When I came to the U.S. back in 1987 I voted with my feet. I thought this was a great country, filled with opportunities. Still do.
When I immigrated I considered myself a right-wing republican. Still do.
Oops. That was wrong. But it is hard to see yourself in a new light.
The whole political spectrum has changed ninety degrees to the right, so today I find myself agreeing with liberals on virtually every issue. I guess that makes me a liberal, by definition.
And that is something which has taken time to get used to. It’s kind of like going to bed as a man and waking up a woman. Perhaps that wasn’t a great analogy, but it’ll have to do. It is a real weird feeling is all I can say.
What changed my mind was reality.
I saw, from the inside, how corporations have taken complete power in this country and how they’ve taken over the Republican Party. It doesn’t represent the people anymore, just the corporations.
To read more about this you ought to read David Sirota’s book, Hostile Takeover.
And the big corporations don’t have your best interest at heart, nor do they have my best interest at heart. They don’t mind if we buy SUV’s and waste gas, they don’t mind if we buy lot’s unhealthy food that makes us inflate like balloons, they don’t mind if we get sick and need drugs and if we waste every available resource on earth.
After all, those things mean they sell more gas, metal, junk food, drugs, and anything else out there.
They have long ago taken over the Republican Party, and they’ve tried to make people believe that “What is good for GM is good for America,” since the 1950s.
To counter this self-interested movement of robber barons, we have something called the Democrats. Or liberals.
To be a liberal is to basically believe in freedom. According to a Google search the definition of liberal is "having political or social views favoring reform and progress tolerant of change; not bound by authoritarianism, orthodoxy, or tradition and a person who favors a political philosophy of progress and reform and the protection of civil liberties."
I also note that another definition, from Wikipedia, holds that liberalism “typically favors the right to dissent from orthodox tenets or established authorities in political or religious matters.”
But based on my personal experiences, liberals are the first to sell out, and I think this is one reason the liberal movement will not gain traction.
Let me give you a couple of examples.
When the enigmatic billionaire, libertarian, environmentalist, animal-rights activist, Mrs. McCaw, who is the owner the 105-year old newspaper Santa Barbara News-Press, started squashing news stories she disagreed with, many of the journalists resigned and publicly protested a gag order. (Picture.)Read the story in the New York Times today.
So what happened when one blogger revealed that the technology manager was heckling bloggers and there was a possibility for rigged rankings at the (fake) liberal bastion, the Huffington Post?
One blogger stood up for liberty on one large online website. What happened?
He’s fired, and only one non-liberal blogger, Greg Gutfeld, out of seven hundred liberal bloggers, come to his defense.
Those seven hundred bloggers wouldn’t have risked their jobs if they had spoken up, they wouldn’t have lost money, the way the journalists at the Santa Barbara News-Press do when they disagree with their liberal owner.
What is that saying again?
"Those willing to sacrifice liberty for security soon lose both, and deserve neither" - Benjamin Franklin.
The security to blog on the Huffington Post, was worth more to those seven hundred than to stand up for liberty itself. Only other liberal websites defended what that blogger had done, feeling safe that they couldn't be fired.
In short, many of these liberal bloggers are simply full of sh-t. First smell of gunfire they drop their pants and run. And that gives you the true nature of the very liberal blog movement.
But let’s have some more fun.
Let’s look at some of the people who donate money to the liberal movement.
You’d expect that if you found a group of people working together, in which one person had given money to Democrat Van Hollen, the next one on the team had given money to John Kerry for his presidential his bid, the next one also had given to Kerry, and so did the fourth one. You’d expect this would be a highly principled team, right?
Wrong.
These are four lawyers working at Covington & Burling, defending Bush Ranger Hank McKinnell and his company Pfizer against the suit I filed against Pfizer.
One more example. One of the most famous liberals is Senator Lieberman, who so famously supported the Iraq war. Who famously was Gore’s vice presidential candidate. Who famously was hugged and kissed by Bush.According to a recent article in the New York Times, “Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona and one of Mr. Lieberman’s closest friends in the Senate, called him “one of the most decent men I have ever known” and simply shook his head when asked about his friend’s situation. “I hesitate to say anything nice about him, for fear that it would be used against him,” Mr. McCain said”
But there you just have it! Bush is embracing and kissing this “Democrat,” and Republicans hesitate to say anything nice about him, for fear it will hurt him! Don’t they want to hurt him; he’s a Democrat for pete’s sake!
No they don’t.
Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton is now kissing and making up with the drug and healthcare industry.
According to New York Times, “As she runs for re-election to the Senate from New York this year and lays the groundwork for a possible presidential bid in 2008, Mrs. Clinton is receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from doctors, hospitals, drug manufacturers and insurers. Nationwide, she is the No. 2 recipient of donations from the industry, trailing only Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, a member of the Republican leadership. Some of the same interests that tried to derail Mrs. Clinton’s health care overhaul are providing support for her Senate re-election bid.”
So a leading Democrat, a possible presidential candidate, is the No. 2 recipient of donations from the healthcare industry.
