This same selfish attitude is evident in the continuing discussion and debate over the prospects of comprehensive health care for all Americans. While there are those who care about their fellow Americans and believe that each and every one of them should have access to the same health care benefits, that this is the moral thing to do, that's not the case with those misguided Americans who personally have excellent benefits but support the powerful forces that are working tirelessly to prevent others from also having them.
The Republicans should feel very fortunate that they have this sizable segment of the middle class that can be so readily controlled and influenced. In fact, the only reason that the Republican Party has been able to survive to this point in time is that it has been able to sell its demented ideology to this easily manipulated group of people by channeling it to them through the intellectually-challenged GOP news commentators whose crazed rantings dominate the mainstream media.
Then there is the gridlock in Congress involving the fiscal cliff discussions and the Democrat's continued insistence that there is an absolute need for the wealthiest Americans to pay more in taxes. A sizable majority of these misguided Americans support the position of the Republicans that calls for protecting the rich even if it means that the majority of Americans have to shoulder a greater burden. The idea that the richest Americans, in this great time of need, must be protected from paying a larger share of taxes is, to me, disgusting, repulsive and unconscionable.
What we have been witnessing is an American tragedy. When I think of this nation's once great industrial might, its manufacturing sector, I recall that it was largely the middle class that made it the envy of the world. When we had a strong manufacturing sector and a strong middle class, America was not plagued by the myriad of problems that it faces today. What this combination of Corporate America and the Republican Party has accomplished, by working to destroy this nation's industrial base, is to weaken the foundations of this nation and carve the heart out of its economy.
Further, Corporate America and its Republican cohorts, without question, fear the minorities of America because they see their increasing numbers and their growing influence in the political process which heavily leans toward the Democrats. And so their primary focus, because of those facts, is to do all possible to hold down these ascending minorities, sap the strength of the middle class, transfer its wealth to the upper income brackets, render it powerless, and force many millions of people who inhabit it into the lower levels of the income spectrum.
Should they be successful in pulling off this societal coup then what they will have achieved is that America will be transformed into a rigid two class system; those at the very top that possess the power and the wealth of the nation and those who will be powerless and comprise the lower levels of this society. While that's what I believe their end objective is, I think this vicious consortium will find that this will become quite impossible because, as was evident in this past election, that more and more Americans are totally rejecting the demented ideology of the Republican Party and want no part of its agenda.
And that is exactly why these wayward, misguided Americans will find that they are on the wrong side of the middle class and the wrong side of America. They cannot remain there, they must make a critically important decision; they can continue to live on the wrong side, following a Republican Party that is self-destructing, soon to become extinct. They can also remain subservient and supportive of Corporatism, an entity that eventually will find that its relentless efforts to destroy the middle class will backfire and completely fail. If they take this path they will become just as meaningless and irrelevant as those they so blindly support.
Or, if they are able to come to their senses, they can reject the pernicious doctrine of these agents of destruction and get back on the right side of the middle class and that of America.
Michael Payne
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