Like centuries before, today's Mexico is a country of illusions, where public relations and marketed perceptions are tools in maintaining the status quo.
The GOP's Use of Branding and Marketing Just as Mexico's ruling class covers its tracks through the drug industry by staging drug busts and jailing unreliable traffickers, so too, the ruling class in the U.S. creates the illusion that its political party, the GOP, advocates policies to improve the standard of living for the American middle class. The GOP greatly outperforms the Democratic Party by using consistent and harmonized talking points.
The GOP claims to stand for Christian beliefs and good, old-fashioned American traditions:
The GOP need look no further than south of the border to see their talking points in action. The Mexican ruling class has always maintained the policies that the GOP in the U.S. advocates. Both the right-wing in Mexico and in the U.S. seek to increase power for businesses and to weaken government, which only intensifies the distribution of wealth away from the middle class and into the hands of the wealthy. The policies have made Mexico third-world country it is today.
But this is changing. The standard of living for middle-class families has dropped drastically since the 1960s.
By eliminating the social infrastructure that a democratic government is designed to maintain for and by the general population, the right-wing in the U.S., particularly organizations like the Heritage Foundation, has carefully dismantled Roosevelt's New Deal, Truman's Fair Deal, and Johnson's Great Society. These initiatives, and others like them, were created to allow all American citizens access to opportunities to improve their living standard and to level economic barriers restricting access to education and healthcare.
Many of today's right-wing organizations have their roots in the Christian Fellowship movement, also known as The Family, which took hold initially in the 1930s and grew in strength as it indoctrinated the wealthy as well as powerful politicians, including G. W. Bush.(9) The Family can trace its origins to even older American conservative organizations, including the KKK and Opus Dei, among others.(10) Like the twisted operations of the powerful mafia-style plutocracy that permeates the Mexican ruling class and government, a nefarious religious movement has now begun to seize control over the American government, including all its branches--the executive, Congress, the Supreme Court--and even several state governments.
The Fellowship, like any church, interpretes the Bible and its prophets in ways suited for their own goals. The Family's agenda focuses on gaining power by furthering the ambitions of many right-wing politicians. Since Jesus is an extremely popular, charismatic prophet, the Family uses Christ as a branding icon, a logo. It helps immensely in gaining votes. A large part of the American population follows most any agenda that includes an association with Jesus. The Family uses Jesus as a branding strategy just as McDonald's uses the clown Ronald McDonald, although the Family's political policies and agenda stray far from the ideals of love, peace, and equality that Jesus preached. The Family sees Jesus as a powerful, charismatic leader who captured a following of gullible masses just like other great men of history, including Genghis Khan and Mussolini.
(1)Drug Lord by Terrence E. Poppa, 1998, at 22.
(2)Id at 222.
(3)Id at 44.
(4)Id at 336.
(5)Id.
(6)Murder City by Charles Bowden, 2010.
(7)Id at 204.
(8) The Spirit Level by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, 2009; Forward by R. B. Reich, at v.
(9) The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power by Jeff Sharlet (2009)
(10)The "Christian" Mafia by Wayne Madsen.
The GOP's Use of Branding and Marketing Just as Mexico's ruling class covers its tracks through the drug industry by staging drug busts and jailing unreliable traffickers, so too, the ruling class in the U.S. creates the illusion that its political party, the GOP, advocates policies to improve the standard of living for the American middle class. The GOP greatly outperforms the Democratic Party by using consistent and harmonized talking points.
The GOP claims to stand for Christian beliefs and good, old-fashioned American traditions:
- It wants to reduce taxes and maintain fiscal responsibility--even though the last Republican president drove up historical deficits.
- It wants to reduce government power and size in order to enable the middle class worker to obtain a higher standard of living, even though weak governmental regulation of big business can ruin the economy for the middle class as we have seen recently.
- It wants to give more freedom to big business to create a stronger economy--leading to a further reduction in industry regulations, an increase in economic disasters, and an even more inequitable distribution of wealth.
- It seeks to create a unified Christian culture and society based on wholesome values, even though an overwhelming number of recent ethical scandals arise from conservatives such as Catholic and other Christian fundamentalists.
- It promotes solid Christian morality as a means to take away individual rights such as women's choice about abortion and other individual liberties.
