Perhaps we would be better served and more honest with one another if were to rename "The Age of Enlightenment" according to its actual effect, which is deceit. Wouldn't you be more inclined to read the writings of those touted as the progenitors of a new age if you knew they were party to what could be considered, "The Age of Deceit,” if you knew that ideologues, charlatans and yes-men established the ideological foundations of “The New World,” and wouldn’t you find your love of country, your love for The United States of America, replenished if you knew that it emerged from a rebellion that decried the tangible results of such deceit? Consider the number of voices throughout human history that go unheard. What did The Sons of Liberty discuss in the squalid corridors of Boston? Who were the protestors that trespassed upon The Dartmouth, Eleanor and Beaver and destroyed their cargo?
Who were the men and women boycotting British goods and British coin? Because rich kids don’t boycott. Boycotts require numbers. Boycotts require a plurality. Boycotts require the people. The rich withhold product to increase prices. The rich corner the market and reduce opportunity. The rich boycott people rather than product, and even if the rich were possessed by a radical change-of-heart, they would be incapable of anything without the many, the masses, the common man.
Who were the men of The Continental Army? They weren’t fighting for a college education. They didn’t fight because it was expected of them. They didn’t fight because the alienating experience of returning to a country in disarray after leaving a country in disarray, of returning to a war zone after having left a war zone provided them with less comfort than the regularity and order of military life. They fought for their principles. They fought because it was necessary. They were defending their brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers, children, friends and neighbors.
And what does our government fight for today? Oil. Power. Cheap labor. It’s a crime against humanity that the voices of those who sacrifice their lives for this country go unheard while those who benefit are worshiped in textbooks or quietly reap the profits. Why did The Sons of Liberty risk their livelihoods to protest a tax? Why did men sacrifice their lives in desperate revolt? What compelled them?
It’s estimated that at least a quarter of the population owned a copy (purchased or pirated) of Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense” during the outbreak of hostilities between the colonists and their rulers. By that accounting, Thomas Paine’s pamphlet is the most popular book in American history, albeit it remains conspicuously absent from school curricula across the country. His incendiary call to arms was read in taverns and reprinted in newspapers along the entire Eastern seaboard. In it, Paine describes the reasons for revolt, illustrates the absurdity of monarchy and aristocracy and defends the rights of all mankind, insisting that in order to preserve those rights, the colonists must institute a government founded upon democratic principles.
He begins by describing how - as populations increase - society begets government, and as he lures the reader into his narrative, he gives a subtle nod to Kett’s Rebellion. “Some convenient tree,” he writes, “Will afford [the people] a State-House, under the branches of which, the whole colony may assemble to deliberate on public matters.” Later in his pamphlet, in an appeal to the people, urging them to remain resolute and united in their conviction to resist the crown and guard one another’s honor, Paine reinforces the allusion to Kett, naming the genus of tree under which he formed his assembly: “The least fracture now will be like a name engraved with the point of a pin on the tender rind of a young oak; the wound will enlarge with the tree, and posterity read it in full grown characters.” This is no coincidence. Paine was born in a town that’s only a twenty to thirty minute drive from Wymondham, where Kett’s rebellion began, the town of Thetford, and the legend of Robert Kett, which is still popular in the county of Norfolk, England today, would have been more prominent and ubiquitous in the Norfolk of 1776.
Paine concludes his introduction with a defense of the logic of government.
“Here then is the origin and rise of government; namely, a mode rendered necessary by the inability of moral virtue to govern the world; here too is the design and end of government, viz., freedom and security. And however our eyes may be dazzled with snow, or our ears deceived by sound; however prejudice may warp our wills, or interest darken our understanding, the simple voice of nature and of reason will say, it is right.”
The remainder of “Common Sense” is a stinging indictment of monarchy, aristocracy and hereditary government peppered with poetic appeals to democratic principles that end with a call for revolution, a description of the “Charter of The United Colonies” and an assessment of the continent’s readiness for war. Despite its poetry, its wealth of history and the wisdom that guided the author’s quill, the most startling quality of Thomas Paine’s exposition is its relevance today.
The pamphlet is a relatively short and accessible read, and after having absorbed less than half its volume, it dawns upon the reader that poverty, trade-generated extortion and usurious debt were foremost among the colonists’ concerns.
“America is only a secondary object in the system of British politics - England consults the good of this country no farther than it answers her own purpose . . . her own interest leads her to suppress the growth of ours in every case which doth not promote her advantage, or in the least interfere with it. A pretty state we should soon be in under such a second-hand government, considering what has happened!”
