Betsy Gleysteen While some realize “Progressive” is not party specific, most equate progressive and liberal with Democrats, and conservative, Christian right, etc. with Republican. Most of what you said could have been written without the use of a label and with it more likelihood of agreement and support. Regarding your response, consider my comments as they relate to your following statements and with that fixing issues in the welfare system only addresses a symptom. • “The issue is that lives are being destroyed in the pursuit of this goal. The war on poverty is an abject failure that has left human destruction and misery in its wake.” • “the true goal of many in power is to redistribute wealth and punish the successful.” Follow any combination of social networks, political blogs, and news reporting and one becomes exposed to many creative forms of name calling, Libtard, Repug; exposed to many insinuations of those groups at the heart of our country’s problems, “it’s those on welfare, it’s the unions, it’s the Republicans, it’s the Democrats”; and to the fear of political ideologies, most notably socialism and communism. Let me add one more ideology, one that here in the United States is seldom written, seldom spoken, one most believe ended with the Second World War, yet stares at us daily through the actions of our national legislature. Fascism, more specifically Corporate Fascism. Fascism: A governmental system led by a dictator having complete power, forcibly suppressing opposition and criticism, regimenting all industry, commerce, and emphasizing an aggressive nationalism, and often racism. In 2003 Sheldon Wolin opens his article “Inverted Totalitarianism”[1] with, The war on Iraq has so monopolized public attention as to obscure the regime change taking place in the Homeland. We may have invaded Iraq to bring in democracy and bring down a totalitarian regime, but in the process our own system may be moving closer to the latter and further weakening the former. Totalitarianism is the centralized control of an autocratic authority, the political concept that the citizen should be totally subject to an absolute state authority. Sheldon Wolin further makes the following observations in his article: Representative institutions no longer represent voters. Instead, they have been short-circuited, steadily corrupted by an institutionalized system of bribery that renders them responsive to powerful interest groups whose constituencies are the major corporations and wealthiest Americans. The courts, in turn, when they are not increasingly handmaidens of corporate power, are consistently deferential to the claims of national security. Elections have become heavily subsidized non-events that typically attract at best merely half of an electorate whose information about foreign and domestic politics is filtered through corporate-dominated media. Citizens are manipulated into a nervous state by the media’s reports of rampant crime and terrorist networks, by thinly veiled threats of the Attorney General and by their own fears about unemployment. What is crucially important here is not only the expansion of governmental power but the inevitable discrediting of constitutional limitations and institutional processes that discourages the citizenry and leaves them politically apathetic. These observations, Mr. Wolin notes are of a political system he calls “inverted totalitarianism”. Under Nazi rule “big business” was subordinated to the political regime. In the United States, however, corporate power has become so predominant in the political establishment, particularly in the Republican Party, and so dominant in its influence over policy, as to suggest a role inversion the exact opposite of the Nazis’. Quite a bold statement and no doubt discounted in many corners ten years ago, but today? Returning to the definition of Fascism and filling in the blanks we have Corporate Fascism: A governmental system led by a dictator (Big Banks, Big Oil); having complete power (purchased through Citizens United, lobbyists); forcibly suppressing opposition (anti-union); and criticism (controlled media, Rupert Murdoch); regimenting all industry (right to work); commerce (Wal-Mart, Koch Bothers); and emphasizing an aggressive nationalism (anti-immigration, NRA, military spending); and often racism. It is time we stop the name calling, the finger-pointing, and fear mongering; and began addressing the real problem that exists. GREED Greed unchecked in the private sector results in the removal of all services, greed unchecked in the public sector results in excessive waste, and greed unchecked in the individual results in an over use of services; entitlement becomes the norm. The pendulum has swung. Remove the obscene and over indulgent military spending and what you have left is a private sector that has over reached and outdistanced exponentially any past degrees of waste in the public sector. Greed will always be with us and with that a requirement for an economic model that provides checks and balances without impacting creative entrepreneurs from enhancing the quality of our lives. Capitalism in its present form, does not work. [1] thenation/article/inverted-totalitarianism
Posted on: Mon, 17 Mar 2014 10:05:19 +0000
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