| He sounds like a leftist.
He sounds like a libertarian.
He sounds like any of us.
What scares me is that in these days of falling esprit de corps and growing hostility toward the ever-widening gap of regard and tolerance between what some see and opposite goals between left and right, I have to wonder how long will it be until this sort of terrorism unleashes itself on a regular basis. Tensions are high on all sides; gun toting fools and devotees of anarchy are chomping at the bit for a reason to deploy their wares and philosophically idiotic actions.
What also scares me is that the movers and shakers of the right and the left are now primed to blame each other for Joe Stack. They will both miss the clear fact that in his manifesto, Joe crosses the lines drawn and is crying out for both sides to listen to the dangers of governmental largess, corporatism and slowly fading freedoms that ALL AMERICANS ARE SUFFERING FROM, sans the rich and powerful who are at the center of this storm.
Let us remember that it was a Republican of note, President Dwight D. Eisenhower who warned the people of the burgeoning Military-Industrial Complex. Let us see that not just the M-I-C is a danger, but any swath cut from our fabric of society by corporate power in any discipline be it healthcare, labor, transportation or financial which leaves us, the working class, with less power, fewer choices and fewer monetary resources is eventually going to lead to a nation of have and have-nots. And in today's scale of the two, if you make less than $500,000.00 a year, you're a have not. This has been true in every culture, which fancied itself as civilized relative to the world it saw around itself.
Let the memory of Joe Stack also teach us that freedom is fleeting at best. Our founding fathers knew this fact and hoped that an active, flourishing, free and MASS INGESTED press (media here forward) was THE essential component in insuring that our government be wisely and knowledgeably managed by a population that is active and informed, free from the influences of special interests or the tyranny of politicians.
"I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country." Thomas Jefferson, 1812
People want to pay less tax. Or, at least, they want the tax they pay to be used judiciously and without corruption. This is possible, but relies on you and me. It depends on a new spirit of honesty that seems lost in America. We all too often close our eyes and turn away when we see graft, corruption or out and out theft of monies in government funded programs, agencies and other expenditures.
We allow our own legislators to rake millions into our own voting districts while we scream angrily at the legislator across the border for doing the same. It seems that most of all, hypocrisy is now a staple of all political movements, left and right. We support this system by blindly re-electing the same people decade after decade thinking, "it's not MY guy who's the problem". Well folks, it IS your guy who's the problem. Send them home. But don't make the mistake of putting in the next guy who is merely a different face in the same philosophical jacket. If a politician takes one penny from any source other than an individual citizen, they are beholding to that party, period. Stop pretending otherwise.
Tea Party hopefuls owe corporations. The entire movement, founded by the true frustration and senses of inequity of individuals, is now designed by corporations, funded by corporations and manipulated by corporations. It's funny that a supposed plank of their platform is anti-corporation. No, this is not surprising at all; the plank is there to suck in the gullible and hopeful that somehow, this time, this movement will be different. Sadly, it isn't and never will be. It is bought and paid for by concerns whose real agenda is to further the enrichment wagon for themselves at the expense of the working folks now duped into willfully ignorant soldiers, ready to die for the planks they think will be addressed were their cause to come into power. They only need to look back over the last 10 years of history and learn the lesson of the religious right and how it was used and discarded when it lost its usefulness to the true powers that be, the rich and powerful. The desires of the mass of Tea Party people will be frustrated and denied. The status quo will be served, not the people. The game is already over. The republican or tea party politician that takes one penny from any source other than an individual citizen, is beholding to that party, period. Stop pretending otherwise.
How many Tea Party advocates realize that the Boston Tea Party they so closely hold as their symbol against tyranny was actually a revolt against corporate favoritism? The East India Company (Elizabeth I's first corporation) was granted tax exempt status on tea sold in the Americas. As a result, the locals who sold tea (AND WERE TAXED) could no longer compete. They lost business and their livelihoods. They reacted by destroying the tax-free tea of a corporation as their protest against this unfair taxation and corporate favoritism.
Liberal concerns owe corporations, of sorts. Unions, political groups, socially concerned special interests hold the same power over the left and control their message, candidates and bills that are introduced in the same way that corporations control the right. MONEY. The democratic politician that takes one penny from any source other than an individual citizen, is beholding to that party, period. Stop pretending otherwise.
