Monday, March 28, 2011

Consumer Slaves

http://www.brookings.edu/opinions/2011/0324_deficit_baily_schultze.aspx

This article indicates that US budget woes will increase due to 'aging baby boomers' and 'rising health care costs', which will 'take a toll on private investment and 'economic growth’’. There is a very vague and brief mention of 'security', which exemplifies the severe state of denial in which we find our government and our society when it comes to actually facing proven ‘national security’ issues such as continual war, war profiteering, and the inherent strain these issues cause on our fiscal disposition.

The article attempts, but fails, to dodge the fact that there is an underlying theme in congress that supports a mid to long-term plan to decrease government spending through the privatization of the institutional social infrastructure. This privatization will take place by systematically increasing corporate tax benefits to 'encourage greater investment', while stripping states and municipalities of their taxation and administrative authority, opening the door for corporate administration of these programs.

The actual forefront of this state-based attack is the federal attack on Social Security with the underpinning foundation of the attack focusing on a plan that will privatize Social Security. If you listen to the rhetoric coming out of Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and other states, you’ll hear very similar themes regarding education. What we see here is an attack on segments of the population whose treatment defines the fundamental social values of a compassionate society; the aging and the young. And as the aging face yet another year with no allocation of the Social Security cost of living adjustment, which clearly characterizes the attack on the aging, we see educational cuts across the board, which clearly characterizes the attack on the young.

While there is a severe strain upon Medicare, which causes a significant strain upon Social Security, although the strain is absorbed by Medicare and Social Security recipients, the strain is caused by the privatized function of our healthcare system as pharmaceutical companies and other healthcare related corporations drive for higher profits. This strain is purposeful and is designed to manipulate the consensus amongst the public that Social Security must be privatized and healthcare must not be socialized. More proof of this theme is available by reading the subliminal attack in the referenced article on current healthcare legislation.

And while there is a strain on state budgets, it is the direct result of the states providing corporate tax benefits and exemptions; interestingly, as though to add insult to injury or to fly the blatant banner of this plan in the faces of the population it intends to destabilize, in many cases the corporate benefits and exemptions mirror almost dollar for dollar the amount of cuts related to educational and social cuts.

The first phase of the federal and state agendas is the multi-pronged attack, an initial frontal assault, in the ultimate war that is being waged by the wealthy elite, represented through its corporate politicians, upon the ever deteriorating middle class and the poor. The goal of this initial assault is to strip the power of the institutions that have been developed over the past century, at the cost of nothing less than human lives, for the purpose of representing and defending the public. Without the middle ground of trade unions, for example, there is only the government against its public. Simultaneously, the cost of developing the infrastructure has been paid for by the taxpayers, it has been socialized, while any profits realized, will be privatized.

When the US bailed out the financial market in 2008, putting the strain on the backs of its tax-paying population, it did so under the same premise as this 'commission' of 'public servants' - that corporate America will then reinvest in the economy; this hasn't happened, and now corporate America and its politicians that are anything but public servants are planning ways to secure the oppressive economic stranglehold on America through the reduction and subsequent privatization of the social infrastructure.

The result will be the same as it has been in the countries which have been subject to the neoliberal experiment; there will be no significant development of the social infrastructure because there is no profit in it. This will cause the gap between the wealthy elite and the ever increasingly vast population of the poor to grow at a significantly expansive rate. There will be no sacrifice from our 'servants' and the burden of their elitism will fall squarely upon our shoulders. Those who cannot bear the burden will collapse and the necessary revolution will be left to the people who have come together to create a TRUE culture of change, a TRUE commission for fiscal AND national responsibility.

The referenced article concludes in its patronizing manner that ''we' know the (aforementioned) measures to deal with the long-run deficit are politically difficult' and that the Republicans and Democrats on the commission who voted for the bipartisan proposal faced those difficulties and hopefully 'congress and the president will do the same'.

