Taming the Beast or Democratic Party, Where Are You?
By Bernard J. Fine
Al-Jazeerah, February 15, 2006
The Bush Administration has run roughshod over nearly every aspect of American life. Its shameful, unpatriotic actions and views are supported by a majority of the Congress. Cronyism, shady operators, shyster lawyers and plain old political scumbags are in power and running out of control. The long-range estimate of the dollar cost of this mischief is in the trillions of dollars. The cost in lives and hopes and dreams is immeasurable.
Despite this shabby state of affairs and while Muslims are united in expressing rage all over the world because of a few cartoons published in a Danish newspaper that demeaned their religion, most Americans can’t even get up enough steam to be concerned when their country is being sacrificed to Mammon on an altar of greed, pseudo-piety and lies.
In this atmosphere, where the situation cries out for leadership, The Democratic Party, with but few exceptions, wimps along in as strong an example of political immobilization as the country has ever experienced. The Party, collectively, is not able to do anything but flail about on rare single issues and even then always in a reactive rather than proactive manner.
The inaction of the Democrats defies analysis. Forget about creativity. Forget about values. Forget about decency and caring for fellow human beings. The order of the day appears to be “go along to get along.” Survival. The best one can say is that nearly all Democratic members seem to be so beholden to private interests and so vested in insuring their own continued presence in Congress that they, by choice, have opted to acquiesce to the right-wing axis of evil in Congress rather than to fight the good fight for basic values such as honesty and fairness.
If the Democrats in Congress disagree with this assessment, let them speak out from their hearts and tell those of us who depend on them to preserve America’s pre-Bushian values just what they do stand for. In detail. Let them explain precisely what is wrong with the values of liberty, freedom, human rights, honesty and equal justice for all; those basic American values that have been and are being trodden upon by the Bush Administration. Let them explain why they do not rise in fury when the President of the United States authorizes Himself to spy on the activities of every citizen, when he commits the country to an illegal war, lies, supports torture, appoints incompetent cronies to key positions, neglects veterans and the poor and destroys the environment.
I offer the following to help the Party get off the pot and start doing something. It is so simple that even the densest member of Congress should be able to understand it.
Dealing with values isn’t rocket science. You can describe the basic values you want for your country in the tritest of phrases: “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” “freedom and justice for all,” “one man one vote,” “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” You don’t have to be a philosopher or political scientist and write impenetrable, convoluted prose in order for others to understand what you mean. To the contrary, Democracy, the spirit of Democracy, is simple. It is simple because it stems from basic human wants and feelings. If you choose to live in a democracy, then your values are all of those trite phrases. If you choose to live in the world of the Republican Bush-man, your values are quite different: cronyism, lying, cheating, cruelty, inequality and selfishness with liberty and justice for some.
As the Bush-man said, “you’re either with us or you’re with them.”
To be more specific on the subject of values such as fairness, equality and justice for all, let’s address the economic goings on in our country as an example of stupidity and self-imolation run amok.
We have a conglomeration of business interests in this country, most of which manufacture and market “things” of various kinds and whose primary reason for being appears to be making profits for their stockholders and huge compensations for their CEOs. These monsters are concerned primarily with immediate considerations; their largest shareholders demand good returns on their investments and demand them immediately. The system is geared to a short-term view of the world.
All of this business activity goes on under the auspices of the government in power. Government obviously must have a long-term view whereas corporations can come and go. Government may or may not have the power or desire to control the rampant business Beast, depending upon who runs the government. If it is run by people who feed the Beast by allowing the Beast to operate with minimal control in return for being paid off (e.g. with campaign contributions and other perks) by the Beast, then we have a situation in which the Beast controls the economic aspects of the country.
As I have noted, the Beast operates primarily as a money-making machine for stockholders and CEOs. In a government under the control of the Beast, making money typically is accomplished by reducing labor costs rather than increasing efficiency of production. You see, it costs money to make production more efficient, but it’s easy to cut labor costs. All you have to do is pay workers less, cut their health benefits, hire part-time workers with no benefits, cut back on retirement packages, fire people before they qualify for retirement benefits, get rid of workers who seek union membership and, if that doesn’t solve the problem, transfer all of your manufacturing resources to third world sweat shops where wages and labor laws are minimal while building cushy headquarters buildings in desirable locations. And, if you can’t move your production to another country, you fire enough people so that the rest are so threatened by the fear of losing their jobs that they work for less without complaining. Completely absent in all of this is any sense of responsibility for the well-being, the economic health, of the country, for communities that are abandoned and for people left without jobs. And all of this is done by a Beast that doesn’t pay its share of taxes (but that’s another story). All of this, mind you, with the support of the government. Your government.
The burden of providing for the folks left behind by the Beast then becomes a problem for the same government that caused the problem in the first place by succumbing to the Beast. Unemployment rises and so does the amount of money required for unemployment benefits. But money is scarcer now because the Beast is operating in another country and pays the government even less in taxes (that, too, is another story). Because governments that feed the Beast generally don’t care much about whether or not people are fed anyway, they soon start to whittle away at employment benefits or shorten their duration. They whittle away at education benefits because they do not value knowledge. They whittle away at medical benefits because, obviously, if you don’t care whether people are fed, you certainly don’t care if they have adequate medical treatment. Now, throw in the costs of conducting an unnecessary illegal war or two and the standard of living of the nation starts to spiral downward. For most people, that is, but not for the rich cronies of those who run the government. The population becomes increasingly fractionated into those that have and those that have not. Freedom and justice for all, health care and housing for all, education for all become cut, trampled on. They become mere words, not values; lip service uttered by functionaries of the government trained by the Administration to promise everything and give nothing.