After World War Two, 730 delegates from 44 Allied nations met in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire and decided to impoverish working people across the globe by passing a series of agreements. This group eventually incorporated under the name “World Trade Organization.” These agreements, or “laws,” which are not the laws of any government and were never revealed to nor sanctioned by any sovereign national [citizen] of the consenting parties, which consist of governments and multinational corporations, supply the rationale required for corporations to engage in bilateral negotiations with sovereign nations like China and India, countries that supply the aforementioned entities with cheap laborers who live in work camps, ghettos and prisons. Yet the gluttonous appetites of CEOs and shareholders, who are motivated solely by greed, remained unsated. The lawlessness that permitted them to extort $39.90 per head per day after they moved operations overseas to reduce wages from 40 dollars per hour to 10 cents per hour was stymied by politicians in countries, states and municipalities who either wanted something the corporations couldn’t provide or who were unwilling to sacrifice the rights of their constituents for personal gain, so they twisted the arms of our lawmakers - wined them, dined them and bribed them - to pass “free-trade” agreements that accelerated the destruction of America’s manufacturing industry, impoverished Mexican farmers, suffocated local commerce, revoked constitutional guarantees protecting Native Americans and further imperiled the environment and natural resources (such as water) across the continent.
Between 1982 and 2012, America’s top 400 wealthiest individuals siphoned 12 percent of investments from manufacturing and funneled it into finance, which experienced a 15 percent increase during the same period of time. NAFTA, a hallmark of The Clinton Administration, has lead to a 97.2 billion dollar trade deficit with Mexico and a displacement of approximately 682,900 American jobs. Today, 53% of American manufacturers, 43% of American internet technology providers and 38% of American research and development companies no longer employ Americans. Multinational corporations, which employ approximately 20 percent of all American workers, cut their domestic employment by 2.9 million while increasing their overseas workforce by 2.4 million between 2000 and 2009. Lawyer, investigative journalist and former chief economist for The McKinzie Consultancy, James S. Henry, estimates that multinationals have moved at least 32 trillion dollars - twice the American GDP - into offshore tax havens. Why is it that the government of the people, by the people and for the people has allowed a global oligarchic confederacy of corporate entities - entities that owe their existence to the largesse of the American people - to defraud those for whom it was instituted to defend?
Not only does The United States government, which was established by “we the people” “in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common [defense], promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity” refuse to collect money owed to the people by corporations that claim no allegiance to anyone but themselves and that abide by a collection of international agreements, or “laws,” that remain hidden from the general public and exist outside of the context of our sovereign rule, it (the government) has the gall to defray the cost of aiding and abetting those multinationals by defunding the means we’ve instituted to preserve “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” That’s not all. The bastards running this dog and pony show are literally selling America to these multinationals at a net loss with tax-payer money. Your “representatives” are selling public education, public lands and services to the highest bidder AT A LOSS with tax-payer money. In other words, your “representatives” are dismantling the country they were elected to protect, they’re giving it away, and they’re charging you for the disservice.
Clearly, “America is only a secondary object in the system of [international trade]. [The United States government] consults the good of [the American people] no farther than it answers [the politician’s, the banker’s, the CEO’s] own purpose . . . [The interests of corporate America] leads her to suppress the growth of ours in every case which doth not promote her advantage, or in the least interfere with it. A pretty state we should soon be in under such a second-hand government, considering what has happened!”
Paine goes on to describe the effect of such a “second-hand government” upon the people and those who govern it: “Men who look upon themselves born to reign, and others to obey, soon grow insolent; selected from the rest of mankind their minds are early poisoned by importance; and the world they act in differs so materially from the world at large, that they have but little opportunity of knowing its true interests, and when they succeed to the government are frequently the most ignorant and unfit of any throughout the dominions.” Paine refers to kings and the hereditary nobility, but what difference is there between nobility and the unbelievably wealthy who “poisoned by importance” “grow insolent” in a world “so materially different from the world at large” they “have little opportunity of knowing its true interests”? Today, the inheritors of 50 percent of The U.S. national income in 2012, who reaped 95 percent of the income gains since 2009, are unlikely to sit elbow-to-elbow at a neighborhood bar with the common man . . . and if they did, it’s unlikely they would be able to tolerate it without an ample helping of thinly-veiled condescension.
