Hartmann skillfully translates Bushspeak: "When the cons call for smaller government or for less regulation or for 'free' market, what they are really saying is: 'Give control of the economy over to a handful of CEOs and let us run the country for you.' What they're really saying is that they don't believe in democracy and don't want a middle class" [p.61]. His point is self-evident from the record accumulated in six years with Bush as the CEO president and the cons attempt to privatize all government operations.
Despite rhetoric about conservatives, the same con men selling us the story about our founding fathers, who fought courageously for the country, are selling the middle class down the river with myths about our own history. Our education system serves to make sure that most people remember a few historical facts and are clueless about the historical debates that took place over the competing ideas about government. This makes is easy for the cons to talk with great levity about what the founding fathers said and use their names to defend policies that are anti-democratic and elitist. While many of the founding fathers did fight, what they fought for was to be free of the politics of England that enriched the king and the royals while the rest of the people lived in Dickensonian poverty. We are at that precipice and we need to retake the country from the hands of the rich and put it back into the hands of the decent Americans in the middle who struggle every day to make an honest living and are getting screwed.
So what does Hartmann propose that we the people do about this situation? He has several suggestions but all require that people get active. The Revolution was not won by passive agreement with its principles; watching it on TV won't do. Hartmann's prescription is to demand a return to the policies and programs that have been dismantled since Reagan plus the addition of a new one-a single-payer health care plan based on Medicare. As he notes, a single-payer health plan was proposed by Truman and defeated by the Republicans of his time.
Hartmann's activist agenda includes renewed support for unions and a revival of energy conservation and energy independence policies as starter issues. He counsels that even small things like contacting our representatives have a larger impact than we may think. In addition, Hartmann encourages the public to take back the Democratic Party, starting at the local level, and make it representative of their interests. The same way the cons seized control of the Republican Party in the 80s, the progressives need to take control of the Democrats to enact their agenda.
It's hard to know what will be the stimulus for garnering a more active public when the corporatocracy controls the media that feeds the middle class the "facts" as they want to them to be heard, controls the educational agenda that keeps the middle class from really learning how to think, and controls the machines that tally our votes. Hartmann's analysis is surely a start.
Lynne Glasner is a freelance writer/editor based in New York City. She has edited numerous books, fiction and nonfiction, many on political subjects. Her essays have appeared in Commondreams, MediaChannel.org as well as OpEd News.
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