Have The Bastards Got You Down For The Count, America?

Is anybody out there mad as hell? Is anybody out there not going to take it anymore? I don’t say you have to like it, but you’re taking it, all right. The entire structure of power generated by those looking after the interests of the world’s wealthiest are seeing to that.

It has been 10 years since Americans first realized once and for all that their elections were largely a fraud, and that the Supreme Court would appoint the “right” man for the job, no matter who voted for him or not. Since then, we have watched the same court award corporations the right to buy candidates and thus judicial appointees with their multi-billions, and seen even the pretense of representation systematically discarded by corporate lobbyists and financial sector appointees who have unscrupulously taken full advantage, and the country is now facing a situation as dire and inexorable to American liberty as climate change is to the fragile environment on Earth.

“There are no longer any major institutions in American society, including the press, the educational system, the financial sector, labor unions, the arts, religious institutions and our dysfunctional political parties, which can be considered democratic. The intent, design and function of these institutions, controlled by corporate money, are to bolster the hierarchical and anti-democratic power of the corporate state.” (http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/do_not_pity_the_democrats_20100913/)

Fully 2 ½ months ago I pilloried the Obama Administration for acquiescing to a revolting status quo set up by his corporate and Wall Street cronies, showing him to have no intention of making good on his campaign promises and in general, “change we can believe in.” When I posted it on The Daily Kos, I found myself pilloried by what I thought were either teenagers shouting the misunderstood slogans of their uninformed parents, or fanatical liberals who would brook no criticism of their “progressive” hero. Now I understand that those violent protestations of President Obama’s good will toward the poor and middle-classes (since that is all they could cite), was the result of their intense fear that indeed, there is no one on their side, no knight to tilt with the dark forces of greed that have dismantled the foundational principles of the country.

Every day, the nation is made to loudly hear the absurd rantings of Republican shills, several times a day like a shrill call to prayer, the likes of Beck, Palin, and the Tea Party “candidates” implausibly streaming from the tiny clown car into the center ring. An utter lunatic with a congregation of 50 people gets national coverage for his plans to burn Korans on 11 September, while Dr Martin Luther King is allowed to be shamelessly coopted by racist morons. We’re taking it, all right. Because all protest of any serious effect or organization is immediately suppressed, whether you believe it or not.

“Over the past several years, entities closely linked to the private security firm Blackwater have provided intelligence, training and security services to US and foreign governments as well as several multinational corporations, including Monsanto, Chevron, the Walt Disney Company, Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines and banking giants Deutsche Bank and Barclays…One of the most incendiary details in the documents is that Blackwater, through Total Intelligence, sought to become the ‘intel arm’ of Monsanto, offering to provide operatives to infiltrate activist groups organizing against the multinational biotech firm.” (http://www.thenation.com/article/154739/blackwaters-black-ops)

Both Conservatives and Liberals have departed from civil service and have fully committed themselves to protecting the interests of the wealthy; it is not beyond the pale to wonder if they no longer have a choice, as with matters pertaining to the insane foreign policy the U.S. has been pursuing with Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Israel, Iran and now Yemen. The documents released on WikiLeaks are only the very tip of the iceberg proving corruption and mishandling of billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars and its director Julian Assange been sought by the C.I.A. and his whistle-blowing organization condemned as a threat to national security, yet the Fox News-type media is allowed to broadcast non-stop propaganda and outright lies without any intelligible consequences whatsoever.

When did the American people lose all control over the workings of their government, supposedly the greatest democracy in the world? Personally, I date the beginning of the end to the Reagan Era, when the “feel good about greed!” generation of Yuppies decided to believe in their coke-fuelled dreams of easy money and prestige-for-getting-away-with-it lifestyles, letting the prosperity gospel of lie-for-pie line their pockets and anesthetize their social consciences. But that’s what I would say, since I was there in New York City in the early to mid-80s, watching out-of-control homelessness and AIDS devastate the streets while the good times rolled on Wall Street and 5^th Avenue. Today, it’s all the rage to blame everything on Bill Clinton, and why not? He was made a prime sucker once, why not do it again? But the rest of us know that it was the Conservative agenda to systematically rig the workings of the country to serve the interests of the wealthiest, abetted by the religious right which took care of the social-branch of that unconstitutional movement, and that Democrats were foolish enough to roll with it until they were no longer useful: enter Bush Jr., or Nero as we like to call him, who recognize when empires are going down in flames.

What can be done? ‘ “It is like being in a pit,” Ralph Nader told me when we spoke on Saturday. “If you are four feet in the pit you have a chance to grab the top and hoist yourself up. If you are 30 feet in the pit you have to start on a different scale.” All resistance will take place outside the arena of electoral politics. The more we expand community credit unions, community health clinics and food cooperatives and build alternative energy systems, the more empowered we will become. “To the extent that these organizations expand and get into communities where they do not exist, we will weaken the multinational goliath, from the banks to the agribusinesses to the HMO giants and hospital chains,” Nader said’ (ibid, truthdig). Nader, the man who, it must be said, helped to bring us to this nadir with his naïve, badly timed campaign.

Well, if I believed America was still a nation of people who would put down their iPhones and resist, organizing unions and communities into effective counter-forces to government inadequacy and corruption, I wouldn’t have moved to Canada. But from up here, it looks like despair has mowed down the grass-roots and the astroturfers have insured there will never again be a level playing field.

Yes, you’re taking it, but the only ones who look mad as hell are the hatters of the Tea Party. Any chance of you sane people that remain giving it a real go? I admire “the liberal media” (Krugman, Maddow, The Nation, Kos, bloggers, Chomsky, & many concerned others) who are trying to raise awareness of the crimes being committed with impunity and sadistic chutzpah by the Republican banking-corporate-military machine, but I don’t see the White House taking notice, and I don’t see a real opposition forming that can make me fall for “HOPE” again, Alan Grayson notwithstanding. With Depression-levels of unemployment and distribution of wealth, you who think I’m preaching to the choir cannot afford to let the face of protest be that of some racist, “clinging to his guns and his religion”, as Mr Obama rightly observed back when his balls were still attached. But it has been proven again and again: voting is not enough, donating to the lesser of two evils won’t cut it. Every day in every way, thinking people must counter the O’Reilly Factor in their own communities and homes, at their jobs and wherever else they can. Every one of you has to get out there and EDUCATE, or those desperate zombies will come and eat your brains.

I want to know if the U.S. can still wake up and pull its head out of its collective ass; the answer is, perhaps — but it has to want to. To paraphrase the depressing observations of another ex-pat, T.S. Eliot, are there enough people who can endure the reality of the mess in order to face it? If the state of the city of New Orleans is any indicator, don’t waste your time hating and calling me a Tokyo Rose: get your immigration applications in order.

In the mean time, I’ll watch this space:

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