“A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”
What matters is not what you call a thing. What matters is what it is.
There are gated communities tucked in gated communities occupied by a wealthy, isolated, self-serving few who run the world on blood and oil. They’ve been handed the world on a platter and have no idea what to do with it. Their cosmopolitan garden parties, trips to Dubai and private yachts separate them from the vast majority of their inheritance. These self-serving few, the unbelievably wealthy, live in a prison of their own design, and while they busy themselves with luxury and opulence in a gilded cage surrounded by heavily armored guards, the rest of us are buying time in the rec yard, fashioning shanks in a fight for the last scraps of decency the world has afforded us.
And what of the dwindling middle class and merely rich (opposed to “unbelievably wealthy”)? Thomas Paine appeals to their better senses. He asks those who “live distant from the scene of sorrow” to remember the plight of their fellow countrymen “who but a few months ago were in ease and affluence, [and] have now no other alternative than to stay and starve, or turn out to beg.” Paine’s pamphlet reminds us that in 1776, Boston’s poor closely resembled the poor in today’s cities, cities like Chicago.
“Endangered by the fire of their friends if they continue within the city, and plundered by the soldiery if they leave it. In their present condition they are prisoners without the hope of redemption, and in a general attack for their relief, they would be exposed to the fury of both armies.”
Between 2001 and 2012, the number of Americans murdered in Chicago exceeded the number of American soldiers that died in Afghanistan by more than double. All across the country, communities systematically deprived of economic opportunity compete in a black market for their bread and butter, and while they slaughter each other in a degraded state of governance, while they decimate their own numbers in this misguided rebellion, they’re preyed upon by a militarized police force that arrests them for the sale and possession of substances that have been deemed illegal by an unfeeling and faraway government. 59 percent of those imprisoned for drug-related offenses are black, yet blacks compose only 13 percent of the population and both whites and blacks use drugs in relatively the same proportions: approximately 6.25 percent of American whites (14 million) and 6.66 percent of American blacks (2.6 million) are reported drug users. The number of blacks incarcerated for drug-related crimes exceeds the number of whites incarcerated for the same offenses by a multiple of ten. Large numbers of those arrested for such offenses are children (Chicago incarcerates more 17-year-olds than L.A., Houston and Philly combined) and approximately 34 percent of those prisoners work for Unicor (The Federal Prison Industries) or private prison contractors that lobby congressmen to pass more laws to imprison more Americans to increase their profit margins. The United States, which composes 5 percent of the global population, claims 25 percent of the world’s prisoners, the largest prison population in human history. Nearly half of those inmates were imprisoned for non-violent offenses. Weren’t debtors’ prisons among the reasons people decided to leave England? Now America imprisons more people than any country in human history.
And it’s no coincidence that blacks and latinos comprise the majority of those who are being herded like cattle into gulags for cheap labor. Separate the masses into groups and exploit the smaller populations (the minorities) first. In this way, the majority will remain largely ignorant of or ambivalent towards the injustices being perpetrated in their name, especially if society is conveniently segregated according to ethnicity and class. The transparency of this strategy should lead us to question the prevailing assumption that those who pass laws or enact silent policies that target minorities are racists. Racism is no more than propaganda used to sway the majority (and minority) to reinforce the status quo. These laws and policies are the product of cold calculation. In effect, racial animosity is engineered. Proliferate hatreds amongst the people according to ethnicity, creed or even something as contrived as political party, then rob them of life and liberty. They’ll be so distracted by their animosities, once they realize their mistake, it’ll be too late. Thomas Paine warns his readers of the same danger in his call to arms.
“Notwithstanding our wisdom, there is a visible feebleness in some of our proceedings which gives encouragement to dissensions. The Continental Belt is too loosely buckled. And if something is not done in time, it will be too late to do any thing, and we shall fall into a state, in which, neither reconciliation nor independence will be practicable. The king and his worthless adherents are got at their old game of dividing the continent, and there are not wanting among us printers, who will be busy spreading specious falsehoods.”
We’re at an impasse.
While we bicker over the minutia of identity politics, while the middle class slips into poverty and the poor - white, black, immigrant and native - faces malnourishment and the prospect of homelessness, while we attack each other, scapegoat The New Deal or Reagan, a corporate elite and the demagogues who serve them are maneuvering to defraud us of our country, our democracy, our rights. Their strategy is simple: divide and conquer. They pollute our billboards, radio, television and forums with mindless drivel and disinformation, they sow hatred in our midst, they do what they please and on the rare occasion when people gather their voices in dissent, its in response to the inflammatory rhetoric of a law-maker, radio personality or news anchor. It’s lockstep, “Yes, Sir!”
