What has become very clear to me with each passing year: leaders like Paul Wellstone, Dennis Kucinich, MLK Jr, etc. see the simple truth - when we all do better, we all do better. A rising tide lifts all boats. No wealth grows without labor. What is also clear - the 1% and corporate powers want none of that. For them, a rising tide threatens their shores.
I truly believe that the 1% - the Dick Cheneys, the Koch brothers, the entire military-industrial complex, fares much much better when there exits a groveling peasant class. If they can keep the teeming masses poor, hungry, pregnant, desperate, stupid, and most of all AFRAID of each other, then their wealth and power is secure. So they think.
They need us stupid and fearful - so they pump the airwaves full of nonsense, and sprinkle their propaganda heavily with word like "communist", to which they add a lethal dose of racism and misogyny. Keep the average working poor family focused on gay marriage, women's rights, or some ethnic boogey-man as the enemy. But keep the focus OFF the giant corporation poisoning their water, ruining their lungs, and pocketing everything but the most meager of crumbs.
So how do we get greed out of our system? I think deep inside every single human heart we instinctively know we all live or die together. Yet show one human a way to cheat his fellow man and make an extra kill, an extra buck, an extra car, and the whole notion goes up in flames.
7 comments:
Good points. Sometimes I fear we have gone past a sort of tipping point, where we can't ever return to sanity.
And I, for one, think you are totally right in your thoughts today! Now, how to get this point across to everyone.
In the old days, Andrew Carnegie built nearly 4,000 public libraries around the world. Henry Huntington donated his father's entire fortune to charitable causes. These days, where are the Koch Brothers' Libraries? The Walton Family Charity Hospitals? Anyone? Giving back on such a grand scale is almost unheard of these days.
Chomsky and Zinn have both said that when we work together we can get things done. It is true and that is why the 1% work so hard on fight against each other.
on getting us to fight against each other I mean :)
I think the main reason we have societies is to keep the little monsters thast live in the dark corners of our brains from getting out and taking over. People like Cheney, the Kochs, etc, are so ruled by their little monsters that they hate the idea of society restraining their greed/bloodlust, whatever.
Sorry to be late to the party here... I agree completely, well said.
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