The GOP need look no further than south of the border to see their talking points in action. The Mexican ruling class has always maintained the policies that the GOP in the U.S. advocates. Both the right-wing in Mexico and in the U.S. seek to increase power for businesses and to weaken government, which only intensifies the distribution of wealth away from the middle class and into the hands of the wealthy. The policies have made Mexico third-world country it is today.
"Mexicans," he explains, "know the army is a bunch of brutes. But what is going on now is a coup d'etat by the army. The president is illegitimate. The army has installed itself. They have become the government".The president has his hands tied, and he has tied them."(7)Except for a few periods, Mexico's right-wing plutocracy has succeeded to maintain its status quo since the Spanish conquered the native Indians centuries ago. In the U.S., the right-wing ruling class has also maintained its power to a lesser extent, especially during the period after WWII, when a middle class began to prosper from the industrial expansion.
"Most American families are worse off today than they were three decades ago. The Great Recession of 2008-2009 destroyed the value of their homes, undermined their savings, and too often left them without jobs. But even before the Great Recession began, most Americans had gained little from the economic expansion that began almost three decades before. Today, the Great Recession notwithstanding, the U.S. economy is far larger than it was in 1980. But where has all the wealth gone? Mostly to the very top. The latest data shows that by 2007, America's top 1 percent of earners received 23 percent of the nation's total income--almost triple their 8 percent share in 1980."(8)This economic trend is eroding much of the American middle class. It continues increasing numbers of families will no longer find the means to assure their children's health and education. This deteriorates our society in general and can destroy our democracy and economy, whose strength depends on critical thinking skills for all citizens. Reducing government means reducing social infrastructure, and leads to the dumbing down of America to the level of a Sarah-Palin culture of ignorance and greed.
By eliminating the social infrastructure that a democratic government is designed to maintain for and by the general population, the right-wing in the U.S., particularly organizations like the Heritage Foundation, has carefully dismantled Roosevelt's New Deal, Truman's Fair Deal, and Johnson's Great Society. These initiatives, and others like them, were created to allow all American citizens access to opportunities to improve their living standard and to level economic barriers restricting access to education and healthcare.
Many of today's right-wing organizations have their roots in the Christian Fellowship movement, also known as The Family, which took hold initially in the 1930s and grew in strength as it indoctrinated the wealthy as well as powerful politicians, including G. W. Bush.(9) The Family can trace its origins to even older American conservative organizations, including the KKK and Opus Dei, among others.(10) Like the twisted operations of the powerful mafia-style plutocracy that permeates the Mexican ruling class and government, a nefarious religious movement has now begun to seize control over the American government, including all its branches--the executive, Congress, the Supreme Court--and even several state governments.
The Fellowship, like any church, interpretes the Bible and its prophets in ways suited for their own goals. The Family's agenda focuses on gaining power by furthering the ambitions of many right-wing politicians. Since Jesus is an extremely popular, charismatic prophet, the Family uses Christ as a branding icon, a logo. It helps immensely in gaining votes. A large part of the American population follows most any agenda that includes an association with Jesus. The Family uses Jesus as a branding strategy just as McDonald's uses the clown Ronald McDonald, although the Family's political policies and agenda stray far from the ideals of love, peace, and equality that Jesus preached. The Family sees Jesus as a powerful, charismatic leader who captured a following of gullible masses just like other great men of history, including Genghis Khan and Mussolini.
"Look at Hitler," he [Doug Cole, a leader of the Family] said, "Lenin, Ho Chi Minh, bin Laden." The Family possessed a weapon those leaders lacked: the "total Jesus" of a brotherhood in Christ.A quote from Genghis Khan sums up much of the Family's fascist mission, especially in light of the neoconservative, preemptive invasion of Iraq:
"The greatest happiness is to scatter your enemy, to drive him before you, to see his cities reduced to ashes, to see those who love him shrouded in tears, and to gather into your bosom his wives and daughters."
(1)Drug Lord by Terrence E. Poppa, 1998, at 22.
(2)Id at 222.
(3)Id at 44.
(4)Id at 336.
(5)Id.
(6)Murder City by Charles Bowden, 2010.
(7)Id at 204.
(8) The Spirit Level by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, 2009; Forward by R. B. Reich, at v.
(9) The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power by Jeff Sharlet (2009)
(10)The "Christian" Mafia by Wayne Madsen.
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