American Fervor, an American political/current events blog that offers an impassioned perspective on issues affecting the implementation, restoration and preservation of freedom, liberty and justice in America. The problem isn't so much about left and right as it is about everything that gets left out.
Sunday, October 16, 2011
Who's To Blame?
There’s a lot of trumped up indignation going around out there from people like Republican House Majority Leader Eric Cantor about “blaming others.” Tsk tsk, we mustn't blame others. “Where I’m most concerned, is we have elected leaders in this town who frankly are joining in an effort to blame others rather than focusing on the policies that have brought about the current situation,” Cantor said of the anti-Wall Street protests. Who put those policies into place, Eric? People like you! The policies that have brought about this situation; deregulation of the financial industry, lowering the top marginal tax rate to the lowest rate since the Great Depression while shifting to tax burden down away from income and onto payroll (that’s where most of us live) resulting in the consolidation of wealth and consequently political power in fewer and fewer hands at the top. Those policies were sold to the American people as means to strengthen the economy, to create jobs, and now 99% of us are raising the point that these policies have NOT worked as advertised, and we‘d like our money back. Tax cuts for the rich have obviously not created any jobs! Deregulation of the financial industry has obviously not strengthened our economy. Are we “blaming others?” Hell yeah! We’re blaming the people - of both political parties - who have supported these policies. They’ve had 30 years to prove their value, and they’ve proved to be a colossal failure - for 99% of us, that is. For 1% of us, they’ve worked out just fine, thank you very much, and since that 1% holds the vast majority of wealth, they also hold the vast majority of access to political power, so the situation is maintained. Any ordinary working person who defends this situation has a severe case of Stockholm Syndrome. Sometimes you just can’t help but blame other people. In the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, European Americans went to Africa in big ships, and brought people back in chains, sold them on auction blocks, and forced them to do hard manual labor without pay. I suppose that saying so is “blaming” somebody. Well, I’m sorry, but there were not two equal and opposing sides in that argument. One side had a great deal of consolidated wealth and political power in the situation and the other side had none. There have been numerous cases throughout history, going back at least as far and even much farther back to the time when the ancestors of those very same European Americans were held in very similar conditions of forced servitude throughout Europe. Going back to Pharaoh in the Bible, and back before that. Sometimes somebody is to blame, and now we’re finding ourselves in a situation where 99% of us are coming in a distant second in terms of power, in terms of self-determination, to 1% of us who think that it is their birthright to control the destiny of our country, the destiny of the lives of the rest of us. Well, it isn’t. Don’t think I’m making a direct comparison of the circumstances of 99% of us in 2011 to the circumstances of people living in slavery in the 1800’s - I’m not. Things are desperate, but not that desperate - at least not yet. But what I am saying is that when the majority of wealth and power is concentrated in the hands of a small group of people, who diligently limit access to that wealth and power to the majority of their fellows, then a major imbalance is created, an imbalance that will be addressed, don’t think it won’t - and you had better believe that the people who are maintaining the imbalance for their own personal benefit are most definitely to blame, and now they‘re getting nervous, because the other 99% of us have had just about enough of the situation, and we’re calling them out.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment