[img]583|left|Eric L. Wattree||no_popup[/img]The time is past due for America to start connecting the dots regarding our political establishment.
It has become increasingly clear we've reached a political crisis. But contrary to what we're being led to believe, the major division in this country is no longer between liberals and conservatives. Rather,it is between the American people and those we've elected to represent us.
Due to political indifference, we've allowed the political establishment to lavish upon themselves so many rewards, prerogatives and political perks that they no longer can identify with the people they represent.
They have become a class within themselves.
Once considered the trusted employees of the American people, they have become a part of a new American aristocracy. They identify much more closely with the rich and powerful — those they are supposed to be protecting us from — than the rest of us.
Liberals and conservatives need to open their eyes to recognize we are facing a common foe who has morphed into a threat to us all.
We Must Unite to Succeed
It is essential to set aside our differences, at least temporarily, to address this common enemy to our way of life.
While liberals and conservatives disagree on their philosophies of governance, we must never confuse that with the belief that liberals are any less loyal as Americans, or that conservatives are any less sincere in their desire to make America a better place.
As different as the two groups are, both want the same thing: what is in the best interest of the American people.
That no longer can be said of our political establishment. Their behavior demonstrates that their priority entails feathering their own nests by protecting their true constituents, big business.
In the past, they were able to hide the alliance. They have been forced into the open by the current geo-economic circumstance.
The political establishment has been forced to betray their true attitude toward the American people, an “ignorant worker class” with a moral obligation to sacrifice both our families (in war), and wealth (in bailouts), for the comfort of the upper class.
That accounts for why the Wall Street bailout sailed through Congress like a hot knife through butter, with only perfunctory grumbling for effect.
Meanwhile, healthcare reform, the jobs bill, legislation to enhance veterans’ benefits, and any other legislation aimed at helping the average American is fiercely resisted.
A String of Non-Accidents
It is no accident that the only Obama effort supported by the GOP is his initiative to go to war.
The Party of No eagerly says yes, regardless of the cost of (lower and middle-class) lives and treasure.
Nor is it accidental that they ignore the fact that a victory merely means that Al Qaeda will move on to a different location. They don't have a problem because war enriches their constituency, the military/industrial complex.
Neither is it an accident that the rule of law is being ignored regarding Bush and Cheney's war crimes, which make America less safe. Their crimes led directly to the economic hardship being suffered by the America people.
They don't have a problem because the political establishment is a class within itself. It protects its own, one area of agreement that is bipartisan.
The reason, as I have mentioned before: The new world order not only is geopolitical but economic in nature.
“When the United States had a thriving industrial economy, one class complemented the other. Labor was well paid and given the security of knowing that they had a job for life. They had the confidence to purchase goods that the corporations produced. That allowed the companies that sold the goods to prosper to the benefit of the investor class.”
But now that U.S. corporations have to compete globally with countries that are paying their workers pennies per day, the middle class has become a prohibitively expensive liability to America's ability to compete around the world. The government, Republicans and Democrats, responds by downgrading the standard of living of the middle class.
Relegating the people to second-class status isn't new..
It has been around since this nation's founding. It's just that after being shot down during the Constitutional Convention in lieu of a more egalitarian form of government in the 18th century, previous adherents of this philosophy had the good sense to be more discreet in their efforts.
As I have pointed out before, Alexander Hamilton, a founding father of the fiscal conservative philosophy, said:
“All communities divide themselves into the few and the many. The first are the rich and well-born, the other the mass of the people… The people are turbulent and changing; they seldom judge or determine right. Give therefore to the first class a distinct, permanent share in government. They will check the unsteadiness of the second, and as they cannot receive any advantage by a change, they, therefore, will ever maintain good government.” (Debates of the Federalist Convention May 14-Sept. 17, 1787).
The political establishment is willing to throw America under the bus because the new world order has made it politically expedient to embrace Hamilton's philosophy that lower and middle class Americans shouldn't have a right to self-government in the first place.
Since it would be problematic to formally take that right away through a Constitutional amendment, it is being taken away through legislative procedure and rulings through the Supreme Court.
That has led to the current disaffection by both liberals and conservatives toward government. People can sense their rights slipping away. They have yet to realize that Congressional gridlock is a convenient way of denying them their rights, that the U.S. Senate majority is allowing the minority to abuse the filibuster procedure because the parties are in collusion. The Republican filibuster provides cover for the Democratic majority for failing to enact, or greatly watering down, legislation demanded by the people, but that neither party wants.
On Jan. 21, the U.S. Supreme Court delivered the final blow. To insure against any repeat of the 2008 election where the people mounted a grassroots effort over the internet to usurp the power of corporations through campaign funding, the Supreme Court passed what is essentially the modern version of Plessy v. Ferguson, taking away the rights of the people by ruling that the American people and corporations are “separate but equal.”
That should serve as a red flag for both liberals and conservatives alike. In 1896, Plessy v. Ferguson was used to undermine the rights of Black people. This ruling, Citizens United v. Federal Election Committee, is being used to undermine the rights of the middle class.
The ruling is a perfect metaphor for Jim Crow, ushering in an era of a diminished American middle class, and the jackboots of the new world order, as it formally arrives at our front door.
Mr. Wattree may be contacted at wattree@verizon.net
You may learn more about Mr. Wattree at wattree.blogspot.com
Religious bigotry: It’s not that I hate everybody who doesn’t look, think and act like me. It’s just that God does.
