Political Machinations in the United States – 2014
In 2008 a black man, Barack Obama, was elected president of the United States.
In 2012 he was chosen for a second term.
This was the first black president in U.S. History.
His election brought on machinations of a confusing and troublesome sort.
Mr. Obama had a very leftist voting record as a Senator. The presumption was that he would be an extreme advocate of leftist Democratic policies. This presumption set off the Republican right and a severe backlash was initiated.
The Republican Party has always been the party of the monied classes. As the Tory is to English politics the Republican is to American politics. But this backlash went well beyond the usual and everyday expected variety.
Big monied people jumped forward and took this as an opportunity to establish hardcore right wing aspirations that were grating under the skin of wealthy right wing radicals for decades. They poured their millions into rightist, adversarial organizations and propaganda institutions. They bought newspapers, TV and radio stations and started an outspoken, gun toting revival of the old ultra right, John Birch Society that they called “The Tea Party.” With guns slung over their shoulders, they huffed and they puffed and are in the active process of trying to blow the American democratic house down.
They decided, it seems, that with a black man as president, and any black president would do, they could pick the American scab of racism and play off the traditional hatreds of the white South and the randomly bigoted North to promote all the old prejudices and animosities against blacks and the poor in general. As was once said of Ronald Reagan, they made bigotry and prejudice acceptable. We can add to that observation that they were now making violence acceptable also.
Though no one likes to make comparisons to the Nazi regime outright, this is, nevertheless, too obvious to let pass.
It is exactly how Adolf took over Germany and initiated his plans of extermination and world conquest.
All the conditions are comparable: a militaristically inclined nation, a poor economy with people living in the streets and under bridges, leftists and rightist vying frantically for political power, and a traditional, lightly scabbed over much hated population for vilifying as a scapegoat.
They defend against this argument by saying that until we see the extermination camps, smell the human flesh burning and see the smoke of the furnace chimney tops no such comparisons should be made. But let me invoke an old Republican aphorism in my defense. Should we have to wait until we see a mushroom cloud on the horizon before we take any precautions?
I don’t expect to see extermination camps across the U.S. landscape, but high unemployment, continuing lower wages, hobo jungles, a declining middle class, and masses of starving, unhealthy adults and children roaming about with no roof over their heads, no food to eat, and no hope for the future is a real likelihood.
But President Obama did not take the leftist, socialist path as expected.
President Obama moved from his leftist Senatorial positions to a more conservative central position. His claim was that as president he wanted to be the president of all the people and not just the base of his progressive, leftist supporters.
Though this would be considered historically admirable in most circles, in today’s America it backfired.
President Obama not only disgruntled his leftist supporters, but was rejected totally by the right.
The right was determined to not allow this man’s presidency to be a success no matter what his achievements. Many Republican Senators and Congressional Representatives said as much in speeches and statements before the American press and to their constituencies at home.
I don’t think this can be contested.
But it didn’t really matter whether Obama was left or center. The historical record would allow the right wing to paint president Obama as a socialist and even a communist no matter where he stood realistically.
It had nothing to do with his “blackness,” the Republican leadership said. It was simply his policies which they claimed were socialistic in nature.
For six years now the Republicans have refused to cooperate with anything this president has advocated. And just recently the Republican leadership stated that they will pass no legislation of any consequence until Barack Obama has left the office of the Presidency.
This is all very strange indeed. In the past no opposing minority party would get away with making such a statement.
In the last election the losing Republican candidate stated that approximately 47% of the American population was a detriment to the country, a drag on the system, lazy, good for nothing folks, who wanted to suck off the hard earned wealth of the 53% hard working, honest, decent folks like himself. He did not tell us what he had planned for that 47% of useless Americans.
This should serve as food for thought.
The only Nazi term he did not use was “parasite.” He left that particular term for other of his Republican supporters to promote.
Just recently a Republican was brought to the carpet of public exposure for using that exact term.
In Nazi Germany, Hitler would not have gained much popular support if he announced that 47% of the German population was lazy and good for nothing. In this respect Republican, outspoken prejudice even surpasses that of the Nazis.
In the New Republic proposed by the New Republicans, we see the advancement of the old with nothing very new.
They would like to return to a “literal” interpretation of the Constitution – as many of them advocate in their various religious packages with regards to the Bible.
Once again, these conservative minds do not like the universality of the voting booth as it has evolved over the last two hundred years. As was the case in the original constitution, they would like to see a more restrictive voting system. Instead of making voting easier and less complicated and available to more of the general population, they are attempting to make it more difficult and less likely for certain classes to manage.
Women and blacks and Indians not living on reservations would still be allowed to vote, I presume. But people without possessions or property should be reconsidered. Everyone should have some skin in the game, they say. They disregard the overall, social Poverty Tax and all other taxes and service fees, as if income tax was the only tax of consequence. They also seem to forget that income tax was never supposed to be a head tax placed on each and every American. It was designed from its very beginning to be a tax only affecting the better-off and the best off. To say why doesn’t everybody have to pay it is like asking why everybody does not have to pay an inheritance tax or a luxury tax. It’s foolishness.
It is also their opinion that many American citizens are not smart or educated enough to be allowed to participate in the system. They feel that along with a means test there should also be a reading and education requirement.
Many in the Republican ranks feel that lowering the voting age was a big mistake. They don’t like the idea of young college students being allowed to vote where they are attending college either. They have taken steps to restrict this privilege in some states – or are making the attempt.
