Cuban Independence War Patriot José Martí, hero, poet and philosopher said: “countries have the governments they deserve”
There is no argument about the 2010 elections; as President Obama described them “we got shellacked”. But there is a very compelling argument that says that a good chunk of the American people is not just misguided but they suffer from collective amnesia.
We had just entered into the biggest economic crisis since the Great Depression and there is no argument that the Republicans are to blame for it…yes, take should take the frickin’ blame, because of their pervasive elimination of regulations, because of the tax cuts for the very rich and because all the subsidies and breaks the big corporations got. They don’t want to take ownership of the mess and they will not even attempt at fixing the problem…on the contrary; they are working feverishly to sabotage the Obama Presidency so that he is a one term Commander in Chief. They have said so and we have seen their actions in the past two years: obstruct, delay, lie, exaggerate and worst of all, use uncivil, vitriolic personal attacks on the President and all Democrats.
Having that out of the way, and I dare anybody argue differently and convince me otherwise, I still don’t understand how a good chunk of the American people was sold a bill of goods, was bamboozled into voting Republican in 2010. They neglected to see in their myopic outlook who really caused their misery and who has to take responsibility for the economic mess and two wars, one of which America became engaged in it by being told lies by their government.
Still, these people were told over and over “you can’t expect to get different results if you apply the same old, tired principles. Please don’t tell me about “government is the problem and government doesn’t work, it is too big and “TRICKLE DOWN ECONOMICS” is swell. I will not buy it and by now, a good many who voted Republican in the 2010 elections are having buyer’s remorse.
How can we even contemplate giving tax cuts for the very wealthy and the corporations and turn around and stick the middle class and the poor with the shortfall, the lack of revenue? How could some of these Teahadist-Republicans who are not super wealthy, actually the great majority of them don’t have a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of…how can they, what were they thinking when they voted Republican?
I think that Dave Johnson puts it very well in his March 25, 2011 article:
Did American Workers "Get What They Deserved?"
Dave Johnson
What did people expect would happen when they voted for Reagan, Bush and other conservatives, or supported their policies? In the Holland (Michigan) Sentinel community columnist Ray Buursma writes, American workers got what they deserved. Some of the things he says might resonate with many of us,
Remember the Reagan standard? Are you better off today than you were a decade ago? Two decades? Three? Unless you make more than $380,000 a year, the answer is no. In fact, your standard of living over the last quarter century has actually decreased while millionaires have added 30 percent to their net wealth. Why? Two reasons.
First, hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs went overseas while the politicians you elected did nothing to stop them. Yet you continue to elect leaders who offer nothing but tax cuts, as if that would stem the flow of disappearing jobs.
Did you demand your leaders address America’s trade imbalance or continuous outsourcing of jobs? Did you demand your leaders require foreign countries to buy a dollar’s worth of American goods for every dollar of goods they sell here?
No and no. You didn’t bother.
Buursma writes that instead of resenting people who make more because they are in a union, people should join a union and fight for your job, wages and benefits. He continues,
Maybe you’re thinking, “I’m not a union worker, so this doesn’t affect me.”
Stop being stupid. Union benefits provide a standard other companies have to match, or at least come close to. When those benefits are cut, yours are, too. Or do you think you operate in your own little employment vacuum?
Agree or disagree, please click through and read his entire piece.
Whose Fault?
There is no question that things are not going the way they should be going. We see decline all around us -- all pointing back to the changes made after the election of Ronald Reagan. Tax cuts led to massive debt. Deregulation led to mine, oil and financial disasters that cost us more than deregulation ever saved. The infrastructure is crumbling. It seems like we are entering third-world status.
So is it the fault of American workers that their wages and benefits have declined as jobs are shipped overseas?
I don't blame working people. After all, they're working! So they're busy, and stressed, and focused on work. They can't be expected to keep up with the little details and facts and nuances -- especially when they are attacked daily with a barrage of well-funded and professionally crafted corporate/conservative propaganda!
This assault on information and truth has been going on for decades. Under Reagan there was a dramatic shift toward "market" -- one-dollar-one-vote -- sources of information and away from objective, citizen-oriented democratic -- one-person-one-vote -- sources. This market-sourced information necessarily reflects a conservative/corporate view because it is driven by money and profit instead of humanity and humanity's needs.
Information for Democracy!
How do we counter the corporate/conservative assault on truth? One answer to the problem of getting accurate, objective information is to use (and support) alternative sources that are not offered by the conservative/corporate machine. Here is a list of a few links to alternative news sources. Please send these to relatives, friends, and even post them to conservative forums.
PHOTO SOURCE: http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://blog.usw.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/dave-johnson.
