The U.S. Civil War of 2011: Social Darwinism is NOT the Answer

"Money
Well, get back
I'm all right Jack
Keep your hands off of my stack
Money
It's a hit
Don't give me that do goody good bullshit
I'm in the high-fidelity first class travelling set
I think I need a Lear jet..."

                                                                                      "Money," by Pink Floyd

            It is an anxious, oxymoronic strain running through our politics that ought to have all of us worrying about who will decide the type of government and society we want in the United States of America.  Those who both claim God as their paradigm of virtue and natural selection as their tool for doing God’s work are dangerous Social Darwinists who will, like the Nazis, decide who are the “useless eaters,” those unworthy of resources to live because they cannot serve society in the way the splinter group, and its growing voice, believe they should to earn such a keep. They are the far right evangelicals and Tea Party Republicans whom we allowed to shape our critical and damaging debate over the debt ceiling.  They held our economy hostage until they could guarantee that Darwinist natural selection was put in place as the measure by which we would give less to those who have less, and more to those who have more, as what?  A reward for a better stock portfolio?  A reward for bank accounts—here and offshore—with many more zeroes after their first numbers than 98% of us have?  A reward for making out better on an unlevel playing field, as if this were some kind of grand, respectable, and somehow fair achievement?  Or, for the 98% of us not as well off as the top 2%, as a punishment for not being as financially favored or fortunate or born that way?  You acted in the ugliest manner possible, and, Congress, no one likes ugly.  God don’t like ugly.  And I, most decidedly, will not make it easy for your ugly, brutish tactics to hold ultimate sway over how MY America is going to be. 

You acted like terrorists, some said.  I think President Obama should have held to the Reagan doctrine on this, “We will not negotiate with terrorists,” and invoked the 14^th Amendment that provides for the national debt to be honored, paid, without question or impediment.  Some say Obama was afraid of being impeached.  Like his immediate predecessor, I would have said, “Bring It On.”  And, I would have taken away your talking points and forced you into a new debate that you would not be able to win.  I would never have allowed you to make such fascist demands and get away with it.  I would have grabbed back the narrative and beaten your asses in with it.  You disgust me.  You, Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin share preferences, philosophies.  Survival of the fittest is fine in the jungle, and natural selection, what Hitler practiced with “inferior” humans, is fine when planting, but we are supposed to be the civilized, and we have savages for elected officials.  You are Un-American.  You neither live your principles (see the Tea Party’s Congressman Walsh and his child support payments in arrears over $117,000) nor uphold those you swore to uphold in that document, maybe you remember it—The Constitution—yeah, that one.  And don’t you go off half-cocked and scream, “Socialist;” for, your God, the one who talks to your Michele Bachmann, is a socialist (and please note that her closet case of a husband takes Medicaid to “pray away the gay” in his counseling practice).  Well, that God who speaks to Michele and Marcus is a socialist.  Yeah.  That’s right.  The guy with the beard, long hair, not into materialism, who said it would be harder for a rich man to pass into the kingdom of heaven than a camel through a needle’s eye.  Yeah.  Jesus.  The one who promised a lot when he delivered His party’s platform in his Sermon on the Mount.  See His talking points.  You will notice a little problem:  none of you is on the same page with Him, although you claim to be guided by His principles.  I say, stop your bullshit.  You want to keep the masses stupid and wanting, polarized, and showing their worst instincts.  Well, many got an unexpected education.  Yes, I know knowledge as a democratic commodity scares the hell out of you, but you bullied and preened, and crowed, and showed enormous belligerence, while playing out the deadly sin of pride, and, guess what?  Some of those “sheep” who follow you found out that as “shepherds” you would rather drive the flock over the cliff’s edge than protect them.  I am not one of your flock.  I am middle class, and a fierce one among the beleaguered of the population.  I am smart and therefore dangerous to you.  Be afraid, be very afraid.  I am far from a lone, fierce voice.  And, after the debacle you staged at the expense of our stature and economy, our People, I hope to be a member of a swelling chorus before long. 

