You don't kill that proverbial goose if you want any more golden eggs. This time, the middle class can't come back because there is no industrial base, no consumer economy to keep it going. Those Americans have joined the struggling masses to await their fate in the next chapter of American history.

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 Today (4/2/08) I  read USXP's excellent diary entry on OpEdNews entitled INDOCTRI-NATION: FAIT ACCOMPLI . I recommend it and hope this article with a similar title will continue USXP's critically important conversation] 

Letting Wall Street and the Fed run the economy is like putting drug addicts and sex offenders in charge of an orphanage.  

By now it’s a cliché:  “America has socialism for the rich and capitalism for the poor.”  Even those who understand the statement may not be able to explain what it means, give examples or examine it. I have long accepted it as ironic but mostly accurate and let it go at that. 

Lately, I’m thinking maybe the statement is misleading, if not completely untrue.  Lately, I’m learning that capitalism is not democratic at all, not really free market, not really patriotic. 

Along with other anxious citizens, I’m learning that whatever system is passing for capitalism in the U.S., it is not operated for the welfare of the nation but for the profits of the corporate state’s masters, or as they like to call themselves, “investors.” 

The combination of unfair and unbalanced trade policy, outsourcing, debt and deficit, a trillion dollar war, tax cuts for the rich, a declining inflationary  dollar and the Bush Privatization Derangement Syndrome, 90% of the people are suddenly left to fend for themselves. 

Goodbye, America 

I’m not a quitter, but I am a realist. When I finally realized the Bush Administration and the Republican Congress (before ’06) were destroying America on multiple fronts, I became an activist in the only way I knew how—writing op-ed pieces like many that now appear on OpEdNews and never in the MSM. By adding OEN to my news sources, I also learned more from better-informed writers whose aims were the same as mine. 

After the ’06 elections, it took a couple of years to realize the Congress, including the Democrats, was either abdicating its sworn duty or was impotent against a kind of executive power never before sought, let alone wielded by an American President, not even in time of war. 

The failure of the new congress to reign in Bush’s war and the out of control spending was portrayed by the MSM as a  Democratic failure.  Media and polls indicated that 75% of Americans wanted to end the war. The same polls indicated that Congress had a lower opinion rating than even Bush, whose approval rating was under 30%.  I never saw a Republican vs Democratic rating for Congress.  

If the public was so angry at the Democrats for failure to stop Bush, why was there no rancor for the Republicans in congress, who enabled the dysfunctional President in his madness?

That’s when I realized the mainstream media, our beloved MSM, was also part of the team of deception when it came to public knowledge and opinion. 

So if Congress and the MSM, and don’t forget the corporate masters, were all in it together, as was becoming increasingly evident, what avenue of action could we take to prevent the fall of our beloved "Land of the Free?" That’s when I realized it was a fait accompli, or as common folks say, “a done deal.” 

The coup, the junta, the devolution, whatever you want to call it, is over. The MSM has helped a cultish element of the Republican Right, Bush’s Neoconservatives, construct an unassailable system: White House; Congress; the Judiciary, the Department of Justice, the Department of Defense. 

Tools in this war against us were the economy, the war, Free Market (meaning unfettered) Capitalism; free trade; Fundamentalist dogma; fear of terrorism and of course, the MSM propaganda machine. 

Killing the Goose

The middle class has become a declining support base for the globalization of capitalism.  The rich have used us to get richer. This time, they screwed up. You don’t kill that proverbial goose if you want any more golden eggs. This time, the middle class can’t come back because there is no industrial base, no consumer economy to keep it going. Those Americans have joined the struggling masses to await their fate in the next chapter of American history. 

I said I’m not a quitter.  But like our military, I’m worn out. I have done too many tours without Spiritual sustenance, renewal, or rejuvenation. Still, that isn’t why I’m giving up. If I’m right and the coup is already accomplished and permanent, there really is no hope because it means the majority of Americans out there don’t even know it.

And if it explodes into public due to a war with Iran and subsequent martial law, count on half of America choosing to support the “government.”  Divide and conquer.

That is what the extreme partisan divide has accomplished over the last twenty-five years. Not knowing who the bad guys are is the first principle of psychological warfare. 

The perfect psyops war result:  They never fired a shot.

Authors Bio:
Fulbright in 1966-67; Visiting Lecturer in American Literature with Baghdad University/Texas University Exchange Program. Guest Lecturer for the American Authors Lecture Series for the United States Information Service in Iraq.

Co-authored with Carole Chaney "Baghdad Letters" in 2003, a collection of letters and journals written in 1966-67 in Iraq.
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