American Aristocracy and the Return of Prosperity

This is a guest post by Thomas Dufour.  Thomas resides in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania where he is a website developer and political activist.  He has been politically active for the past 9 years, and is a current member of multiple political organizations where he assists in redeveloping various aspects of their day to day operations, and also writes from time to time.  You can follow Thomas on Twitter, view his online portfolio, and check out more of Thomas' writing on his Tumblr. 

For too long I feel I have laid my passions dormant. I have often taken the quieter route in my activism solely out of my distaste for partisanship and the animosity politics generally brings to what would normally be friendly conversation. But after a long train of abuses upon myself, my friends, neighbors, loved ones and my country has derailed any hope for my peaceful continuance as a “click activist”, I feel the time has finally come for me to stand up and take a more active role in my country’s future – not just for myself, but for all of those I have mentioned above.

Tom Paine comes to mind as I’m writing this, and while I’ll spare you all the over dramatization of a paraphrased cliché from one of his works, I will entice you all to relate to the absolute frustration we must mutually feel to be represented by a government that no longer can conceivably represent our economic interests as human beings.

For too long now we have watched as the bickering and name calling have reached a fever pitch.  We have watched as media organizations and their respective extremists on either side have pitched their tents and set up camp on their lists of respective opposing issues.  But more importantly, we’ve watched a void develop in the bosom of America.  A void comprised of citizens who only demand what any other rational human would demand from his or her government:  The right to live in peace, the right to better ourselves and our families and the right to live as long and as healthy and prosperous lives as we possibly can in happiness.  These cornerstones of government are not new and since the dawn of time, humankind has coalesced into tribes to ensure these ends.  It is only recently that this institution has been destroyed in America and I believe that we’re seeing the fallout first hand.

The foundations of our natural aristocracy have been broken by the theory that those who have can produce better than those who have not.  The ladders of prosperity have been shattered by the theory that common laborers do not have the right to petition their employers for a better workplace or for better wages.  Our public education system is routinely decimated by the theory that you can streamline the duties of an educator down to what effectively becomes a button pressing job while taking away the kind of innovation and creativity that would allow educators to effectively do their jobs.  We’ve been goaded into believing that deregulating the marketplace would bring some kind of prosperity to our lives – that loosening environmental restrictions would somehow improve our lot in life.  Instead we’re faced with the fallout of a decimated economy while the few in power walked away with millions never to be seen again while we, the people, are left to piece back together what is left of our 401ks and investment portfolios.

Then to be insulted when we ask for small sacrifices in return so we can continue on the work of our society!  We’re called communists and Marxists – unpatriotic and lazy.  How soon people forget that it wasn’t just the bankers who built our great cities but the Steelworkers who toiled day after day to give the bankers their skyscrapers from which to spit on the world. There is a marketed thought that they should have more money and more influence so that they may provide for us! We are told it is them who we should be beholden to and that it is their lineage who we should look to for our daily bread and butter.  It is therefore that we are left to their “generosity” and are reduced to nothing more than what they would consider parasites leeching off their own personal gain no matter which way you approach the topic.

But it is not that way and it was never intended to be so.  Our country as illustrated by Jefferson and Adams was meant to be ruled by a class of our best and brightest from all levels of society – not just a class of wealthy elites the way that Great Britain was.  America was meant to be different and in being different we were supposed to be better.  We were never meant to rely on concentrated wealth and power – we were made to be suspicious of it and to pursue in our own ends the life and liberty which was afforded to us by our united sacrifice in the peace that our sacrifice provided.

We are made better by our virtue and talent and through that we deserve all of the opportunity it brings us per our overall utility to society.  So should it not be societies end to ensure the development of those talents and virtues? Should we not be engaging our youth to become the future leaders of our nation and the world?  It seems we have shifted our focus from one of hope to one of narrow possibility.  So long as a child is able to work upon graduation he or she is deemed a success to society and in that we are failing ourselves and our nation.  Not only are we robbing our children blind of the opportunity to reach their potential by underfunding and destroying our education system but we are also adding insult to injury by enslaving these children in poverty by removing any means for them to organize for their own benefit.

It’s time to take a stand and demand that our government organize itself to represent the interests of the people that it was created to represent.  Let’s remove all outside influence and develop a congress which represents the best ideas, not the best funded.  Let’s build a nation and not just a place known for unquenchable greed.  Let’s take further steps not to  create endless loopholes which absolve the wealthy from their obligations to our laws and where justice, truly means justice.

It’s all within reach ladies and gentlemen, I believe we can be there together but it will never come easy.  We must work at it day by day.  Tell your friends.  Tell your neighbors.  America needs us and it’s certainly not time to turn our backs on her.