You have any idea what would happen if the U.S. dollar, the world’s reserve currency, were to tank or be replaced? You should since it was a risk you were willing to take.  It would mean sky-rocketing interest rates at a time when businesses need to borrow at the lowest interest rates, people need the lowest mortgage rates to help restart the housing sector (which would fall even more precipitously), and outrageous inflation—making those responsible for 70% of our GDP growth—consumers—less able to spend, which would cause less demand across the economic sectors, and higher unemployment. (IMF managing director Christine Lagarde was asked about such a possible scenario, and made it clear that we could not envision the cataclysm, nor should we speculate on such a topic as it would throw global markets into further tumult, and, ultimately, no such step could be made quickly or lightly).  Look at the turmoil caused by a prospective default of Greece, whose economy is small change next to ours—the biggest and richest in the world.  It would be unimaginable horror on an unimaginable and unprecedented scale.   Ignoramuses.  You and K Street  and that disappointment in the Whitehouse are in for some more bruising yourselves. You may have polarized us even further in the short run, but I believe there will be a backlash that waylays your future plans.  I will work toward your definitive and collective endings. I am fired up and I will not capitulate until I get everybody in my sphere going.  Understand?  Consider this little time you have left, and use it to contemplate how 9.2% of Americans feel, because we are going to fire you.  You have not served us, you have shamed us, and for that there is no forgiveness.  I’ll leave that up to Jesus.

You want to cut entitlements, the social programs, as you preserve tax breaks for the corporations, the wealthiest—who, by the way, have trillions of dollars in cash on their balance sheets but are not spending it to create jobs, as you continue to lie about these facts.  I don’t know; maybe it’s me, but I would rather see Americans fed, clothed, able to get their needed medicines than keep tax loopholes for corporate jet owners.  WE ARE NOT A THIRD WORLD COUNTRY!!!  I know, I know.  Silly me.  Needs before greed.  Can’t have that be a guiding principle in the greatest land in the world, whose image as such, by the way, has been severely called into question while you used our greatness as a bargaining tool to shine a light on a president’s flaws, and wanted to shore up your re-election bids by looking less like the Founding Fathers, who sought to provide for the general welfare, than an apoplectic German tyrant who would have seen the fall of his country—had he not killed himself in a bunker—after he, like you, got all and more of what he demanded, categorically ignoring treaties and alliances made to make our world safer and more civil, and still strove on to decimate people, until a lethargic world roused itself from torpor and said, “No more.”  That caused a World War.  Perhaps you are presiding over the next Civil War in the United States.  For, as England might have slept in 1938, sacrificing Czechoslovakia in an appeasement to a madman, we Americans are more awake than we have been, and we are determined not to have our elderly and needy be your Czechoslovakia. 

You say only spending cuts without revenue-raising can cure us of our malady.  Less money in the economic system leads to higher unemployment, greater social devastation, and a blighted land of plenty for only those, a certain few, allowed to reach the common table.  But, even the Chosen will not benefit; for, who will buy their products?  Who will employ their services?   In the last week of this July, the CEOs of Wal-Mart, Kimberley Clarke, PNC-Sierra Semiconductor Manufacturing, and CVS testified before Congress to say they were willing for all their corporate loopholes to be put on the table, to work toward a more competitive America, keeping more jobs here by working with Congress to alleviate the tax burden they now must meet—topping out at 35%--25% paid in foreign taxes, and a 10% sur-tax on top of that when they re-patriot (bring home to the U.S.) funds.  They said the tax credits they get would be much less appealing if we, working together, could find ways to make a lower corporate tax possible.  It isn’t oh so simple, nor is it unquestionable nobility, but they sounded more patriotic than the fools who piss themselves to get the donations these CEOs might give them for re-election campaigns. BUT, to get those donations, the pissing reps will need to preserve those very loopholes and credits that these Americans are telling us to put up on the chopping block.

Remember, or learn of, what got us here.  It is not so simplistic that partisan arguments, like that of democratic strategist Paul Begala, can adequately explain.  We know the litany: tax cuts for the wealthiest 1%, the funding of two wars on the national credit card, a Medicare prescription drug benefit with no way to pay for it, etc.  What really got us here, though, are older wounds, never properly attended to:

Thirty years of financial deregulation started under Reagan, and galloping through Bush II.  Banks bundling mortgages (the good and the bad), student loans, all kinds of loans, bad debt, and selling them as AAA rated collateral, “securitized” debt.  It, like asinine and dangerous ignorance, was all based on lies.  So, a deregulated industry, allowing local Savings and Loans to bet customer’s savings on just about anything—from the weather (I kid you not) to how much a stock could spike, as a result of unethically pushing it on unsuspecting buyers, then lose, thus “making a market,” was an acceptable form of making the game. It caused the Savings and Loan failure of the 80s, led to power accruing to a few giants, making CEOs obscene amounts of money while they would be overseeing the melee believing that, on a smaller playing field, they would now be “too big to fail.” So, they played fast and loose, and when they failed, guess what happened?  We bailed them out.  First under George W. Bush, who I must say, was reluctant to do so.  That was a time he should have stuck to his guns.

