When Democracy Breaks Down

As angry as people were in the election of 2010, as disenchanted with the status quo of government and of the entire process, now they are seeing the results of misinformation mixed with apathy and anger. While there are problems with the Democratic party, mostly stemming from the corporate interests that people who watch MSNBC have been hearing about for years, but which became much more prominant and obvious after the SCOTUS decision on Citizens United.

What we see now, however, is the result of that mix of anger. Many people in this country allowed their anger and apathy towards the party in power to override their ability to understand distinctions between Democrat and Republican. Perhaps it isn't just coincidence that we are having this fight now after such a huge economic crisis, as it mirrors the same hard times our country had during the early part of the twentieth century. People became scared about their personal finances and because it is always easier to blame a problem on someone rather than solve the problem they were swayed by the anti-worker and anti-Middle Class interests. Those corporate interests have always opposed unions and workers rights, have always opposed fair wages and benefits, which we take for granted today and only came about because of unions.

We now have so much access to media that the people who are at best misguided in their ideas about the role of the government and of fiscal policy and most cases are much more likely corporate shills cannot hide their heavy handed tactics anymore. They cannot hide their moves and legislative proposals anymore. Technology has seen that we are able to have mass dissemination of information very quickly and dissemination and knowledge in the hands of the working and Middle Class can only spur on the kinds of protests and the kind of workers movement which gave us a Middle Class in the first place.

The differences between the two parties, the distinction that people have been unable to recognize for so long, is now readily apparent. The Republican Party cannot pretend to have any interest in 'Main Street' or the workers of this country. They cannot pretend or hide behind the shield of rhetoric anymore. They are for cutting government programs most Americans rely on every day, such as public schools, and relaxing every law or restriction on their corporate bosses that keep them from making as much money as possible. We see this in Wisconsin, where every single Democrat in the the state senate fled the state and has remained absent for three weeks despite all the threats and consequences. When Democrats stand on principle, it is with workers.

This is not to say that all Democrats are created equal. This is no to say that there isn't serious reform needed in campaign finance law, laws that have been relaxed more and more lately in spite of all the rhetoric from both parties every election cycle to work for reform, and even more so by Citizens United. What's ironic about that name is that it is characteristic of all the major conservative PACs right now. They take names like Americans for Prosperity and parade around PR materials with clip art of crowds in protest, but when the money is traced, when it can be traced, it leads to major corporations and individual billionaires. Even though these are conservative groups, there are enough Dems who seek funding from places like financial investment firms and banks that a false equivalency can be drawn by conservative pundits. There are, however, very different realities in campaign funding for Democrats and that for Republicans. Funding from the supposedly huge money of progressives like George Saros is also very very very different from the funding by the Koch brothers.

Ultimately this union fight in Wisconsin and other states is galvanizing unions, the one major political force that the vast majority of working Americans have to counteract the money of the extremely wealthy, and bringing out the best in the Democratic officials at the state level. The question is will Democrats on the national level, who are embroiled in issues that are pandemic to the entire country as well as the world, pick up on this awakening labor movement and recognize it for what it is: Their BASE? Will they take the opportunity to use this to draw that distinction they couldn't last time? It is so clear in the body of the Wisconsin 14 and their distinction from the Republicans in the Senate who held an illegal committee meeting in an attempt to maneuver the legislation only dealing with union rights through into law even without the Democrats. I think this will bring focus onto those elected officials on the national level who are truly interested in standing up for the base and those who aren't.

This fight is going to return the party, which has gotten so lost in the midst of federal issues, to the core principles it stands for. Then we voters, whatever our typical voting habits, are going to have to turn blinders on to the messaging coming from the Republicans. We are going to have to show them through out vote that we were in fact paying attention.

Michael Moore said something interesting tonight on Rachel Maddow's show, that this country is not broke. This is something that has been said over and over again by progressives, but since those who are unemployed or who are suffering because of the economic disaster are hurting so badly they didn't listen to. We are not broke. We have the most robust and largest economy in the world. The Republican narrative that somehow our government has gotten so large and so unwieldy and so reckless with money is largely untrue. We don't have a spending problem in this country, we have a revenue problem in this country, and the reason why most Middle Class people are hurting and why they were convinced with that garbage about tax cuts is because the wealth is now concentrated at the top. Even the Republicans admit our Middle Class is disappearing. Rather than identifying the real problem, however, the rich people who have been sucking it up and who were responsible for the reckless investments that led to our Recession, they convince most people that somehow those rich people are just simple Americans, that they are in just as much trouble, are suffering just as much, and that they don't deserve to be taxed anymore than the working class.

That's a lie, it's fiction and it's an outright negligent lie. Four hundred Americans now possess as much wealth as fifty percent of this country combined. That accumulation of wealth is staggering, and it came about because the taxes that should have been levied against them, but which weren't because they had already paid for politicians to keep the money flowing in, have steadily been lowered over and over. That money that they have absorbed is the money from the pensions of workers that then disappeared during the Worldcom scandal, during the Berney Maddoff scandal and the tax money we used to bail them out after they caused the economy to collapse. That money isn't going back into the economy like Republicans say it will. It's going into more investments that are safe and high yield so it makes more money. Meanwhile more than ten million people are out of work and another twenty can't find jobs that pay well.

Those tax cuts mean that the top 2%, which owns 80% of the wealth of this country, is the gap that is causing the deficit. There are, of course, spending issues, first among them the two wars we are still involved with. That doesn't mean killing programs so many people rely on. Why Americans didn't recognize that as a consequence of the Republicans becoming the majority I don't know. Maybe people aren't as intelligent as I hope they are. But the end result is that those programs put in place to help the needy and vulnerable, to make sure we have clean water and air and that everyone has access to education, those programs, rather than the defense budget, are what are being cut and it will only make the recession hurt that much more. Meanwhile Eric Cantor stands in front of cameras in his thousand dollar suit and cocky grin telling us we are broke. We are only broke because he and his rich friends didn't want to pay an extra 3% of their yearly income in taxes so that the government could provide services for everyone.

Reality is cold and simple now. Republicans want to privatize everything, want to strip all workers of their rights so they can't object when an employer cuts their benefits or lowers their wages at will, they want us to think that we can't afford basic services and that somehow by cutting taxes on our shrinking wages that we are benefiting. They want us to have private fire services though that service won't happen if we don't pay our yearly dues. They want us to ignore the air pollution giving us headaches and nose bleeds and causing our cancers and just go about our daily lives as though nothing is wrong. They want us to ignore the serious problems in our education system, our failing schools and the warped and backward curriculum self-righteous ultraconservative divorcees running for office tell us is the truth and right and to pretend that somehow we aren't being controlled by their corporate and religious doctrines when they restrict us from having medically necessary treatments and procedures, blocking us from being with the people we love, and putting us in jail for suggesting that somehow there is a better way to live.

THAT is Tea Party America, and we deserve better than that.