“They used their
wealth to seduce and demoralize institutions of popular government until those
instruments were weakened beyond repair – or even worse, until those
instruments became the means of disinheriting and disempowering the people…”
Steve Fraser, The Age of Acquiescence
As usual, the news of the world is bad and getting worse.
The legislature of the state of Wisconsin is full of nut-jobs, and it looks
like Wisconsin will be joining the ranks of right-to-work-for-less states.
Thanks largely to John Boehner, the US Congress was recently turned into a
mega-stage for the re-election campaign of Israel’s Bibi Netanyahu. Bibi is
Israel’s Dick Cheney. Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb. I will give Bibi this much – he
has enormous balls. To thumb your nose at the benefactor without which Israel
can’t survive takes a big, hefty pair.
Crazy shit.
Reading the news depresses me, so I counter with Alice
Walker, a writer, and activist, who manages to see the world for the weeping
sore that it is and still remain optimistic about the future. When it all
becomes too much and my brain is overloaded with doom and gloom, Walker shines
a light and gives me hope. When my son is acting the fool and making impulsive
choices, Walker reminds me to be patient, to pause, to withhold judgment.
I’m reading Steve Fraser’s The Age of Acquiescence, a
fantastic history of protest in these United States. I was eager to read this
book after seeing Fraser interviewed by Bill Moyers. Neoliberal class warfare
may seem like a new thing, but Fraser reminds us that it has been a part of
America since Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton offered competing visions
of what this country should become. Since the opening of this republic, the
wealthy have sought to rig the game in their favor, to tilt the playing field,
purchase the loyalty of legislators and judges, and use the power of the state
to protect their property and privilege from the lower classes. The rich and
powerful want a government robust enough to protect their interests, but not so
robust as to interfere in their business.
We forget the impassioned debates, the marches and strikes,
the violence, and bloodshed that animated the masses in Chicago and New York
City and Cleveland and Detroit. Lacking a natural aristocracy like so many
countries of the Old World, the masses in this country didn’t know their place
in the scheme of things, and so the poor and the working poor frequently rose
up and filled the streets and rattled the gilded gates of the ruling class.
Capitalism itself was a frequent target, the system that by its very nature
created stupendous wealth for a select few and widespread misery for the
unfortunate majority.
The urge to pick up a rock or a paving stone or a torch or a
loaded rifle in order to seek redress was more powerful in those bygone days;
workers are cowed now, defeated by decades of trade, monetary, and government
policy that has once again tilted the field in favor of those who have the
most. Organized labor is impotent, and, in many cases, incompetent. Distracted
by our cell phones and the faux dramas playing on our flat screen TV’s, most of
us have accepted, with nary a whimper of protest, the reality of working harder
for less, of doing worse than our parents and leaving our children with
diminished choices.
Is the outrage we once felt and reacted to when confronted
with gross social injustice forever lost?
You tell me.
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