I used to think it was most like the Republican Party to lie to the people
while picking our pocket. But as I age I
see the Democrats doing the same thing:
not restoring habeas corpus, not closing down Guantanamo, wire-tapping
us with enhanced use of the Patriot Act to spy on us, you know the drill. Uncle Sam no longer has to hold our hand and
soothe our fears mainly because we do not know the things to be afraid of
anymore. Billions are spent on swaying
public opinion toward a concept or ideas championed by the money people who
invest in making all the fears of the common man go away by believing something,
usually something false and bad for us.
But good for them. Like global
warming is just a Liberal plot to get us to spending more money on cleaning up
the air, the water, our food supply. Yet
if you follow the money you see a dead end at the biggest corporations in
America who do not wish to clean up the environment or their act. It would cost them too much extra money to
filter their smokestacks and remediate their pollution practices of the air and
water.
And who among us does not believe that a corporation’s first and only allegiance is to make more profit so the bottom line looks better? Isn’t that the core policy of a corporation even if it means human casualties and hair-lipping America? Monsanto prefers to spray their soy beans with its very own Roundup, the world’s best weed-killer because it does not kill the soybeans. It is more cost-effective than the manpower to weed the soybean crops by hand which would leave no carcinogen chemicals behind on the soybeans to be eaten by humans and animals that humans eat. But no matter. Though lifespans might just be shortened, further government studies would have to be made to prove such a thing. Sound familiar? Sure it does. When you follow the money it is more cost effective to spray with Roundup, kill the weeds, and harvest the soybeans for consumption.
Some of worst human plagues ever visited upon the world used God in the ruse that justified it all. Take Reagan and his Biblical portrayal of Russia as the Evil Empire. They were godless, he suggested. Communists were bad to the bone, as Reagan described them. Forget that Jesus said to forgive everybody. See that did not include Communists. And all we needed to know and believe was that they were bent on our destruction. Case closed. So Reagan’s popularity caused a phenomenon not yet seen in politics. He was so popular on Death Valley Days, and as president, stumped so hard for our military buildup to defeat the Evil Empire. Why it was so necessary to hear him tell it, that borrowing and spending Trillions of dollars to do it became a first for conservative Republicans. Do you love it? Big-spending Conservatives had to be a first. Well, because God was on our side at the time (so said Reagan), borrowing the money to bring Russia to its knees was money well-spent. God would grace us and reward us for our dedication to helping Him. But instead it helped Lockheed and General Motors and General Electric, and any other Military Industrial Complex corporations who were in bed with Uncle Sam and could entice him to buy millions of hammers and toilet seats for hundreds of dollars a pop. Jerry Falwell of the then Moral Majority spread the word to every Christian he could reach by the television set to not vote for Democrats. Period. The American voters bought it. And nobody raised hell about our borrowing and spending to defeat the Evil Empire. Reagan made us feel clean and good again with a sense of national pride, right? In a cute summary, one day Cheney said to Bush and his cabinet: “Reagan taught us that deficits don’t matter.” As long as it had God’s stamp of approval and was dedicated to ruining Russians or Muslim non-believers, borrowing and spending was okay. So we tacked on an additional $3.2 Trillion to our National Debt.
Bush II did even better. On the heels of 911 he (by God and Americans who flunked geography and history both) borrowed and spent $4 Trillion during his 8 years as president. To attack Iraq! Spent billions of dollars trying to convince the world that Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden were buddies in a coordinated effort to destroy the West. So by exploiting the emotions of the American people who feared terrorists as much as they did the Russians by then we have over $7 Trillion added to our National Debt that requires borrowing and spending even more on just the interest alone. But it was okay with most all Americans. Until it came home to roost during the first term of Obama’s administration who did all it could do, like in damage control. People polled think Bush was to blame for most of the economic quagmire we now find ourselves in, but not to worry. There are billions of propaganda media dollars to spend on why it was Obama’s fault entirely. http://www.investopedia.com/articles/economics/10/national-debt.asp Note: Why debt does matter and Cheney was wrong.
Maybe there is something to what Cheney said. Maybe his saying Reagan taught us that deficits don’t matter is because he thinks the American people are too stupid to notice or to grasp what is going on. Like when you borrow and spend on massive military buildups and war/boots on the ground and invoke the righteous backing of the Almighty in messages to the people, all the stealing of war goods and services at exorbitant prices paid to Blackwater at a billion dollars a pop just may not be noticed. Deficits may not matter to the government who is in bed with the MIC and millions of $500 hammers gone unchallenged by the GAO and other government offices and emotionally-detached taxpayers.
Bottom line, the American people don’t know what to believe. What’s more, it staggers the mind to even think about it as they retire to the NFL Sunday game and the X Box for video games. Why dwell on it? You can’t change it. It’s far bigger than anything we could ever do anything about. Right?
I have taken arrows from a learned professor who was “cognoscente” (his word, not mine) about how sovereign nations manipulated and could print more money on a lark. Yes, they could print more paper dollars at the whim of a leader who ran out of money and needed some more without adding any value to the extra dollars put into circulation. Everything was always lovely and perfect because sovereign powers were divine, and had no obligation to answer to anybody or so it seemed to him. I call it stealing a country’s future by inflating the currency, but that is my less-educated position, and I admit to having it. I think I might have ticked him off when I asked if the sum borrowed ever needed to be paid back, though. oye!
But now the Fed keeps printing money until hell is beginning to freeze over with little notice or disagreement from those who keep paying into the coffers of our battered Treasury with hard-earned tax dollars. Hey some Americans have lost their jobs and their houses, but you don’t hear a peep out of them. I guess they can stand the increases at the pump and at Kroger’s. But we protest not of the stealing from our own for some deluded reason. The government can sell us anything whatsoever and we will not challenge Washington or become outraged. If the congressmen vote themselves a health plan 5 times better and more solvent than Medicare or Obamacare, never mind, nobody cares and fewer even know about it. If one term as a congressman gets you healthcare, a healthy pension for the rest of your life after having served only 6 years, well then no matter, it just is, and we can like it or lump it. If the United States Fed surpasses China as our biggest lender to fund our National Debt interest so we can pay the troops, etc., why get upset? And if the Fed prints more money with White House and Congressional approval, to pay for the debt it buys, then what’s the problem? It’s only paper, right?
Want to attack Iraq and need a reason? Just say Saddam Hussein has missiles pointed at U.S. cities and get Colin Powell to show us some artist’s drawings as proof. If ever a sliver of truth surfaces about our lie that Saddam Hussein is trying to buy yellow cake Uranium from Africa just fix the whistle-blower’s wagon. If Joe Wilson dares to show the world proof it was bogus British intelligence that Saddam Hussein was trying to buy Uranium from Niger, just expose Joe Wilson’s CIA undercover wife, Valerie Plame. Who’s gonna ever know? Let Scooter Libby take the fall. And when he gets convicted of perjury by a federal court, just commute his sentence. The president can do that, no problem. Is it any wonder that the American people feel defeated when it comes to Washington? With such power at the Capitol how could what we might ever have to say be meaningful? And what is truth?, as Pontius Pilate asked. When billions of dollars can video-produce truth in any way desired and sell it to the American people for a mere pittance when everybody is out to the ball game or mesmerized and hypnotized by a video screen?
Lordy, it is such a nice day out today, I think I will go fishing in the lake. That feels right. Somehow I forgot what I was talking about. It couldn’t have been all that important, anyhow.