Making our voices heard above all the chaos
Americans are told there’s no money for social programs desperately needed by those who were not beneficiaries of the billionaire welfare program (aka tax “reform”) and the Wall Street boom. We are called “takers” by the those who have too much say in how our country is governed and who rake in billions in corporate welfare. Today banks and corporations have more rights than people, hiring brigades of lawyers and lobbyists to write legislation ensuring their privilege and their obscene profits. Ordinary people’s voices go unheard.
Americans aren’t “takers.” We want jobs paying living wages. Too many of us have no jobs or must work two or three jobs to make ends meet. Americans are swimming in debt, some paying for daily essentials with high-fee credit cards, many burdened by onerous college loans. Too many Americans can’t afford a $400 emergency. Retirement? Forget it. Millions lost their retirement in the conflagration of 2008; many more lost homes, while the perpetrators laughed all the way to their bank vaults because none of them were prosecuted — and Democrats were in power. These same banks and corporations are on the brink of tanking our economy again. And we’ll pay. Again.
Americans want a better life for our children, and that those children are kept safe from greedy corporations that poison our food, water and air. We want infrastructure that isn’t falling down around our ears. We want our precious national parks, our postal service and “social services” that our taxes pay for, funded and not threatened with privatization. We want to be able to plan for retirement. We want to be free from constant surveillance and the increasing threat from militarized police should we dare to exercise our First Amendment rights of assembly and free speech. We don’t want to live in a society where left and right are set against each other to distract us from what is going on behind our backs. We want our elections free from dark money, gerrymandering, Interstate Crosscheck purges and domestic — not unproven “Russian” — interference at the polls. We want to be told the truth. We want to trust our government. And we want equal representation with the moneyed class.
What Americans don’t want is war, especially not nuclear war. Some dangerous and powerful people think a “limited” nuclear war is winnable and survivable. It isn’t. It’s time to put the military/ industrial complex on a diet. Ending the quagmire in Afghanistan would be a start. Just imagine what that trillion-dollar Pentagon budget could buy if it was spent here at home. Equally dangerous as a nuclear holocaust is impending ecological meltdown. If we’re lucky, we have maybe 15 years before it’s too late, yet nothing is being done in Washington, D.C., where some individuals even refuse to acknowledge the reality of climate change. If something isn’t done and quickly, nothing else will matter. Life on Earth will be over.
Not so long ago, a middle-class lifestyle was taken for granted by most of us — and if a citizen wasn’t already there, hard work was the key to success. This downward shift didn’t start with Trump. He’s a symptom, not the disease, which began decades ago with both parties complicit. Like the proverbial frogs in a simmering pot of water, we as a nation didn’t really notice those good things slipping away. That’s our fault. We must make some hard choices now. Together we must find ways to make our voices heard above the chaos, because this can only be fixed by a government that works for every American, not just the rich and powerful.