What is wrong with the world, in a few short Facebook paragraphs

I went on a 4am rant on Facebook last night, which resulted in the following:

It's infuriating that big business is able to get away with manipulating the public in the name of free market capitalism, while behaving in a manner so directly opposed to free market capitalism's main tenant: competition. See: the logging industry's success in criminalizing marijuana because they know hemp is threatening to their profits, and the constant push for more oil-based products.

Deception in the name of profit is disgusting and is directly opposed to democracy, choice, and everything that everyone who wants to be loyal to the Unites States basic philosophy of free will, freedom, and equality continues to champion.

It is inherently immoral to use profit, propaganda, and widespread manipulation as a way to maintain the flow of pieces of green paper to one's bank account.

Also noting the fact that it's easy to see how other, non-economic-based inequalities are maintained under this pretend, yet highly-populaized, version of free-market economics. Women and ethnic minorites continue to be systemicallly oppressed as a direct result of the accepted belief that exploitation is a natural byproduct of innovation, and because the US has a history of making systemic oppression profitable (see: slavery, Jim Crow laws, & gender-based expectations & stereotypes), large entites continue to find ways to convince vulnerable people that maintaining that status quo is beneficial-- usually by exploiting said populations' community-based religious beliefs, when in fact those religious beliefs, & the claim that any politician or pundit shares them, is completely irrelevant to any practical issue that affects every single average American.

Again, it comes down to manipulation via rhetoric, deception, & propaganda. Undemocratic, plutocratic, xenophobic, misogynist, racist bullshit. Everything we pretend to be against that we actively support via engaging in the very lifestyle that perpetuates it.

It's not that I believe that capitalism is inherently evil. It's that allowing the pursuit of profit to dictate society is inherently flawed. Capitalism can produce amazing innovation, but the unregulated freedom to prioritize profit breedscorruption & deception, which is naturally in opposition to HUMANS having free will and choice to democratically reward & punish good and bad behavior. Adam Smith himself noted the inherent flaws in this system & championed regulation & check & balances, which is what the so-called free-market capitalists are currently fighting so vehemently against. & it's transparently all about greed, not actual economic stability, which is what's causing the labor resurgence & the so-called "class wars."

And: sustainability is key for long-term profitability, if you're concerned with such things as "profit." Not logging, not petroleum, not other unsustainable and un-renewable resources. DUH. The fact that those in power are so concerned with unsustainable EVERYTHING makes their intentions completely transparent. Anyone ACTUALLY interested and concerned with long-term success will abandon petroleum-based products and other un-renewable interests with those that will be sustained over the long terms, like wind and solar power, or hemp over wood-based production for paper-based products and clothing. IT'S OBVIOUS, and infuriating that it's apparently so easy to ignore reality or accept propaganda and bullshit rhetoric claiming exactly the opposite of reality. WAKE THE FUCK UP.

And while I appreciate organizations like NOW, the ACLU, and others, they're merely a Band-Aid on the huge, chronic problem that continues to plague our country. They're a response to the problem, but they're not the solution. They valiantly and respectably do what they can to help those negatively affected by the system, WITHIN the system, but they don't solve the underlying problem, which is unregulated greed and profit-chasing. And it's not their fault. They are staffed by committed activists and people passionate about this exact kind of change and progress; they do exactly what they can.

This is what is fucked up about our system, that makes us actually nearly powerless and fucked as a society. We like to think that, as Americans, we are freer and better in most all ways than everyone else on this little planet in the vast universe that we reside in, but really, we're not only not better than many places, we're also far worse. What the fuck is "life," anyway? The pursuit of profit? The thrill of the fight between you and giant, profit-earning entities? How is that helpful to you? Do you LIKE the idea that humans are supposedly naturally inclined to kill each other over some berries? Don't you think that, regardless of your philosophical or religious beliefs, that humans might be capable of MORE than that? We've been granted (or evolved into) the ability to reason and contemplate morality; shouldn't this mean that we have a responsibility to see it all the way through, then? If we can, then we MUST, if you ask me.

Conservative ideology fights for the continued support of stagnancy. Stagnancy ONLY causes a halt in our human evolution, progress, and responsibility-- personally and communally. Progress, in ALL FORMS, is THE ONLY way to ensure human survival, prosperity, and freedom. Conservatism IN ALL FORMS, PERIOD, is ALWAYS a stumbling block to true humanity, because it promotes stagnancy. Stagnancy IS ALWAYS bad. ALWAYS. GROWTH is the only goal worth pursuing. 

Stagnancy, coincidentally, is championed in evangelical Christian circles, as a natural byproduct of remembering that, someday, apparently Jesus will float down to Earth and declare that some people get to live in the clouds and others get to literally burn in actual fire "below" the Earth. Interesting how these same propagandists are some of the biggest supporters of right-wing politics and continue to have so much political influence. HILAR, RIGHT?!! LOL!!

(Despite my ranting getting progressively drunker over the evening, the responses I got were surprisingly not hostile, with lots of "read Marx!" recommendations.  And hey, no one called me a troop-hating anti-American this time!)