And you don’t think the liberal movement is in trouble?
These are all armchair liberals. They put a few dollars in the collection box, they talk nicely, but in real life what they do supports the republican movement, so much that some even get a kiss on their cheek by Bush himself and others get a shower of money from the most right-wing of all companies.
With such Democrats, do we even need Republicans?
And that’s the reason I don’t see much hope for the liberal movement.
It is on a path to self-destruction, and the only help it gets is from Republicans so arrogant and stupid that they hurt themselves.
Many of the powerful liberals have already been bought and paid for and it will not matter one iota who comes to power in the end. It’s all a shell game. Now you see it, now you don’t, and it sure doesn’t matter which party you pick.
Well, maybe it does matter who you pick, a little.
But not that much. Not in this country.
One day, far, far ahead, the people in this country will rise and demand representation that represents them, and there will be a new beginning.
But that time is very far ahead.
10 comments:
And I have been a liberal all my life. However, after meeting some of the "progressives" on the Huffpo site, as well as seeing how only one line of comment is tolerated, and no rationality allowed, I am through with all that.
In spite of having been a liberal all my life, I am also good at math and numbers, and I have been employed in business all my life, starting with international banking, in Europe. The problem with the "progressives" and "liberals" is that they are not rational. They can not stick to facts and data, nor do they have any idea how things are paid for. One has only to look at what gets on the Huffpo website with repsect to the current Middle East crisis, to see what one is dealing with. They are PRO international terrorism, PRO the Muslim Terrorist Murder Entity, against their own nation, uninformed and irrational. Everything and the kitchen sink, not to mention the toilet, is brought in to bash the U.S., Israel, anything and anyone. That people get murdered all over the world, in The Netherlands, in Belgium, in India, in England, in Spain, in the U.S. and no one is safe, does not matter. That Hezbullah is an international terrorist entity with sophisticated weaponry, does not register. They keep insisting that these are poor refugees. Liberals, in my humble opinion, have gone off the deep end and are nuts. They speak of things they have no notion of. They have never lived in a warzone. They speak out of their neckhair. I am a liberal no more.
Lots of good stuff here, Doc. A lot of this sounds like the speech I give to Dem fund raisers when they call, which is often.
A few points. I did ask RJ why he was not part of the discussion concerning your dismissal. Although I consider the text of his response private, he assured me that he was not afraid of AH, he just was not a fan of yours. That's fine, but I felt he missed my point. Andy had NO business getting involved in the comments section, but I'm not going to flog this dead horse again
Second, Joe and Hillary are not liberals. I doubt they ever were. Maybe Joe when he was a puppy.
I consider myself a practical person. I just want clear air and water, and a little protection from the crooks.
I would love for Americans to be better at acessing risk. We spend 400 billion to avenge 3,000 deaths, but every year we lose what?(to lazy to look it up again) 40-50k to auto accidents. Most could be saved by wearing a helmet. Sound rediculous? Maybe it is, but so is the Iraq war. We lose 400k a year to cigs. Ban them. People stuff themselves with trans fat (I know, broken record) while the FDA says it knocks off another 6k per year. Never mind that the Harvard Med School says 30k and other studies put the number over 100k.
The end point is this. We could be saving a lot more lives with that 400 billion instead of killing and wounding 100k of innocents, if there is such an animal. Note the above numbers are per YEAR. That 3000 was for a five year period.
As for who owns this country, that's pretty obvious. I once chatted with my state rep on an issue near and dear to me. The response was, "that would be the right thing to do, but where is your money? Big money doesn't agree with you."
My son said he studied about me in his lobbying class. I'm a "Crack-pot lobbyest" he says. Definition: One who thinks his reps should do something because it's right, not because he bought them lunch and a vacation and gave their kid a 250k a year job.
At this point, I could support Russ, or maybe Al, but I don't see another choice that gets my money this go around.
Joe and Hillary are not liberals.
Liberals are not even liberals - they must now (after much money was spent to accomplish this) call themselves progressives.
Joe and Hillary are not progressives either. As you said, they are "in the bag" to corporate interests.
Please good doctor - stay with the real issues and avoid the label game. The very same corporate interests love it when we do so.
The goal of the corporate controllers: Keep them (liberals, progressives, whatever)worried about labels and have them miss what's really going on against their interests.
Doc I think you are onto something here. As you’ve said before, “follow the money!” Do politicians really listen to their constituents or are many of them travelling to the beat of a different drum?
“Money doesn’t just talk, it screams!” We’ve all heard that many times, but, ARE we the slaves of money? Money doesn’t grow on trees, so, we are ‘beholden’ to someone or something for our income. Are nations any different?
In the US the FED controls credit. They create “money” and then charge us interest on that creation. But there’s more. They also control liquidity, so, they also control inflation, even if they might not like to admit it. Does our government own the FED?
No, they are a private corporation owned by some of the same investors who own the rest of the world’s Central Banks. These corporations have shareholders whom comprise 300 of the world’s wealthiest family dynasties.
