I have a very good Canadian friend who enjoys "needling" me about being a Democrat, a liberal, and supporter of President Obama. He sends me stuff, as I am sure many of us get, like stupid cartoons about Obama taking more money from the 1% that pay over 50% of the taxes while the lower 50% of the American populace doesn't pay "any taxes". He asked me that with this fact being "true" how it could not bother me.
My response was:
"None of it is true! This is such bullshit and that is a stupid ass cartoon. Figures may not lie, but liars figure. Here’s why! The top 20% own 80% of the wealth. Do you realize that the top 400 Americans together have greater wealth than the bottom 150,000,000 COMBINED? And besides this inequality, the lower portion of the population still pays for every other kind of tax like real estate, gas, sales, state, FICA, Medicare etc. Seriously, how much do you actually believe anyone making $40K/annum (the median income in the US) has left to pay Federal Income tax after they pay for food, gas, utilities, schools? Do you get why there is a 99% movement growing in this country?"
To which I received a much more rational response about governments failing and Obama having squandered the opportunity his mandate afforded him to change the political environment. My response to that response is below the fold.
First of all, Happy Holidays. And thank you for a rational response. There isn’t a great deal I disagree with you here. The 99% or #OWS movement is coherent however. They know, we all know exactly what they stand for. They (we) are pissed. We have worked all our lives with a gaze on a relatively enjoyable retirement, and equality in opportunity. Now, however, we are being told we can’t afford that or at least not for us. Maybe for people like Paris Hilton, who have excelled, it is possible, but not for the majority. We are pissed because we spent 3 trillion dollars and 4500 lives on a “war” that was a complete scam. We have watched as our “nesteggs” came and went several times in the last 20 years, each time in a more diminished form. And we watched as CEO’s left with multi-million, or in some cases, billion dollar severance packages celebrating their failure while workers were thrown out to “retrain” and “evolve”. And then of course came 2008. We watched as trillions of the people’s money was used to bail out those who had setup an elaborate ponzi scheme of CDFs and pre-packaged garbage which they shipped around the world. I would have preferred to have them choke on their own greed, but the world is too interlaced to have allowed that. We all live on the same planet, after all. And we are pissed because now that our hard earned treasure has been lost to grand larceny, we are being told that our dreams are no longer affordable. “We just don’t have the money” we are told. We must live within our means. The message of the 99% is “Fuck you, that was our money you stole”. And in addition to stealing it, now you want to tell me “Its tough shit, so chew harder.”??? That rationale only works if the current order is to be maintained. When you have this level of disparity, the current order can’t stand for long. That’s why #OWS scares Frank Luntz. This isn’t a result of government not being able to work. Its a result of those in government making certain it DOESN’T work. That it can’t work.
As for the disappointment with Obama, certainly I share some of that. But it becomes clearer each day that the headwinds for him have been unprecedented in my opinion. You don’t need to be a conspiracy theorist to acknowledge the avowed objective of the opposition party for defeating him above all else, including their own country. Its my belief that Barack Obama is to be made to stand as an object lesson for any minority. “How dare you become President?”
Frankly, Bush was a much greater disappointment. After 9/11, he had a nearly unanimous mandate. I didn’t vote for him, but I was proud of him when he stood on the rubble of the WTC and said the ones who did this would hear from all us soon. His speech to the the Joint Session of Congress was his finest hour IMO. And then he betrayed the faith of his fellow countrymen. He manipulated the events, as he said he would, to become a “war president” and use that status to achieve his ideological agenda. All of which brings us to where we are today. Some of the 1% understand the status quo is unsustainable. Some of them understand it correctly, some don’t. The more conditions take on the look of a Mubarek Egypt, the more likely an “arab spring” will occur eventually.
I’m looking forward to some spirited conversation with you and Brian someday. Maybe in his Arizona fortress before the barbarians get to the gates.