[img]583|left|Eric L. Wattree||no_popup[/img]When I was a teenager, my grandfather told me when you start thinking everyone else is crazy, it's time to look in the mirror. It must be my time because this country is looking more like a Stepford society to me every day.
It must be something in the water because ever since the Reagan era the American people seem to be walking in their sleep, allowing the government and multinational corporations to cut their throats at will.
During Iran-Contra, we simply stood by while Ronald Reagan sold arms to the very people our troops are facing today. We watched in silence as he flooded our inner cities with drugs in order to support his illegal excursion into Nicaragua. We also stood by while, under Reaganomics, he allowed speculators to dismantle our industrial base and sell off some of our largest corporations, one piece at a time, to benefit a small handful of people.
We Will Take Care of You
But the Republicans told us to not to worry. They said, if you'll just give up the right to write off the interest on your credit cards and other debts temporarily, the rewards that the rich are enjoying will eventually trickle down. All of you will be showered with the benefits of a robust economy. But their promise never came to pass. The only thing that trickled down was having to pay the tax burden of the rich. Even as I write, the rich are enjoying additional tax breaks while we still haven't regained the simple right to write off the interest on our debts.
As a direct result of our apathy, we're suffering from the effects of our stupidity today, thirty years later. Due to the assault on our educational system, we haven't learned a thing. Now the Republican Party and their corporate cronies have an entirely new generation of victims to feed that nonsense to. They recycle their nonsense about every ten years, after the American people have time to forget the disaster they created.
Look at the Republican record. Due to the freewheeling fiscal policies of conservative Republicans between 1986 and 1989, spanning the presidencies of Reagan and Bush Sr., the FSLIC had to pay off all the depositors of 296 institutions with assets of over $125 billion, while the American people just stood and watched.
In 1988 Silverado Savings and Loan collapsed, costing the taxpayers $1.3 billion. It was headed by Neil Bush, brother of George W. The investigation alleged that he was guilty of “breaches of his fiduciary duties involving multiple conflicts of interest.” The issue was settled out of court, with Bush paying a mere $50,000 settlement. Yet again, we stood by and watched.
In 1989 there was the Lincoln Savings and Loan scandal, involving Charles Keating and Sen. John McCain. Lincoln went bankrupt. It resulted in more than 21,000 investors losing their life savings. Most were elderly. Their losses amounted to $285 million. Thereafter, Sen. McCain was censured by the Senate for trying to use his influence to protect Keating, who ended up going to the federal penitentiary. Yet again, we stood around with a blank look.
A Revolving Door That Revolts
We also stood by and watched while Dick Cheney, under Bush Sr., reconfigured our military to sell off many of its most vital functions to private corporations, then walked right out the door into the arms of Halliburton to make a killing on the damage that he'd done.
If that weren’t enough, he returned as Vice President to take advantage of the damage he had done by lying to the American people in order to invade Iraq. That led to the death and maiming of thousands of American troops, and nearly a million Iraqi citizens, all in the name of exhausting our national treasury and transferring the nation's wealth into the pockets of his friends, cronies and colleagues. Still, the American people didn't say a word.
We continued to walk around like zombies as we stared into the void of MTV, BET and ESPN. The level of our stupidity must have even shocked them. So they looked at one another and said, “We've exhausted the national treasury, but they still have a few dollars in their pockets.” They hit us with the Wall Street scam. Even after that, we are walking around in a daze.
They get away with all of this because our population is so under-educated and distracted by our hedonistic pursuits that we have no sense of history. Due to our lack of education, they have convinced many of us that any attempt to protect ourselves and our families from this corporate fraud constitutes socialism.
It is the American way to allow Halliburton to raid our treasury to electrocute our troops and provide them with contaminated water. But it is a socialist plot to spend a dime on putting Americans back to work or providing our families with affordable healthcare.
Thus the American people are rapidly sliding down a slope where corruption is considered the norm. That is why I am weighing in so heavily on the corruption that's taking place in the Postal Service. In the past, the government protected the American people from fraud and abuse, so private corporations had to steal from us covertly. Gradually the mores of our society changed to where private corporations could do it openly. But now the government has gotten in on the act. The Postal Service has embraced the philosophy that it is alright to commit acts of abuse, intimidation and actual felonies against American citizens. When are we going to say enough is enough? Soon, I hope, because at the rate that America is descending into the despotic abyss, it won't be long before Washington's corporate puppets outlaw our right to dissent.
Eric L. Wattree
wattree.blogspot.com
Ewattree@Gmail.com
Religious bigotry: It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think and act like me. It’s just that God does.
