
Cessation of Aggression and Disarmament
The constitution will serve as basic law, as opposed to a purely historical document, and will at no time be utilized for restroom hygiene purposes by any public servant, which reminds me
Public officials of all branches will be public servants, meaning they will serve the people, and not corporations.
Gladly! Those are excellent principles to govern by.
both parties agree on the war in iraq, they just disagree on how (bombing & sanctions vs bombing & occupation)
Same thing with the war on the working class. Clinton wanted to export their jobs, and cut their welfare. Bush wants to create a permanent under-class of guest-workers, and cut social security, medicare, etc.
If this was a real democracy, things would look a lot different around here.
Excellent rant.
which tampopo mentioned above.
I also high recommend Gangs of America for a better understanding of how “personhood” for corporate entities has damaged our democracy.
Besides being available at your local indy bookstore, the author believes so strongly in democracy that he has made the book available as a free pdf download.
Note: Link above is not the pdf link.
Thanks for a great diary, Antifa. I do think focusing on corporate actions is essential to correcting this fascist trend of our government, of, by, and for corporations.
Here’s the link to the PDF download.
http://www.gangsofamerica.com/read.html
This is required reading for every citizen.