We are now in the middle of the Democrats 100-hour agenda led by the new Democratic leadership in the House of Representatives. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said when new Congressional begins, Democrats will be focusing on key domestic issues promised in last year’s electoral campaigns: Medicare, the minimum wage, college education and energy policy.
Today, Democrats are putting forward specific steps to expand prosperity, to provide all Americans with the opportunity to succeed, to live a secure and comfortable life including good jobs here at home, affordable health care, a growing economy with stable prices, investments in new technologies, and fiscal responsibility in government.
However, she has yet to she mention anything about reversing the legalization of torture or restoring habeas corpus; nothing about reversing the Patriot Act, and nothing about averting war in Iran.
Even though a wide majority of people is in favor of impeaching the president, it was Nancy Pelosi who declared that impeachment was “off the table.” The reasoning is that Democratic leaders like Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Harry Reid, Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi are concerned they would be “endangering” any chances of winning the White House in 2008 with a move, like impeachment. The fear is that a move like would appear “radical” to swing voters.
The reality is that America’s political processes is so fundamentally corrupt that the only way we get new leaders in Congress are not because of their persuasive powers, lofty and encompassing vision or mastery of the details of governance, but who can out whore themselves to the wealthy individuals and corporations than their fellow lawmakers. And that’s the problem when the government stops being a government for the people but legislative guardians for the “institutionalized system” that are meant to keep the rich rich and the poor poor. The point is, if there isn’t any profit to be made, the rich and powerful will continue to confirm a current social structure and will staunchly resist any real effort to change it.
In the end, it will be the Democratic elites and Republican will stand together against any political or economic approach that aims to provide true opportunity and genuine dignity to all people. Using the evidence Len provided on the top executives from Corrections Corp of America who generously donated to Republican politicians, a closer look further demonstrate how they too have contributed generously to conservative Democrats. (Cite: #1 | #2 | #3 | #4 | #5)
Such a system of rank obscenity could only exist in a world that is motivated by greed, where profit margin out weighs human dignity. Those who claim “today’s working poor are doing better than any Third World country!” are hypocrites of the first order. They would send a drowning man a rope, but refuse to pull him to shore and later brag how the rope of hope is better than a rock of despair. Rather than raising the people to true dignity, they systematically eliminate competition, by institutionally minimizing true opportunity, and collectively control the flow on who is allowed into their special inner circle. All one has to do is compare the inclusion of racial and ethnic minorities in the political parties and national legislatures of the US. The fact remains the powerful use of the political right to take part in politics is stratified in a way that carefully corresponds to lines of social stratification such as gender, income, or education. Although we may see and hear them, the sad truth, they are a cog of the systematic inequalities in political participation. And their role only continues the vicious cycle where political and social inequalities reinforces each other.
So the conspiracy continues. And for capitalist elites it is not a conspiracy of action, but a conspiracy of silence – a conspiracy that is based primarily on nationality, color, culture and gender. It is this form of hypocrisy that continues to affect the character of a nation as it seeps its way into the hearts and minds of the individuals that make up the system and only to become ingrained in many. It is this deception that makes it impossible to “forget” the brutality, contempt and racism that many people of color have suffered.
What is more insidious, is how the extreme right wing have soften their linguistic approach to forward their concepts of the white, capitalist and Christian superiority that was once used to justify the lynching and burning of Black people, enslaving millions of Chinese laborers to build this nations transcontinental railroad, and forcing Native Americans and Mexicans off their lands. What is happening in Amerikkka is a perfect illustration of La Fontaine’s fable of the wolf picking a quarrel with the lamb solely for an excuse to devour him.
Over the years, the extreme right has had an irrational fear that America is facing an “existential crisis” that threatens the dominate white culture.
“Was not Western civilization vastly superior to the indigenous civilizations it encountered and crushed, from the Aztecs and Incas in the Americas to the Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Taoist civilizations from Africa to the Far East?”
“Since Americans of European descent — unlike Germans — are not into sackcloth-and-ashes, but take immense pride in their ancestor’s achievements and bridle at reverse discrimination, it is hard to see a happy future of peace and reconciliation [if white guilt continues].”
“This idea of America as a creedal nation bound together not by ‘blood or birth or soil’ but by ‘ideals’ that must be taught and learned … is demonstrably false.”
“America faces an existential crisis. If we do not get control of our borders, by 2050 Americans of European descent will be a minority in the nation their ancestors created and built.”
It is not a coincidence that last year the US became a battleground against immigrants and that Congress provide the ammo that war – issuing laws that criminalize immigrants and allow the expansion of the border wall that would prevent them from entering this country.
The corporate media also took part in this campaign by demonizing immigrants and condemning them for taking away jobs that should go to citizens, who, for that reason, genuinely believe that their living standards have dropped in recent years. The conspiracy of silence has been raging on for a long time and consequently, has come to be expected whenever the US is hit with economic hard times. Some groups adamantly refuse to accept that what is happening today is not due to some immigration phenomenon but government policies that aids the rich in over the “have nots.”
The circumstances that were brought on by a neo-liberal model that eliminated foreign competition and marginalized a region are the cause for the systematic and perennial flight from Latin Americans and Caribbeans to seek the “American dream.” In order to reach it, they either have endangered their lives by being victims of trafficking, or entered through a visa and once it expires are now known to be in “legal limbo.” All because they emigrated from their native land and are now in no man’s land, and subjected to the violation of their human rights.
The Bush administration is chalk full of double standards when it comes to handling immigration. Currently, he has sent “la migra dogs of war” to enforce the laws that has broken families up and detaining innocent children in detention camps, while the owners of Swift & Co, the second-largest beef processor and largest pork processor in the world, have not been troubled, much less punished for employing undocumented immigrants.
This is the Conspiracy of Silence that is happening here in the Land of Free.