Have you ever had that feeling that you learned something that you already knew but had forgotten? The initial feeling akin to euphoria - knowledge gained - then the realization that you knew that information and along the way had stored it in a dusty corner of the brain and you come to grips with the fact you just aren't that smart at all. In fact, you might just be dealing with the early onset of alzheimers - a comforting thought indeed, but on the upside, it too will soon be forgotten...
I had that moment today. A joke has been circulating on Facebook in the last couple days -
This is what it really boils down to isn't it?
A couple days ago I wrote of a possible future where right wing conservatives ran the country without a viable opposition. The conservative right's dream of low taxes, no regulation on business, a laissez-faire capitalist system where free markets reign supreme, thrown in with religious-social conservative ideals. Maybe it's just the prism that I look through, but that form of political system just feels like a potential fasco-theocracy.
This morning I was having a conversation with a co-worker who has no qualms identifying himself as a hardcore conservative. I told the joke above and it dawned on me that we no longer live in a representative democracy. I thought about the graphic in Sunday's blog:
You can't have representative democracy when the top 20% of the population controls nearly 85% of the wealth. Since McCain-Feingold (the Campaign Finance Act) passed nearly a decade ago, the law limiting corporate money pumped into political campaigns has been challenged repeatedly until at last effectively overturned by the Supreme Court in a 5-4 decision in January 2010. The court ruled essentially that money is a form of free speech and can not be limited according to the First Amendment.
On the heels of the financial meltdown, or what should be called the Wall Street Fleecing of America, and noting that not one Wall Street executive has been indicted, tried, convicted, or gone to jail for this rape of the American financial system, it is apparent that that top 1% of wealth in America is the true ruling power in this country.
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| From Mother Jones |
We are simply maintaining a facade of representative government of the people, by the people and for the people - nothing could be further from the truth. We have a government of a vetted select for corporate interests. Our 535 elected representatives have been bought and paid for - and it isn't by you or me. Our remaining 10 members of the government - a president and nine members of the Supreme Court are similarly compensated and funded by upper tenth of the top 1 percent.
Meanwhile, those Americans in the bottom 90-95% are scrambling for crumbs and distracted by that union guy trying to take a cookie, or abortion, or prayer in school, or gay marriage, or any other issue that has no real economic impact to their way of life. You think these politicians on either side of the aisle aren't playing you like fiddles? You might want to try turning off Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity sometime - these are the guys getting paid to keep you distracted from what is really happening to you - and it isn't pretty.
So what exactly do you call a political system based on capitalism? Since the founding of this country, we've maintained a representative democracy that co-exists with a capitalist economic system. But when the economic system overcomes the democratic system, what is that called? Can capitalism exist solely as a lone political system? I think we are on the cusp of finding out.
And here I thought I had this awesome epiphany, and I remembered a saying my dad told me quite often when I was a kid: "Money talks, bullshit walks." There is nothing new here - it's all about the money and it's talking.
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