Now, you, Republicans, want to fight Wall Street reform because unfettered crazy people did so well without it, and we just didn’t notice it, because we are all idiots and we should give compulsive gamblers our money and let them do with it as they please:  give themselves bigger compensation packages, new Rolexes, another home, yacht, or corporate jet, keep their employee rolls down, their salaries and bonuses up.  Yes.  That is your answer, Republicans:  Screw history.  Screw truth.  Get those low-lives off the dole and make middle class lackeys pay. Yeah.  Tell constituents that lazy folk are the greatest drain on our economy, and let them go savage at each other. Never go after our true masters—the wealthy.  Never let them foot a bill, correct a wrong, be jailed for unethical behaviors.  Kowtow and kiss up:  this is how we will keep power.  And, if you don’t give us what we want, we will just allow the wealthy to buy us, senator or congressman, and do their will.  Or, if you don't give us our way, we will just take some federal agency hostage, like the FAA, and, if that isn't enough, maybe we'll just eat your young.  Any way you want to try to approach this, here is our deal: no deal.  We must allow our benefactors to take what they want. This alone will ensure our hold on power.  And, ultimate, unchecked power is All we want and All we will settle for.  That bullshit is the kind of strong-arming Larry Summers did when he threatened the head of the very agency that would see regulations in the credit default swaps market.  Larry Summers belongs in jail.  Alan Greenspan, too.  And, if I were to have been the one going after Clinton for impeachment, it would have been for his part in this debacle, not for a blow job.  Suck on that.

Here is Thomas Jefferson on banks:

     "If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their Fathers conquered...I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies... The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs."

This is a guy who understood greed.

            I know very few want to read about this, which is exactly why you should.  If we remain ignorant, we remain powerless.  I have a problem with the raiding, the unchecked greed.  I have a problem with the cries to cut entitlement spending until the elderly bleed, not because I am a socialist, but because I am an AMERICAN.  Pre-election 2008, the same year Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, highest paid CEO in history (from Goldman Sachs), told us there was nothing to worry about in the psycho-leveraging going on at every investment bank, we, the taxpayers, were called upon to bailout investment banks and AIG to avert a global meltdown.  And, not one of the top officers of these firms paid in or put out, although they were the lying, character-disordered freaks who made it all come down.  Now, their mouthpieces say, let’s go back to that same pool of people and make them sacrifice again while we banshees scream and distract.   Nothing like making some stupid folks believe that they are paying for little black babies being born out of wedlock, abortions, and a path to survival for all those irresponsible creeps out there, while those lesbos and homos think it’s ok to marry, and those darn teachers ain’t doin’ a thing with our little angels.  Yeah, to HELL with them.  Cut it all away—just don’t cut mine.  ‘Cause I ain’t like that.  I am God-fearin’ and good as my mama raised me to be.  Yeah, me too, and I don’t abuse my girlfriend, I pay my taxes, and tolerate peaceably your existence in our nation.  Happy to do it for ya, Bubba.  Now, go put down your beer, fix your teeth, and take your head out of your ass because your proctologist called, having just located it.

Just what is necessary to protect rights, let alone accrue power?  Justice and equitability won’t do it for us.  As Sojourner Truth said in her famous "Ain't I a Woman?" speech at the 1851 Women's Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio, in the context of fighting for equal civil rights for women—being fought against by men who quite naturally believed women to be inferior in the head, and therefore not worthy of equal rights—

“What's intellect got to do with women's rights or black folks' rights? If my cup won't hold but a pint and yours holds a quart, wouldn't you be mean not to let me have my little half-measure full?"

In other words, are we not to be considered equal, and, therefore, equal under the law?  Are we not all to have rights and privileges accruing to us as citizens of this great nation, despite disparity of intellect, income, age, anything? Well, Ms. Truth, truth is that intellect is not the only criterion by which worthiness to live a decent life with rights and services protected will now be decided:  age, illness, injury, long-term unemployment, and tragic circumstance can and will be held against us, although the wantonly rich will easily take the Social Security check when it comes, and the Medicare coverage when it is available, and the wantonly stupid keep singing “We Shall Overcome,” with decided derision at our first African American president.

Here are some facts we should consider.   According to the IRS estimates for 2010, income NOT subject to Social Security taxes is as follows: individual income in excess of $102,000, and $106, 800 for the self-employed.  The Republicans do not want to raise this limit.  I believe we should.  And, as for the tax rates, the top earners in this country pay the SAME as the working poor:  18%.   How’s that for fairness, for equitability?  And, as for intellect, Ms. Truth, there is still a deadly dearth of it in our elected officials and many of their “sheep.”  Not so much has changed in that area in the last 160 years, I am sorry to say.  

If we are going to continue this grand experiment of ours, I think we should do some natural selection at the voting booths.