In a democracy, it’s the other way around. In a democracy, rights are claimed, not given. In a democracy, when citizens speak, they employ the legislature. In a democracy, a few words deliver the weight of a community. In a democracy, people are not easily lead. In a democracy, the words, “neighbor” and “citizen,” are sacred. In a democracy, no one feels helpless. It’s obvious to all but the most dense and fearful among us that we no longer live in a democracy. Our “representatives” are taking bribes. We’re presented with a line-up of generic faces and the most insidious among them, the shills who accept the most favors, thereby accruing the largest sums in campaign donations, win elections 94 percent of the time. Our votes count for nothing. The Constitution goes unrecognized or is invoked by our law-makers only on those occasions when it's convenient. Besides, The Supreme Court has nearly equivocated the entire document. Those Justices have interpreted The Constitution into oblivion. The wealthy are above the law and laws are continually passed in contravention of the will of the people. These "laws" harm us all, whereas common law - real common law - law that says "I should be able to put whatever the hell I want in my body without fearing 30 years imprisonment" goes unheard. This is a state of lawlessness. We live in a state of lawlessness, anarchy, which is precisely how Thomas Pain put it in 1776.
“The present state of America is truly alarming to every man who is capable of reflection. Without law, without government, without any other mode of power than what is founded on, and granted by courtesy. Held together by an unexampled concurrence of sentiment, which is nevertheless subject to change, and which every secret enemy is endeavoring to dissolve. Our present condition, is, legislation without law; wisdom without a plan; a constitution without a name; and, what is strangely astonishing, perfect Independence contending for dependance.”
Aren’t we “without law, without government, without any other mode of power” other than what’s granted to us by courtesy? If so, how do we measure the courtesy that’s afforded to us? Are we being treated courteously? Who has claimed the privilege of providing us with law, government and modes of power on their terms? Why don’t we, who are without such privilege, claim it for ourselves? Who believes themselves incapable of imagining a better way of life or the means to realize it? Can we rightly call ourselves citizens if power has been reduced to the ability to purchase it? Is purchasing-power the only power available to us? If we continue grasping at something that is perpetually beyond our grasp, will we ever know? Why do we perpetuate this fraud?
There are those among us who deliberate over these questions without resolve, who read omens but don’t heed them, who embody The Constitution yet are continually betrayed by those elected to uphold it. Thomas Paine’s words are as relevant today as they were in 1776. We, who are more than capable of providing ourselves with our own economy, our own food and our own government, scramble to perpetuate a system that reduces us to commodities. We compete instead of cooperate, obey instead of dissent, pretend instead of observe. Men, women and children are reduced to quantities to be measured, calculated and exploited. We’ve become a country of prostitutes, ruled by pimps, raped by the wealthy. We’re bought and sold every day, and the bidding started at least thirty years ago, except today, if the client busts your face, it’s your fault. “The customer is always right and Exxon needs a tax subsidy, so you can take your food stamps and eat em!”
Reasons are contrived to excuse our suffering. Some call us “lazy,” “a drain on the economy” or “self-entitled,” but how are people supposed to work if there are no jobs? How are people without jobs supposed to eat without assistance? Who dares libel those of us who demand equality as “self-entitled?” Some say we must dismantle Medicaid, disability insurance, supplemental nutrition assistance, compensatory education, assisted housing, child welfare, and tax credits for the poor and middle class to lower the deficit, pay the debt and help the economy, but how would a nation of sick, penniless, starving, homeless people help the economy? Why is the country borrowing its own money from a private banking cartel? There is neither a debt nor deficit - not really - so why do the political and economic hacks keep pretending there is? Why do we participate in this sham? We can print our own money, jumpstart our own economy, create our own jobs, run our own government and grow our own food. We’re perfectly capable of it, so why do we march, lock step, to where the price of food rises on a daily basis? Who did this to us? Who reduced us to this miserly existence? Who shackled us to this system of profit and by doing so, deprived us of our autonomy?
“Is the power who is jealous of our prosperity, a proper power to govern us? Whoever says No to this question is an independent, for independency means no more, than, whether we shall make our own laws, or whether the king, the greatest enemy this continent hath, or can have, shall tell us, ‘there shall be no laws but such as I like.’”