The FED is only about 50% owned by US share holders (dynastic families only, not publicly traded). But, the US is the FED’s only customer whom they, directly, make money on.
Do you think that harmony or disharmony costs us more? You got it. Disharmony!
So there is an obvious conflict of interest, in a business sense, between the FED and our political-economic stability.
The rest of the world’s Central Banks operate under the same rules: disharmony is more profitable than harmony. Or to put it bluntly, in the light of current events, war is VERY profitable. And Central Banks are into financing wars!
Guess which seven countries in the world did not have their credit controlled by one of these dynastic Central Banks? Afghanistan was the seventh, Iraq was the sixth, then comes Iran, North Korea, Libya, Cuba, etc (I forget the last one, Syria, perhaps).
I think we all see a pattern here, this isn’t rocket science. The question is how do we dig ourselves out from under the three-ton elephant standing on our chest?
We in the US have it easier than some other countries in that when the Federal Reserve Act was passed by Congress, and signed into law by President Wilson, in 1913, they included a clause that says, in effect; “This law can be rescinded by doing so.”
I’ve made an effort to be factual here, but if some of my learned readers find errors please enter the discussion and add your corrections. J
Janine, I agree. I'm used to write stuff with a good ending and an action plan. For this one, that is tough. It's the system, not the people. We have a system which doesn't represent the people. Sad but true. Let's not forget this was the first democracy in the world, and it is hard to get anything right the first time around. Problem is once the system is there, everyone in power is beholden to it, and have no interest in change. It is also a system which has in itself been good enough to stand up to change and which has survived. But I do think that in the long term change will come. You may never enjoy this, now will I, I'm sad to say, but perhaps your grandchildren will. Look at how long it took to abolish slavery or for women to vote. We're talking centuries. That's reality.
Beeta. That's it. History is unpredictable, just like the weather. After reading my last comment I started wondering what I was doing. Then I read yours and realized I should simply continue.
Boy oh Boy! Where to begin? Tough to jump in and add something when everybody so far has made such good informed points. I guess it all boils down to, "things are screwed up" and so, "what are gonna do?" Lemme dust off my soapbox, oil my creaky knees, and give it a shot.
1. Labels today have no meaning, except what the labeler wants them to mean. Welcome to my often-stated "parallel universe."
2. Corporations are NOT evil. Guns are not evil, nor are medicines, pesticides, politicians, or soldiers. Some people are evil, and in there hands these things can be used for evil purposes.
3. The founding fathers were almost universally rich, and despite retrospective judgement regarding some of their actions, they were not evil.
4. The situation is not hopeless, and as my buddy Einstein said to me one day, "Yo stupid! look up, the answers are right in front of you."
And the answer is..... (drum roll, please)...EDUCATION. YOU people are smart. YOU'RE well read, informed, and some even highly, formally educated. YOU see all these things. The problem is there's not enough of YOU.
Capitalism, in and of itself, is not evil. It is the most successful economic model ever devised, and has catapulted much of the world into unimaginable heights of progress. In spite of the shortcomings we all know about, our life-span is twice as long as our founders, we've been to mars, and billions of people are enjoying fullfilling and secure lives.
When you enter the door into Capitalism, there's a giant sign overhead that says, "Let The Buyer Beware." It is business's wont to maximize profits, it is the consumers' duty to be able to make informed decisions.
Now if consumers are stupid, so much the better for business. Which brings us back to education.
Education is the antidote for almost all our problems, from corrupt business to corrupt politicians. And there's the rub.
Our educational system is beyond broke. It is a bureaucracy more powerful than any other. It's goals are to increase in size, power, and influence. If you believe they spend even 10 minutes thinking about educating our children, please sign up for summer/night school and get a clue. Soon they'll have more aides, assistants, administrators, grief counselors, therapists, and analysts than there are citizens. Just like I said before, it's not the individual people who are evil, it's the system. You know the saying, "power corrupts.........." well, this baby is the poster child for absolute power, incompetence, and national fraud.
p.s. Several excellent posts have been written since I started this, so if I said anything redundant, I apologize.
p.s.s. Beeta, I didn't forget we have open issues to continue.
"But that time is very far ahead"
Actually Doc, it's probably never going to happen. I'm pretty sure the rich and powerful people of the world have seen this coming too and have been doing everything in their power to prevent the "awakening" of a people who are oppressed even if we are "jet propelled, air conditioned and steak fed...slaves." Americans are so deep in the shit that we don't even see how "our" institutions perpetuate stupidity.
It's sad, really sad.
www.worldslaves.citymax.com
anonymous: www.worldslaves.citymax.com
Interesting site. My mind was bent!
That's hardly fair to use Lieberman as an example of a "liberal"... he's pretty damn conservative for the party. You could have mentioned Zell Miller while you were at it (very much a Republican in ideology, but officially a member of the Democratic party).
Lieberman is being challenged in the upcoming CT Democratic primary because so many CT dems are upset about how poorly he has represented the party here.
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