Slowly, I hope, the masses are realizing where the trouble with our government truly lays. INDIVIDUAL people of both the left and the right need to finally put the pieces together and realize that it is MONEY, CAMPAIGN INFLUENCE, MANIPULATION and out and out DECEIT that drives our elections, policies of those elected officials, appointed judges and media "professionals" and ultimately the repercussions on our society as a whole.
The time has come for us to stop arguing about right and left. The time has come for us to start thinking about our nation as a culture made up of nearly 300,000,000 people where 98% are average workers with the same bills to pay, the same hopes for our children, a desire to be secure in our old age and to live under a government than cannot take all we have from us and to live under a capitalist system that cannot do the same. The other 2% makes all the rules, and they DO NOT make rules that restrict themselves.
Joe Stack shows us that the most basic desires of the tea partiers and the left ARE THE SAME separated only by powers above us whose key to survival is manipulation of all of us through clever marketing, deceit, behind the back tactics forged in "smoke-filled rooms" of power and arrogance which see the common man as merely a tool to be used and tossed away.
Joe Stack shows us that capitalism is good, but greed is evil. Greed is its own master. It serves only itself. Capitalism is not greed; capitalism is hard work and the benefit that it creates. Greed is usury, a practice banned by the very bible we as a nation supposedly subscribe to as our moral compass and most other religions around the globe and throughout history. How can we allow this to go on any longer?
"Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration."
-Lincoln's First Annual Message to Congress, December 3, 1861.
A government is always necessary. People are flawed and left on our own make too much trouble. The rule of law is essential. In the words of one song by Roger Waters, never more accurately described. . . "Give any one species too much rope and they'll fuck it up". But whose rules shall we live under? Ours, the masses, which are made to benefit and protect each of us and a clear intent of our founding fathers? Or, shall we live under laws written by the 2% that benefit and protect the 2% with the 98% paying the bill for it all?
At the time of writing this, there is a republican who has begun a campaign to unseat Senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin. Russ Feingold's campaign has an average contribution of $50.00. He has promoted citizen's civil rights and campaign finance reform. A man who is worth between 58 and 130 million dollars and who has not paid a dime of income tax for 9 or the last 10 years is challenging him. [Milwaukee Journal Sentinel 2/16/2010]. Shall we all guess together what sort of tax cuts Mr. Wall will favor?
Research this. . . How many American corporations pay NO FEDERAL TAX at all? According to the Government Accounting Office, MORE THAN 2/3rds of corporations pay no tax at all! How many citizens pay no tax at all? Want to bet about 2%? Simple logic. . . Corporations and the rich pay for most campaigns. Corporations and the rich get payback for those payments in the form of legislation. Who do you think the legislation benefits and protects? You? ROFLMAO!
We need government. We need police, we need fire protection, we need schools, we need healthcare, we need energy, we need food, and we need housing. We argue how much influence (read taxes) our government should or should not have over these needs. For a long time, we have been taught that this argument is what makes the difference between right and left. And in the past, this probably was true. Not anymore.
Now is the time that individual persons of the left and the right need to come together and realize that the battle line is between the haves and the have-nots. Until we have a government free of corporate and exceedingly wealthy individual money, power and manipulation, there will never be a tax break that comes to us, the working class. Never will there be decisions made based on that the people need or want. There will only be minor placations ($300.00 tax rebates) and lip service to quell a very angry and very justified mass population.
The pie is only so big on any given day. Our slice is getting smaller and smaller and our contribution to the pie through our labor and commitment is getting larger and larger. Ask this. . . In the last 30 years of Republican campaigning and passed legislation that has indeed cut taxes, exactly whose taxes were cut? Yours, Mine? Nope. Think about corporations and that 2% for the answer.
Joe Stack made a bad decision to take the lives of others to make his point. All terrorists do. But what he said was true, "Now when the wealthy fuck up, the poor get to die for the mistakes... isn't that a clever, tidy solution."
How many more must die to feed the hubris and extreme avarice of the rich and powerful?
I Thank you. |
