The Sequestration cuts are starting to take effect which is another victory for the wealthy over the middle class, a further erosion of democratic values in favor of corporate oligarchy, and ultimately a grand victory for the ideal that all men are created equal its just that some are a lot more equal than others.
Every time the middle class begins to assert our rights to a fair wage and a nation that works for all of us the wealthy class in this country, along with their brain dead little toadies the Tea Party, start howling class warfare, as if for some reason none of us has a right to a safe work place, a fair wage for our labor or a right to share in the bounty of this great nation and the political decisions that affect our lives. They act as if we should be grateful for the crumbs off the rich mans economic banquet table thus obviously only a Socialist would tell working people that we were not second class citizens and had rights that should be respected.
The history of America is a history of class warfare even if our Walt Disney fantasy histories want you to believe that there is something foreign and un-American about good wages and a working class that shares power politically with those at the top of the economic heap. That is what an inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness that all of us possess, really means.
By the time of the American Revolution there had been at least 18 rebellions of indentured servants and slaves against their plight politically and economically. The grand father of all rebellion including the American Revolution took place in 1676 Virginia 100 years before our Declaration of Independence.
Known as Bacon's Rebellion, it began when one of the lesser English gentry in Virginia organized an army of white and black indentured servants and slaves who then threw the wealthy planter class out of Virginia and burned the capital at Jamestown to the ground thus leveling the distribution of wealth. The rebellion began to unravel when Bacon died in October of 1676 and the English navy helped restore the Grandees to power and the gross inequality that went with it.
The lesson for the rich in each rebellion was that unless they found a way to keep slaves and servants divided they could not hold power so the first elements of establishing segregation of whites and blacks began along with the estblishment of racism as a tool of political manipulation. This meant poor whites were to be the buffer that kept the rich in power and everyone but the Southern aristocracy dirt poor and intellectually ignorant. The South as America's version of a third world country providing the raw materials for the North's growing manufacturing and economic power so we didn't have to leave home to have a colony for exploiting economically was the end result.
The history of America after the revolution is one long class struggle over civil rights for African Americans and women as well as rights in the work place won by organizing labor unions to fight the economic power of the rich and the corrupt politicians who were their employees rather than the peoples employees. The Tea Party simpleton's are basically asserting the principle that working people should have no rights or expectations in the work place except what the rich man grants you. That is the real meaning of Right to Work. My ancestors had a name for buffoons, scabs and stool pigeons.
The rich hate the New Deal because for the first time in American history government didn't work solely for their benefit. When you realize that the American Revolution was really fought because the wealthy people in the colonies believed, they not the English aristocracy, should the have the right to exploit the American working class for profit, the sooner you can disregard all that propaganda your high school history text taught you, because it is mostly a falsehood designed to keep you in your economic place.
Class mobility is largely a myth. Study after study has recognized that the economic class you were born in is the greatest single predictor of success not diligence, hard work , ability or merit. Horatio Alger, poor boy or girl makes good, is a lie designed to perpetuate the idea that compliance not standing up for your rights, is the tool to success.
Kiss the Rich mans posterior so this story goes, and he will magnanimously grant you a place at his economic table. Like the Amway sales pitch, a few do get ahead because it holds the phony social control narrative together and ads legitimacy to the economic narrative in the same way the pretense of voting allows the perpetuation of the fraud that you have a say in government.
The problems we have are the result of a corrupt political ideology that began with Ronald Reagan most recently, but has always existed. That ideology is that only the rich investor class matters. If this myth were really a reality there should be lots of jobs and our national economy should be booming because working people have worked against their own economic interests for over thirty years now and have continued electing politicians who steal from the middle class with tax cut schemes, and who have redistributed the most wealth in history to one class, the richest Americans. Instead of untold wealth this nation is increasingly functioning like a third rate Banana Republic.
We have massive debt and failing schools, incompetent health care delivery, and a collapsing economy because we have a totally corrupt political system. We fail at solving the problems necessary to a functional society because our government has been corrupted by money and a collection of ethically challenged idiots pretending to be political leaders. It is not government that is the problem it is a corrupt political ideology that lionizes greed, selfishness, and cruelty and calls these character defects, virtues.
At this point in our history it is past time for the middle class to fight back. Class warfare isn't un-American it is the crucible that has kept America moving forward. This is the only war we should be fighting not Afghanistan or phony Wars on Terror that are really about keeping the middle class in its place.
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