Others in their conservative ranks are questioning the popular election of senators. In the original constitution senators were selected by state legislatures and not directly by the general public.
Of course felons and ex-convicts should not be allowed to vote even after doing their time and serving their sentences. This is considered a no-brainer, bad guys will always remain bad guys. There is no rehabilitation for evil. Society shares no responsibility in anybody’s evil. It is all a matter of individual choices. Maybe this is the reason they are not in favor of rehabilitation in prisons. Conservatives have always believed that lawbreakers should be punished, not “pampered.”
The Electoral College should be done away with and a popular vote should be the determining factor. It is interesting that on the one hand, they would be opposed to the popular vote of Federal senators allowing state legislatures to choose, but then advocate the unconstitutional, popular majority vote for the highest office in the land. None of them has suggested yet that the four top candidates, regardless of party, should all be put on the same ballot and the top two selected, without party consideration, as it was in the beginning. George Washington wanted no political parties in the new government.
Many of them do not understand why each state, no matter what the population, should have two Senators. Clearly this must be considered a breach in democratic, majority rule, they submit. They advocate Constitutional government, yet they are clearly lacking in the understanding of the fundamental arguments which led to many of the provisions practiced until this day.
They believe that the second amendment was incorporated into the constitution in order to provide American citizens with adequate fire power to violently overthrow the elected government if enough of them decide that it is necessary. American citizens should be allowed to purchase and use at their individual discretion, any weapons available to the police or the military service. They would use these weapons to shoot their fellow countrymen and military protectors, we must presume. I don’t know if they are in favor of tactical nuclear weapons made available for general consumption, but tanks and other such things have been purchased by those who can afford them.
Social Security needs help in their opinion. Removing the artificial caps that are a basic subsidy to the wealthy and would solve any shortages in the next one hundred years is not the solution they are looking for. They would like to help it by “privatization.”
This would put the Social Security Trust Fund up for grabs by the same predators who robbed the Saving & Loans, the Commercial Banks, the Stock Market and confiscated the home equity of all Americans and nearly bankrupted the world.
That they are in the process of liquidating the assets of America should be obvious. To improve Social Security and expand and improve its benefits is clearly not a part of their agenda.
Medicare is another sore spot for this group of rightist radicals. They offer no ideas on how to replace it, or make it less costly and more efficient. Their only goal seems to be to abolish it.
Food stamps are another problem eating at their viscera. Poor people should work for their living as they have done.
Poor people demanding living wages horrify them. They ignore the fact that military personnel are a big group of food stamp recipients and that a majority collecting food stamps are working. They also ignore the fact that the food stamp program is one of the most efficient government programs operating – very little fraud or abuse. They prefer to accept hyperbole and untruths to make their judgments. Unfortunately, neither the Military of the private sector is willing to pay these folks a living wage. When an increase in the minimum is asked for, they reject it.
They want no top or bottom limits placed on wages.
They are adamantly against trade unions and the right to collective bargaining. These are items that were settled years ago. But they were never settled in the minds of these radicals and business leaders who still promote their repeal.
The big business enemies of workers and their rights have been working behind the scene for decades slowly but surely dismantling private sector unions and all the benefits they have provided to workers. Their propaganda has been working. Most private sector unions have been destroyed and they see this as the time to attack the public sector unions.
When all unionization has been destroyed, then the American work force will once again be malleable and cooperative.
They will be desperate; they will work for any wage, under any conditions with no complaints. This is the way the management bosses and their right wing clones want it to be.
There will be no need to go overseas to hunt up cheap labor to exploit if they can turn America back one hundred years to a third world, poverty ruled nation also.
Poverty is more than tolerable so long as you and yours do not have to participate in it. This has always been a formidable part of the conservative mantra.
Medicaid is, of course, in their gun sights. Most states have gutted their Medicaid programs already or they have tangled the bureaucracy to such a degree that it is hardly worth the effort to inquire about qualification. They would like to return more and more authority to the individual states, because at that level, control and manipulation are less cumbersome and costly.
This is the road to smaller government and lower taxes, they claim.
It seems obvious to me that this is the very same road leading to the death and destruction of the middle class, the working class and the poor. It is this very same road that will lead a once great and wealthy nation to one of poverty and insignificance.
Why have the right taken this time to take up this action; a plan that has never had much appeal for the general population in the history of this nation?
Obama, the first black president, has provided this opportunity through no fault of his own, in my opinion.
Whole segments of the American population go along with this simply because of their built in hatred and prejudice towards the “inferior” black race.
As was the case with the Jew in Germany, the hatred for blacks in America goes back to our beginnings as a nation and even before that as slave colonies. The blacks could be used as America’s Jews to promote a fascist state here at home.
Nazism without Jewish persecution is fascism.
When Obama goes, will this all go away?
No, it will not.
This provided the first step. The fanatical right wing has shown their hand. They have placed their cards face up on the table. They have gone too far to go back. If anyone does not know what they are about and what their intentions are by now, then they are not to be considered of any real consequence to the future. They will follow along blindly and do whatever they are told.
Will the bulk of the American public see what is happening and take the appropriate action?
If the right radicals are put in their places and removed from office, this could all be just a bad memory. If more are elected to public office, America will continue on its present downhill course and liquidation. If the moderates and the left are returned to a majority, we could see an improvement in America’s future.
In the past, America has always made the proper decisions after trying all the others, as Churchill said. We can only wait and see.