No one wants to depend on an institution that subjects them to poverty wages, illness and food insecurity. No one wants to be homeless. No one wants to be neglected, abused or deprived of an adequate education. No one wants to live the life of a drug dealer, burglar or pick pocket. No one wants to go without meaningful work. These are the conditions of a desperate people, a people who are under attack in a world dominated by unfeeling corporate interests, under the management of a dysfunctional and corrupt government.
The number of Americans on the brink of starvation has doubled since 1980. 1 out of 6 Americans rely on charity or foodstamps to feed themselves, or they're simply unsure of where or how to find their next meal. These people, who are often referred to as “food insecure” instead of “hungry,” have no alternative but to purchase cheap food ("junk food"), which causes chronic lifelong health problems. Children who don't receive the nutrition they require suffer from stunted brain development, PTSD and behavioral problems. Some just find it extremely difficult to learn because they're always hungry. 23 percent of America's children live on the brink of starvation in "food insecure" families. Half of the families deemed "food insecure" are families that receive some form of income. 16 percent live outside of major metropolitan areas, where one might expect there to be land available for farming. The problem is not that we lack food. The problem is that food is becoming increasingly unaffordable. All the data suggests this problem will continue and worsen, claiming larger percentages of the population as the years drag on.
Many of those who suffer from food insecurity work minimum wage jobs, many of which are in the service and fast-food industries. More than half of low-wage workers at fast-food restaurants rely on public assistance, costing American taxpayers nearly 7 billion dollars every year. Last year, the top 10 largest fast-food companies made 7.4 billion dollars in profits. Americans are subsidizing the fast food industry because CEOs and shareholders don’t want to pay their employees a reasonable wage or provide them with health insurance. In response to stories like these, the top brass at McDonalds provided their employees with a “Practical Money Skills Budget Journal” “brought to you by Visa Inc. and Wealth Watchers International,” which included a “sample monthly budget” that excluded necessary expenditures such as heating, food, child care, clothes and gasoline, which - apparently - was allocated to the sample monthly budget’s “daily spending money goal” of 25 dollars. Adding insult to injury, the Practical Money Skills Budget recommended that its employees find a second job, a recommendation that has since been reneged, although “the monthly net income total” remains 2,060 dollars, which - for an employee working 35 hours per week, which is the number of hours allotted for most McDonalds’ employees - amounts to $12.86/hour, or $5.61/hour more than what McDonalds employees receive in compensation for stuffing little paper sacks full of chicken and corn matter while wearing that humiliating uniform.
America’s civilian workforce consists of 156 million people and 7.2 percent is unemployed according to The Bureau of Labor Statistics, yet evidence suggests the number of Americans struggling financially is higher than the unemployment rate bandied about on the 10 o’clock news. 15.2 million Americans work low-wage jobs, earning less than 23,000 dollars per annum, and 11.2 million Americans are unemployed, yet approximately 90.4 million people are neither “employed,” “low-wage” nor “unemployed.” They’re simply “discouraged.” BLS collects data on only 7.4 percent of discouraged workers: the approximate 3.1 million who have “searched for work in the previous year, but not the last 4 weeks,” and the approximate 3.2 million who “did not search for work in the previous year.” The remaining 84.1 million include those who The Bureau of Labor Statistics says, “Includes some persons who are not asked if they want a job.” They may as well have said, “We have no fucking clue.”
Some commentators are eager to point out that 10 percent of our discouraged workers are 16 or 17 years of age, 23 percent are enrolled in either a 2 or 4 year college, and 44 percent are 65 years of age or older, leaving only 23 percent, or about 20 million people, in the category of “question mark.” In my neighborhood, you’d be hedging your bets if you guessed that 50 percent of 16 and 17 years olds, college students and “retirees” need a job yet are unable to find one. Maybe these commentators live in Westchester County.
