More than 85 percent of polled citizens now state "the nation is headed in the wrong direction".
(EUGENE, Ore.) - Reagan’s catchy slogan-then was "It’s Morning in America Again". That was the beginnings of an unquenchable neo-con "spin and propaganda pitch" unprecedented in world history, well-funded by Far Right billionaires.
But this role-playing with a skillful actor as our President has produced three decades later, a far from brightening New Day for our nation. The most important failed-project of his time-in-office, historians now agree, was the Iran/Contra debacle: The beginnings of our descent into the maelstrom of Iraq, with Iran still-to-come, from current indications.
"Trickle-down" benefits never did, and "voodoo economics" proved to be just that: "voodoo" per Bush-I.
"Deregulation" only destroyed the demanded role of government in protecting the commonweal; and extended “privatization” proved only that corporate corruption could easily outrun even government incompetence.
As for “globalization”, the “free trade” principle proceeded to pauperize primarily the progressing nations most needing solid, effective help to move towards democracy; while “enhancing the economies” only of “world-straddling corporate entities intent on plunder and pillage.”
Even the most unenlightened segments of the American public are now becoming frustrated, angry, embarrassed and passionately “determined to bring about demanded changes --in practically everything.”
“Racism as a political tool for manipulation has worked for decades, but now that, too, is losing power as profound changes profoundly alter working-class conceptions and understandings”, one pundit wrote recently. He was referring to long-known research findings showing that “racism is a myth perpetrated and popularized for economic manipulation” --as reported herein recently.
More than 85 percent of polled citizens now state “the nation is headed in the wrong direction” --and many feel that direction is “deep into the ditch, for years to come.” The primary middle-class worry has now become just “to keep ahead of chaos and collapse”; while a large majority fear that “the children will never be able to make it better for themselves” in future years.
There is growing, overwhelming consensus in the nation that we cannot move on into the 21st Century without first facing right up to the overwhelming and massive consequences now driving our leaders, current and future, into convulsive and reactive patterns, policies and promises.
Nearly everyone now agrees we must alter our way-of-life in every essential of our democracy: In our economy, our world-image, our “peace-keeping” military regime, our rapacious empire-seeking, our healthcare “system”, our education “system”, and even, for many, in that long-solacing set of religious views and patterns fundamental in the lives of so many.
Soaring economic inequality and stagnating wages are forcing wholesale and retail cutbacks by all consumers, while we are forced to face such governing failures as clearly have occurred in the sub-prime financial-system failure triggered by “deregulation”; the Katrina standby while the waters washed away federal policies and patterns; and the complete failures to face up to global warming and production of alternate-energy innovations.
Each and every one of all of these has been -- perhaps irrevocably-- defiled and damaged by “the market pattern”: That overweening, far over-confident belief that the “open. honest, unfettered market” -- and its often-lethal competition for the shrinking dollars that are still its lifeblood-- will inevitably “set things right”: If only government keeps hands-off and permits the blood and mayhem to flow in full measure; often irrevocably, too.
We are told that is the heart of the capitalistic system; that without “the market-makes-all/well principle we cannot achieve, adjust, and advance.”
We have been told --for 30 years starting with the Reagan era, that even the most fundamental of single-worker protection-and-progress measures --union membership to combine and build cooperative offsetting efforts for all-- is a “no-no”, to be massacred and manipulated-to-death by business, corporate and other interests.
Now that has been allowed to be achieved, at great cost to “the American Dream” born in and of the New Deal and the GI Bill, joint creators of our classic and America-defining huge, prosperous, progressive middle-class.
(Progressive? Yes--irrevocably so, in results and purchases and ongoing heavy consumption, if not in political and economic understandings --now being learned perhaps late but that much more intensely...)
Every possible propaganda-spin/and/media-channel manipulation has been lushly financed and fiercely set up to drive home and defend what has now turned out to be a complete fiasco of both policy and protection for the fundamental principles set forth for us by our Founding Fathers.
How did we ever allow ourselves to be so suckered and seduced into such a complete set of singularly damaging and desperate situations?
“That’s a long, complicated story” is the usual answer. but, in essence, it is all too simple: We failed in that most fundamental of measures demanded from any and all responsible participants in any ongoing governance system. Pay close attention to what your leaders tell you they are doing --and why.
Protection and preservation of what you now have depends on your continuing vigilance. For that, we thought we had wide-awake and very well-placed, thoughtful, ethical and most important of all, principled and determined-- watchers and witnesses, set to “give us the word” on what was being done, by whom, for what reasons and with what consequences.
That’s why our Founders, in their first action to add and strengthen and supplement the principles they fought for so valiantly-- set out the First Amendment.
In true Founders-style, it provided special protection and place-for-action for “the free press”, guaranteeing not only the right to probe, ponder and report on any and all damaging prospects in our democracy; but also setting into place --properly right on the shoulders of the protected press, the absolutely fundamental responsibilities to watch, learn, cogitate and then report-and-teach on all consequential matters.
That responsibility was meant to cover the entire population. There was no plan-nor-pattern for it to be confined and compelled into non-consequence by governmental confrontation; punishing consequences for political deviation; nor corporate control via fear-and-career combination --for both corporate and media key-employees.
Pogo was undoubtedly right when he declared: “We has met the enemy --and he is us!” But, in America, there are surely overriding reasons and resonances beyond those of citizen responsibilities and accountabilities.
We are indubitably “the best-informed nation in the world” today. SO -- what went wrong has to be, somehow, surely embedded and ensconced deep within that very strength about which we boast: the media technologies which could, should, and surely now MUST, both teach us and warn us.
It may well be not only OUR nation, but the world as we have known it, fully at stake now. We had better “pay close attention” while we still can do so. If we do, “people power” put to work via our inalienable right the vote can still cure, with some political/killing carried out effectively, to pave the way to the gallows or the hoosegow.
Our Founders provided us with proper tools for that, too.
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Reader’s Note: Quotes are combined, condensed. summarized due to space needs here. Verbatim sources available with request to Editor and ID for direct contact.
Among 50 sources surveyed and excerpted, here are several with much more detail than possible here:
1. The Problem With Conservatism Is Conservatism; Greg Anrig; www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=the_problem_wit...
2. The Fall of Conservatism; George Packer; The New Yorker; 4/7/08
3. Kunstler: “The Remorseless Algebra of a Deflationary Death Spiral”; Mike Whitney; www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20027.htm
4. “This Land Is Their Land: Reports from a Divided Nation”; (new book, excerpt); Barbara Ehrenreich;
www.barbaraehrenreich.com/thislandistheirland.htm
Op Ed: National RealitiesSalem-News.com