It is time for the people of the United States to understand that we do not have a representative government. We have a corporatocracy that is feeding on us, bankrupting our economy, raping our social infrastructure to feed its voracious appetite for profit, involving us in the process of continual war, and sinking us further into a position of global alienation.

The US government is so thoroughly saturated with corruption, so completely corroded with greed and avarice, so wholly staffed by corporate politicians and lobbyists, that we have long since bypassed the point at which there is a solution within the system without significant restructuring of the system itself.

Until we are able as a nation to realign the motive of our government, which at this point is only to create and sustain profitable markets, we will continue down the path of economic destruction and the inherent offsetting destructive reaction of all imperialistic, hegemonic conquest, which is war. For on this path, in the creation of these markets, there is nothing other than the continued export of our labor, destruction of our social infrastructure, divestment of our middle class, and the ultimate enslavement of the two camps of humanity, the market itself and the enslaved population that supports it.

We will continue to crush democracy while saying we support it, we will continue to commit generational genocide while the starving and poor of the world cry out for true humanitarianism, and we will continue to grow the institutional machinery that operates on economic oppression, racism, sexism, and slavery. All the while, America, we will continue to be divided, with our public 'servants' telling us how they are acting in our interests, we will believe in our 'democracy', we will exercise our 'choice', and we will continue to live the American lie of consumerism.

There is not hope within the labels and filters through which our consent is managed. There is not truth within a governmental system that we readily acknowledge is bereft of truth. The hope and promise that was America has been used for an ill purpose, it has taken the vast wealth of influence and might and has created a society that is proud of its 'killing capabilities', a society that claims it cannot take on the burden of humanitarianism while it burdens the world with its blood lusting quest for hegemony.

Until we stand for one child, we stand for none; until we grasp our social conscience and adjust our moral compass, we will head down the path of the most wealthy hopeful promising nation ever to have existed that went the way of all empires, down the destructive path of prideful arrogant imperialism, caught in the crossfire of our own polarized political battles, a society of subjects rather than a society of leaders who demand that their public servants serve.

We have been lied to. We have been told that our ‘freedom’ must come at the cost of the lives of millions of citizens from throughout the world; Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Palestine, Central and South America, Europe, Asia … And while we have believed and lived these lies, we have enjoyed the comfort and luxury of complacent apathy, which lands us square in the center of a concept called complicity. Now, as our government distracts us with its murderous tendencies, it strips us of the veil of comfort and states clearly, “Yes, we protected you with the murder of millions. We have lied to you and you knew it all along. We have represented you throughout the world and allowed you to keep your eyes closed to the suffering of the world. We have given you distraction, we have given you wealth, we have given you consumerism – and you have consumed! Now you must pay the price. Now you must recognize us for what we have always been. Now you must bow down to the corporate power that is beyond humanity; that has no mortal, finite, characteristics. We have a theatre of war for you to appease your anxiety and your apprehension as you wallow at the consumer trough. And you will give us your rights because we’ve come now to the point where we own you. We have taken your votes and cast them aside so that we can serve our corporate masters. We will create crisis and emergency so that you will have no choice but to acquiesce to our power. Your days have ended and the slavery to which you’ve surrendered, the slavery of consumerism, represents the cell, indeed, the very shackles, to which you will now forever be confined.


We are indeed passing through a needle-eyed tunnel in history that represents a moment in time, albeit perhaps years, wherein we have the possibility of righting ourselves, of disengaging our powerful war machines, paying reparations to the countries that we have decimated, shedding a tear for the humanity we’ve wasted, and using every resource we have to bring ourselves into a position of right rather than wrong, of good rather than evil, of hope rather than despair. We cannot undo what we have done, but we can land upon the vast horizon of history as the only nation that was ever able to pull itself upward by its recognition of its faults and make itself right with the world. To achieve this, however, we must be willing to call our government to account. We must be willing to stand beyond our divisions, and we must be willing to pay a price that is equal to that of the countries which we have abused.

No comments:

Post a Comment