Oligarchs Paradise

“I know not why it should be a matter of congratulation that persons who are already richer than any one needs to be, should have doubled their means of consuming things which give little or no pleasure except as representative of wealth.” J.S. Mill

Slick Willie still has balls. It takes a hefty pair to stand in front of a crowd in Philadelphia and tell African-American protestors that government policies that hurt them and their communities were really, at heart, for their benefit.

Your lives mattered so much to my administration that I made them a living hell. I had to destroy your communities in order to save them.

No apology required.

Bill Clinton’s crime bill, passed back in the mid-90’s, was not designed to protect the lives of African-American teenagers; the intent was to allay the fears of white people who thought black gangs like the Crips and Bloods were about to overrun suburbia, and to demonstrate that Bill Clinton was as tough on crime as any Republican.

The Clintons triangulate everything for political advantage. Yes, I physically beat you to a pulp, but surely you can see it was for your own good? Turn the tables, blame the victims. The Clintons have made this tactic into an art form.

The thought of another Clinton administration is nauseating. We deserve better than someone who has used her position in government to enrich herself. Who asks us to believe that Wall Street banks are happy to pay her upwards of $200,000 for a single speech without expecting anything in return. This is insulting -- we know how the world works.

Our democracy is a democracy in name only because the political system, at least at the national level, is deaf to the needs of average citizens. How many times have I written this or something similar on this blog? The disconnect between the rulers and the ruled is severe. It’s clear that people from all walks of life and circumstances want peace, decent jobs, some measure of economic security, safe drinking water, breathable air, food that isn’t laced with poison, and a voice. The political machinery produces few of these things because to do so would require the rulers who own and operate the machinery to give up their privilege, and that never happens.  

As Robert McChesney and John Nichols note in their new book, People Get Ready: The Fight Against a Jobless Economy and a Citizenless Democracy,  the solution to all these issues is political. Income inequality is about distribution of wealth, and that involves politics; climate change is all politics; the impact of technology on employment opportunities for our children is about government policy. But we have to understand that from the very beginning, the leading lights of the American colony, and then the American nation, feared the masses, the passions of the mob, and protected private property, the landed, and the slave owners. If the status quo is going to change, we cannot ask politely and wait for an answer -- we must demand.

Repeatedly.

Democracy is messy and unpredictable. The alternative, however, is what we see happening now: environmental degradation, extreme income inequality, political paralysis, a weak and debased corporate media that only serves to distract citizens from reality, and wars abroad that go on for decades. Poll after poll shows that this is not the America people want.

I know it’s not the America I want. I want this country to live up to its ideals, and I’d like my children to have half a shot at lives that are not reduced to toil, want and insecurity.