Assuming that half of the 20 million discouraged workers in the category of “question mark” and half the people enrolled in either a 2 or 4 year college need a job yet are unable to find one, including the 6.3 million discouraged workers whom we can safely assume were looking for work, the 11.2 million unemployed and the 15.2 million “underemployed,” who work low-wage jobs, we are left with a relatively conservative estimate of 53.2 million people in a state of financial duress, or 34 percent of the civilian workforce, an estimate that doesn’t account for anyone who’s 16, 17, 65 years old or more who may need a job yet is unable to find one, illegal immigrants, the homeless or dependents (children). Granted, there may be overlap between the number of discouraged-question marks-and-college-students and the 6.3 million discouraged workers whom we can safely assume were looking for work, so let’s ignore the 6.3 million. Employing the data that’s available to me and my faculties of commons sense, I’ve arrived at the tentative conclusion that about 30 percent of the civilian workforce, or 46.9 million people, is in a state of financial Armageddon, a state of financial insecurity, in poverty or on the brink of poverty, and that's a conservative estimate. In summary, there’s about 101.6 million people who aren't working, or 65 percent of the civilian workforce, yet the unemployment rate assumes 58 percent, 90.4 million people, don’t want a job or don’t need one at a time in our nation's history when inequality and inflation are at record levels, leaving only 26 percent of the civilian workforce, or 40.8 million people, living in relative comfort, a figure that doesn’t account for those who built up nest eggs during America's golden years and are living off their pensions (assuming they still have pensions).
The United States Social Security Department’s figures are more startling. They’ve calculated that 66.2 percent of wage earners netted less than approximately 40 thousand dollars per year, and the median wage earner, 50 percent of Americans, earn less than approximately 26 thousand dollars per year. These figures exclude the unemployed and “discouraged workers,” and the results draw a sharp contrast with the economic composition of Congress. In 2011, only 10 percent of Congress claimed an average net worth of less than 40 thousand dollars, and 51 percent claimed an average net worth of one million dollars or more at a time when only 9 percent of Americans were millionaires. Our law-makers are rich men, and “the rich are in general slaves to fear . . .”
The tragedy unravels before a backdrop of lower tax rates for high-income earners and financial deregulation (regulation in favor of private and corporate interests), a tragedy glossed over by the six news conglomerates that have appropriated 90 percent of the nation’s media outlets, outlets too eager to proliferate a number churned out by government bureaus employed by staffers who’ve been hired to lie to themselves and the public. All of this - the growing number of people who experience food insecurity, financial duress or who simply aren’t working, the rampant inequality and unbridled inflation - is the result of lower taxes and “deregulation,” which have been touted as generators of economic growth and are perpetuated by both major political parties. Republicans lower taxes on corporations and high-income earners, then defund the government while Democrats advance financial deregulation and pass legislation that subsidizes monopolization and financial corruption. Both parties have embraced privatization, the dismantling of workers' rights, the de facto bribery of public officials and overall corruption of our politics. They work in tandem to destroy democracy and their beneficiaries are the same: a wealthy elite.
As a result of these policies, 50 percent of the income gains in 2012 were allocated to the top 1 percent of the economic ladder. Some people blame government subsidies and the people who do are usually the same people clamoring for lower taxes and “deregulation,” yet most government subsidies are de facto tax credits, and those tax credits were elicited from law-makers as a result of lobbying and campaign finance “deregulation.” All of this is for what? Profit? The richest 1 percent of Americans own 40 percent of the nation’s wealth while the bottom 50 percent of Americans own nothing. Mark Zuckerberg was paid 2.37 billion dollars in 2013 for selling 1 billion Facebook users’ information to U.S. government agencies, private intelligence contractors and other corporations. Anywhere between 700 trillion and 1.2 quadrillion dollars has been invested in derivatives, abstract market products with no tangible value.
Are United States’ power-brokers jealous of our prosperity? “What prosperity?” You may ask, a question that leads me to conclude, “Yes. Yes, the corporations and wealthy elite who run this country are jealous of our prosperity. That’s why it’s disappearing.” Anyone who suggests otherwise tacitly agrees with the premise that the people are incapable of work, incapable of realizing their own potential and providing for themselves. Some jab an accusing finger at The United States’ welfare system and cite it as evidence of a weakness among the poor and working class, but such arguments imply that these groups are inherently less equal in ability in a world of equal opportunity when the opposite is true, yet not everyone who prays for the dismantling of The United States’ welfare system is racist and classist.
Some people are merely convinced that tax-funded benefits enable the iniquitous or opportunistic behavior of others, yet what would happen to the 65.1 million or more people receiving some form of government assistance if it were dismantled overnight? Those without government-assisted housing, nutritional assistance and gainful employment would compete for jobs with the working poor, who would also be deprived of the government-assisted nutritional assistance upon which they rely. 17 percent of Americans are unable to feed themselves without some form of assistance. The immediate elimination of The United States’ welfare system would be de facto Social Darwinism, or genocide. How is the elimination of The United States’ welfare system going to resuscitate the economy if private industry is incapable of creating jobs that pay employees enough to feed themselves, fuel their cars or buy their children new clothes, an industry that leaves its employees no alternative but to seek government assistance in order to live? “Abolish the minimum wage,” some have suggested, claiming that such a reform would create jobs, and it probably would. It would probably also condemn America’s progeny to work camps, which once went by the name of, “concentration camp.”
