“We are undergoing the most vicious class war in U.S. history. Social inequality has reached its most extreme levels of disparity in over 200 years, surpassing the rapacious greed of the era of the robber barons. The legislative, executive and judicial branches of government, along with the media and universities, have been seized by a tiny cabal of billionaires and corporations who pass laws and legislation that consolidate their power and obscene wealth at our expense. We are sacrificial victims, whether on the left or the right, helpless before this modern incarnation of the Biblical idol Moloch.
“In 1928, the top one percent held about 24 percent of the nation’s income, a percentage that steadily declined until 1973. By the early 1970s the oligarchy’s assault against workers was accelerated in response to the rise of popular mass movements in the 1960s. The billionaire class and corporations poured billions into political parties, academia, think-tanks and the media. Critics of capitalism had difficulty finding a platform, including on public broadcasting. Those who sang to the tune the billionaires played were lavished with grants, book deals, tenured professorships, awards and permanent megaphones in the commercial press. Wages stagnated. Income inequality grew to monstrous proportions. Tax rates for corporations and the rich were slashed until it culminated in a virtual tax boycott.
“Today, the top 10 percent of the richest people in the United States own almost 70 percent of the country’s total wealth. The top 1 percent control 32 percent of the wealth. The bottom 50 percent of the U.S. population hold 3 percent of all U.S. wealth.
“These ruling oligarchs have us, not to mention the natural world, in a death grip…
“Those with the courage to shine a light into the inner workings of the machinery, such as Noam Chomsky, are turned into pariahs, or, like Julian Assange, relentlessly persecuted…”
“The central premise of mass culture is that capitalism unassailable engine of human progress, even as global capitalists have pumped nearly 37 percent more greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere since the first Convention on Climate Change in 1992…”
“Our facts, the facts of those who are evicted, go to prison, are unemployed, are sick yet uninsured, the 12 million children who go to bed hungry, or live, like nearly 600,000 Americans, on the streets, are not part of the equation. Our facts do not attract advertisers. Our facts do not fit with the Disneyfied world the media and advertisers are paid to create. Our facts are an impediment to increased profits…”
“Societies in decline are seduced by the death instinct, as Freud observes in “Civilization and Its Discontents,” written during the rise of European fascism and World War II…”
“A population beset by despair, a sense of dethronement and powerlessness, is intoxicated by an orgy of annihilation, which soon morphs into self-annihilation…”
“As the gap opens between the illusion of who we think we are, and the reality of the inequality, the violence, the foreclosures, the bankruptcies that are caused by the inability to pay medical bills, and ultimately the collapse of empire, we are unprepared emotionally, psychologically, and intellectually for what confronts us. When the wolf is at the door, when our house is foreclosed, when unemployment insurance runs out, we react as a child reacts. We search for a demagogue or a savior who promises protection, moral renewal, vengeance and new glory.
This is the deformed world our corporate masters have created. It is one we must confront and dismantle. It requires us to pit power against power. It requires us to dismantle the illusions used to disempower us, to adhere to values based on the sanctity of life, rather than the fact of profit. It requires us to cross the cultural and political divides the ruling class has erected and to build new political and social coalitions…”
“We must organize to use the one weapon workers possess that can cripple and destroy the billionaire class’s economic and political power. The strike…”
“At what point does a beleaguered population living near or below the poverty line rise up in protest? At what point will it engage in sustained civil resistance to break the stranglehold of the power elite? At what point will people be willing to accept the risk of arrest, prison or worse?
“This, if history is any guide, is unknown. But that the tinder is there is now undeniable, even to the ruling class…”
“France is giving us a powerful lesson in how to pit popular power against a ruling elite…”
Read the full article here.
(Image is Piece of Mind by Mr. Fish)
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