All of this happens in the context of the world of international trade, what economists now call the “free market” or “the market.” The “free market” has become the religion of preference for many economists and politicians who should know better but who think only in the short term.
There is no such thing as a “free” market. That is a sophomoric concept originated by and for simple minds that, in a world full of complexity, somehow need to accept the exceedingly naive notion that, by allowing free trade everywhere and anywhere between Beasts, prices and wages will, according the “law” of supply and demand, ultimately settle out in some magical way to what they should be, whatever that means.
In reality, the “Free Market” is nothing more than a fast food scheme for feeding Beasts.
But what of the long-term?
Worshiping the “free market” will come to an abrupt end when the Beast starts to find that it can’t sell its goods anymore. Why can’t it sell its goods? Because its exploitation of labor and its ignoring of basic human values has stifled the incomes of so many people that those folks won’t be able to buy the goods the Beast produces. That very thing appears to be happening right now. The Beast is being forced to cut wages, benefits, and pensions because its products are not selling. No demand for goods. This phenomenon is starting at the level of the most expensive goods and will “trickle down” eventually to cheaper merchandise until we all will live in a country in which Walmart and its clones will market extremely cheap schlock to people with hardly any money to spend.
It all boils down to the fact that people have to have enough money to buy the goods of the Beast. In order for that to happen, the Beast has to provide the people with money by hiring them. If the Beast goes elsewhere to hire workers, those left behind will not be able to buy the goods the Beast produces. By pursuing the short-term only, the Beast obviously ruins its long-term prospects. It will then have to make its profits by selling its goods outside of the Beast’s country of origin. That has many complications and is not as easy as it sounds. As a result, the economy of the Beast’s government will become buried under the demands of supporting the unemployed, the medically uninsured and the unpensioned elderly. Throw in an incompetently run government that has no sense of fiscal reality or responsibility and the country will slowly die.
Oversimplified? Of course. There are many other factors involved. But it is indisputable that the system has to be changed. We cannot continue on the present path and hope to achieve a viable future economy. It simply is not possible. With each cut in veteran’s services, for example, fewer people will be able to buy the goods of the Beast. With each cut back in social security, fewer people will be able to buy the goods of the Beast. With each failure to transform our dependence on oil into cheaper and more efficient forms of energy, fewer people will be able to buy the goods of the Beast. And with each mugging of the populace by exploitative drug companies and for-profit medical Beasts, fewer people will be able to buy the goods of the manufacturing Beasts.
The process can only be reversed by a change in government philosophy and integrity. Beasts have to be made to understand, either by legislation or astute arguments, the long term negative implications of their actions for the government, the country and, for heaven’s sake, themselves. Republicans have demonstrated that they simply aren’t up to the complexity of the task and that they do not possess adequate feeling for the common man. Solutions require more than tunnel vision economics and a belief in the “magic” of a “free” market.
In this context, readers should be aware that the current minimum wage in this country is $5.15 per hour; it has been that way since 1997. 1997!!! That’s $41.20 per 8-hour day, folks. Many people pay that to see a ballgame or concert or show or to have a nice little dinner with the spouse. $206 per week !. $824 per month! For housing, food, education, medical, clothing.???
Think hard about it. The Republican Party, backed by the Beasts, most of whom apparently cannot think beyond tomorrow, is creating an oligarchy . . . a small class ... of very wealthy people who keep their positions in society by making sure that the lesser people . . . the workers . . . are paid wages so low that they can barely exist. And now this oppression is climbing up the income ladder with each wage cut, each pension cut, each health benefit cut, each down-sizing.
Who is going to buy the cars? Ask General Motors? Ask Chrysler? Ask Toyota? They still don’t get it. Their solutions are to keep cutting. Cutting wages, cutting health benefits, cutting retirement benefits, increasing overtime without increasing pay. You name it. They try to change anything but their blind, compulsive, deadhead adherence to “free” market” concepts and the reign of the autonomous Corporation.
One would think the above situation would be enough to get a reasonably responsible Democrat thinking about what this country faces and the necessity to do something about it NOW. One would think that our Senators and Representatives might be able to come up with some sort of a political platform, some sort of a statement about caring for the workers, the poor, the lame, the halt and the blind. Some kind of expression of the Party caring about the well-being of all of the people, honestly, sympathetically, so that every inhabitant of this country can live with some kind of dignity, earn a living, live with a roof over his or her head, get an education, get treated for illnesses, enjoy life just a little bit in parks, forests, breathing clean air, swimming and drinking clean water without a bunch of Beasts and an unsympathetic government spying on them and preying on their very existence. You don’t even have to have a platform, for god’s sake. Just say it, dammit, just say it and the people will be with you
Dr. Bernard J Fine, editor of Fiatlux.info, was a senior scientist at the US Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine before retiring in 1993.
AI
