I talk to people every day. People who are really pretty smart. I watch as people get angry at President Obama for seemingly having not only caused all of today’s problems but apparently sitting by and doing nothing at all to fix his horrid messes. People who have taken the bait (hook line and sinker) and really think they are being misled by everyone but Fox News. Fox News of course being very new to the game of teaching people that what will eventually destroy them is what they actually want. This has been going on for decades.
The right wing has convinced too many people that unions are evil and are going to destroy the companies we work for, even though they are talking to people who live (at least for a little while longer) in the middle class that would not be here if not for unions. The middle class has been a problem that businesses have been trying to solve for a long time. Even though unions are nothing more than groups of workers trying to protect themselves from the horrors of what it was like before workers had any rights. Yet many have come to believe that unions are some nefarious monster dreamed up by Stalin to make people lazy. Even though unions are partially why small businesses (supposedly the backbone of American enterprise) can compete and even exist. Has anyone noticed how unions, the middle class and small businesses are disappearing now and how mega corporations just keep getting bigger?
They have convinced too many people that large companies have their best interest in mind not the government. Even though they do not have the right to influence what corporations do (see above) even if they work for one. Even though government is something they voted for and have a lot of say in what it does. If you think there is fraud and abuse in your police department now; give it to the private sector and get out of the way quickly. I can imagine the first board meeting when the stockholders complain of not enough revenue.
They love to point out that when the government spends money it is taxpayer's money being spent but have convinced too many people that when an insurance company gives billions of dollars in bonuses to it's executives that somehow that wasn't policy holder's money being spent. That when a large bank gives billions of dollars in bonuses to it's executives it somehow wasn't depositor's money being spent. They have convinced too may people that the poor, the disenfranchised and the government are taking all of your money. I'm not sure why the poor remain poor in that case and why we so consistently vote for a government that is fleecing us.
They have convinced people that immigrants are destroying the fabric of what makes America great though that is what made America great and immigration is a strong strand among others making our fabric.
How have they done these things? When the right wing representatives in the government and the right wing itself (read corporations) are the ones actually doing the fleecing?
It is actually quite simple. They are taking advantage of the fact that we have become a nation that clings to a belief that we are owed a comfortable life. Convinced that we are owed the right to accumulate whatever we need to assure that we attain that comfort. The convincers themselves live the most comfortable of lives and have become the role models we aspire to instead of being recognized as a problem we have to solve. People are all but bred to ignore what the cost of this comfort is. That cost being poverty throughout the world, the destruction of our natural resources, the pollution, the waste etc.
Somehow we've come to think our way of life is free and due us. If we punish or in anyway diminish this super class of extremely wealthy individuals we somehow doom ourselves to never standing amongst them. Against that I claim no argument.
How do you fight that?
How do you tell Americans that we really don't deserve wide screen TVs that have access to hundreds of channels, huge machines that move us and our stuff around, bananas in the middle of winter and ice cold drinks in the middle of summer. How do you tell people you may have some of these things but not at the price you currently pay? It really cost so much more. Just look around.
But how do we make these claims and not become the enemy? Not become the enemy of what people have been told all of there lives was their intrinsic right as an American.
We can’t and that is why the far right wins. They tell people that all of those selfish hippies are just trying to give your stuff to lazy poor people and deny you the American dream. And horrors of horrors ... some of these lazy poor people are "illegal". They confidently claim that even the "Global Warming" and "Peak Oil" are myths contrived by progressives to trick you out of your right to the American way of life. The way of life that was promised to us by our flawless forefathers. So it is simple. Starve the enablers and all of the lazy, poor and illegal people will have to go elsewhere and America will be great again.
We have to show people that the American dream was the myth. It is the attempt to create and sustain that myth that is killing the planet and enabling a true class war. It is not the poor robbing from the rich in order to eat. It is the rich robbing the poor to maintain their version of the dream.
If we pretend that we can continue, ala Beck and so many others, with things as usual we will soon squander everything, devastate the earth and condemn future generations in the bargain. It is happening as we speak.
The other option is that we take a deep breath and change ... This cannot be one person at a time. This is all or nothing.