“Hath your house been burnt? Hath you property been destroyed before your face? Are your wife and children destitute of a bed to lie on, or bread to live on? Have you lost a parent or a child by their hands, and yourself the ruined and wretched survivor? If you have not, then are you not a judge of those who have. But if you have, and can still shake hands with the murderers, then are you unworthy the name of husband, father, friend, or lover, and whatever may be your rank or title in life, you have the heart of a coward, and the spirit of a sycophant.”
Some of us live in neighborhoods blighted by poverty and decay. We fall asleep to the pop!pop!pop! of gunfire at night. Some of us have been forced out of our homes into the streets because a handful of men decided to rig the market on credit defaults and sub prime mortgages to make a pretty penny. Some of us go hungry. Some of us have lost fathers and mothers, sons and daughters, brothers and sisters on the front lines of a drug war we didn’t start. Has this happened to you, or do you merely judge those to whom it has happened? And if this has happened to you, yet persist in shilling for those who debase you, I can only assume that your heart died from fear a long time ago.
Welfare is a legitimate and necessary response to an emergency - it always was and always will be - and it’s as necessary today as it was 90 years ago, yet the pressing question we must ask ourselves isn’t, “Should we expand or contract the welfare system?” The question we must ask ourselves is, “Why are we still in a state of emergency?” Welfare should be rendered obsolete due to a lack of applicants after having undergone robust expansion and dramatic reform to address the needs of the current crisis. In other words, poverty should be a thing of the past. This is the goal of all Americans: to realize a state in which men and women can freely navigate the architecture of society, of government and economy, to discover their inner potential, their independence and a brighter future for the next generation, so we may finally dispense with this helplessness and attend to the business of our communities. We all know this, but we’ve been divided by land, word and deed, by those who - threatened by our common vision - would rather invest their fortunes in our common failings.
“Wherefore, instead of gazing at each other with suspicious or doubtful curiosity, let each of us hold out to his neighbor the hearty hand of friendship, and unite in drawing a line, which, like an act of oblivion, shall bury in forgetfulness every former dissention. Let the names of Whig and Tory be extinct; and let none other be heard among us, than those of a good citizen, an open and resolute friend, and a virtuous supporter of the RIGHTS of MANKIND and of the FREE AND INDEPENDENT STATES OF AMERICA.”
A thorough inspection of our nation’s history elicits adequate evidence proving what most Americans today have already intuited and that the poorest among us know in our hearts to be true: the conditions that precipitated our revolution persist despite liberation from the throne of England, the half-hearted emancipation of The South’s prisoners and the unfinished work of Martin Luther King Jr., and are felt in pensive pre-dawn moments from behind dusty windows in the ramshackle ruins of our poorest communities, in the shrill calls for justice and equality that have been silenced by bullets and batons and the sobs of loved-ones, who agonize over the future or sit with hands folded, silent and aloof with wonder or bewilderment as they contemplate the past. Our law-makers lie to us: they sell our votes and wage war for profit. Young Americans sacrifice their lives to satisfy the imperialistic ambitions of a wealthy elite. Our country is massacring indigenous populations across the globe and - unsurprisingly (especially when one considers their economic rank) - our law-makers have lead us to believe that we’re killing poor people in their homelands, which we’ve invaded, to defend ourselves. “We have boasted the protection of Great Britain,” Paine wrote, “Without considering that her motive was interest, not attachment; that she did not protect us from our enemies on our account, but from her enemies on her own account, from those who had no quarrel with us on any other account, and who will always be our enemies on the same account.” The United States kills for oil, heroin and slave wages. “That she hath engrossed us is true, and defended the continent at our expense as well as her own is admitted, and she would have defended Turkey from the same motive, namely, the sake of trade and dominion.” Our laws are written by unelected officials: lobbyists, think tank desk jockeys and other members of the sycophantic corporate class. The electoral process has been reduced to legalized bribery, party censorship and boiler room auctioneering. The middle class is being expunged by market forces that Congress acknowledges, endorses and subsequently created. We’re already crippled with debt and “as parents, we can have no joy, knowing that this government is not sufficiently lasting to ensure anything which we may bequeath to posterity: and by a plain method of argument, as we are running the next generation into debt, we ought to do the work of it, otherwise we use them meanly and pitifully.”
We’re divided as a people yet exploited as a whole.
Periodic revolt is necessary in order to secure equality, virtue and liberty . . . but this isn’t 1776. Violent revolution is both strategically unsound and morally reprehensible in a place where the architecture of democracy remains intact, yet like our physical infrastructure, has fallen into a state of decay as a result of our own neglect. Citizenship isn’t served on a platter. Citizenship is claimed. There will be those who lambast talk of revolt as “the ravings of a madman.” There will be those who denounce democracy, reward obedience and celebrate egoism, who parade demagoguery and oligarchy through the streets under the banner of populism, who tell you what to believe instead of ask how you vote. There will be those who swallow the propaganda fed to us by our corrupt government, who believe democracy shoots missiles into mud huts, lies to the world and betrays its own citizens. There will be those who call for direct action, confrontation, who would send you into a hail of rubber bullets while the suits in Washington chortle over iced bourbon and cigars as they discuss your masochism. There will be those who sell you a panacea for all your complaints, an elixer, snake oil, a lemon they call, “technology.”
Democracy begins and ends with family, community, with neighbors and neighborhoods. Democracy is local commerce, not global dominion. Rather than espouse the conformity of individualism, Democracy leverages equality to realize a plurality. Democracy doesn’t purchase diabetes and heart attacks at fast food chains and supermarkets. Democracy grows its own food. Democracy doesn’t cater to a corrupt economic system. Democracy prints its own money.
There’s nothing Apple, Walmart or our criminal Congress can do that we can’t do, and on our terms. We can create sustainable, independent, interconnected communities built upon democratic principles of equality, liberty and self-government. We can employ the government and structure society to reflect our values and our principles instead of the motives of a faraway entity or the rapaciousness of a moneyed elite. Thomas Paine envisioned a society where the assemblies are annual, where a combination of lottery and congressional vote are employed to elect a president, where “law is king,” representation is “more equal,” business is “wholly domestic, and subject to the authority of a continental congress,” where a “charter,” or constitution, is written by an “intermediate body between the governed and the governors,” the majority of which would be composed of “representatives of the people at large.” Imagine the amount of work, will power, courage and determination required to realize Thomas Paine’s America, which he offered merely as a suggestion, hoping it might “give rise to something better.”
“Could the straggling thoughts of individuals be collected, they would frequently form materials for wise and able men to improve to useful matter.”
Jean-Jacques Rousseau described democracy as divinely inspired. “A population of gods could have a democratic government,” he said. “A government as perfect as that is not for men.” Aristotle, who reduced government to a science, compared democracy to a table with enough room for everyone, where everyone shares a meal and no one goes hungry: a family in deliberation.
“The principle that the multitude ought to be supreme rather than the few best is capable of satisfactory explanation, and though not free from difficulty, seems to contain an element of truth. For the many, of whom each individual is but an ordinary person, when they meet together may very likely be better than the few good, if regarded not individually but collectively, just as a feast to which many contribute is better than a dinner provided out of a single purse. For each individual among the many has a share of virtue or prudence, and when they meet together they become in a manner one man, who has many feet, and hands, and senses; that is a figure of their mind and disposition.”
When we behave less like a family and more like a political party, a marketing demographic or machine, we lose our dignity, sanity and independence, and as democracy falters, as the blue-print for society shifts from the family-unit to something else, something abstract and synthetic, neighborhoods, cities and countries will increasingly resemble prisons instead of homes. Today, technology, utility and a dwindling grasp of and participation in democracy has separated, isolated and alienated us from one another and ourselves to such a grave extent, there may not be enough humanity - empathy, virtue or wisdom - available in 100,000 people to constitute one citizen, yet together, the common people of The United States and abroad are more than capable of reclaiming that citizenship, their wholeness, and transforming their collective potential into democratic reform, yet such a societal shift remains unlikely to occur so long as we’re hampered by cowardice and conformity. If we can’t share our sufferings and embrace our neighbors in the spirit of fraternity, democracy will crumple, followed by humanity and the ecosystem, so it’s of pivotal importance that we revisit the history, language and dream of self-government (not “I govern myself,” rather, “We govern ourselves”).
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