My America: Letters to Americans

Once upon a time when governments no longer served most of their citizens it was the most economically disadvantaged that could be counted on to rebel against tyranny and injustice.  Times have changed, for the worse, despite the spread of democracy.

 

Here we are with a two-party plutocracy that preferentially serves corporate and wealthy interests and lets the middle class suffer and sink.  Plausibly, the middle class is unready to revolt because it still maintains a relatively good standard of living despite rising economic insecurity.  But what about the lowest 40 percent of Americans that are the working poor?

 

A recent survey of this group by the Washington Post, the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation and Harvard University conducted this past June looked at the beliefs of adults ages 18 to 64 working 30 or more hours a week, not self-employed and who earned no more than $27,000 in 2007.  The results show a fascinating dichotomy.  Though there is widespread pain and discontent there is also a stubborn faith in the American dream despite little help from government.

 

Ninety percent of this group sees the current economy negatively, either not so good or poor, with 52 percent feeling financially insecure and 50 percent feeling less secure than a few years ago.  The fractions saying they have difficulty affording basic things are severe, including: 88 percent that cannot save money for college or other education for their children, 82 percent paying for gasoline or other transportation costs, 81 percent saving money for retirement, 65 percent paying for health care and health insurance, 65 percent handling child care, close to 60 percent paying credit card bills, monthly utility bills and rent or mortgage costs, and 47 percent buying food.  Three quarters say it has gotten harder to find good jobs and nearly that fraction for finding affordable health care, and 68 percent finding decent, affordable housing.

 

In the past year this group has had to take many actions to make ends meet, including 70 percent that cut electricity use and home heating; 62 percent that took an extra job or worked extra hours, 51 percent that postponed medical or dental care and 50 percent that took money out of savings or retirement funds.

 

All this sounds pretty bleak.  But are these people mad and pessimistic?  Not exactly.

 

An amazing 69 percent are hopeful about their personal financial situation, 59 percent believe they are more likely over the next few years to move up in terms of their social class, 59 percent believe that their children will have a standard of living much or somewhat better than theirs, and 56 percent think they will achieve the American dream in their lifetime.

 

Do these lower economic class, hardest hit Americans that account for 25 percent of the adult population believe that government helps them?  No.  Only 22 percent believe that government programs are making things better for them.  But apparently they have bought hook, line and sinker into Barack Obama’s change rhetoric, with a 2 to 1 margin favoring him over John McCain.  And when it comes to beliefs about which candidate will do better for them the margins favoring Obama go up to 3 or more to 1 for improving their own financial situation, the national economy and the national health care system.  Similarly, Obama is seen as much more concerned with their needs and better represent their values.  All very good news for Obama, except that only 70 are registered to vote and about a third saw no difference in whether Obama or McCain was in office.

 

Faith in Obama, however, pales in comparison to the other source of comfort for dealing with hard economic times.  A striking 78 percent find religion or faith in God helps them get through tough economic times.

 

The unmistakable conclusion from all these data is that no rebellion against the power elites running the two-party plutocracy seems likely.  If the bottom 40 percent of Americans in terms of income still believe in the American dream and change-spouting politicians like Obama, it is hard to believe that the more affluent middle 40 percent of the population are ready to support more radical change through political rebellion.

 

Interesting how gasoline prices are dropping as we approach the Republican and Democratic conventions and Election Day.  Apparently, America’s ruling class knows what it is doing.  It can keep channeling more and more of the nation’s wealth to the rich, Upper Class producing more economic inequality without fearing the kind of political revolution that Thomas Jefferson thought the nation needs periodically.  Consider this: In the three decades after World War II household inflation-adjusted income of the bottom 90 percent increased 83 percent compared to 20 percent increase for the top 10 percent.  In contrast, in the past three decades, the bottom 90 percent saw only a 10 percent increase while the top 10 percent received an increase of 232 percent!  The two-party stranglehold on our political system has produced rising economic inequality.

 

Forget all that nonsense about the proletariat.  Most Americans use their faith in God or religion or conventional politicians to cope, even in some of the most insecure economic times in American history.  They remain overly confident in voting as the path to change.  The ruling class has successfully used propaganda to dumb down and manipulate most of the public because delusion has become the opiate of the masses.

 

In God and Barack Obama We Trust could be placed on all our currency if the views of millions of Americans are taken seriously.  Don’t you feel better?

 

[Joel S. Hirschhorn can be reached through www.delusionaldemocracy.com.]

How Hillary Can Knock-Out Obama

Joel S. Hirschhorn

Now is the time for Hilary Clinton to take a bold position that in one brilliant, courageous stroke shows the nation that she is more willing to pursue true reforms of the two-party plutocratic political system than Obama is.

Obama versus Clinton versus Plutocracy Joel S. Hirschhorn Here comes another inconvenient truth. Despite all the attention to Oprah for Obama and the pundit blabbering about the Democratic primary horse race the outcome has been predetermined. What people do not want to know is that power elites control what the Democratic ticket will be. When the primaries end the winner will be the reigning plutocracy. Rich and powerful elites want Hillary Clinton in the White House if the Democrats get their turn in the rigged two-party system. Just one big problem: The establishment plutocracy wants her more than most Americans trust or like her. No matter how much she spends and no matter how many big name endorsements she gets, her phoniness and arrogance prevail. She would be America’s irritating Panderer-in-Chief. What to do?

The history of Rome was a society like no other. We are all part of the Roman conflict. Some how during the fall of Rome, every one of us in the great world of our survived the fall of Rome, the 700 years of complete destruction of society, infrastructures, library's from 2000 years of history and we all were either part of the rise of Christianity, survived Paganism in some parts of the world or became part of the last religion that followed in fear of Christianity, Islam. Although many great people have been part of the Islamic history, the greatest portion of Islam that still survives today is the reason it was established, to counter the fear of Christianity during the fall of the Roman empire in the East. Islam took 2000 years of history and destroyed it and has yet to advance its own people out of the dark ages and uses this as a motivation for destruction of Christianity. As Christianity moved forward in the West, Islam slowly declined until all it had left was to fight for land and take over Christianity and its money, power and strong following of Christians world wide. The history of Rome ended at the beginning of the rise of Islam and Christianity. Both religions believe in God therefore every soul believing in God has the possibility of being saved. The error in judgement is not on the people but on the false prophet. I have read about how a false prophet will rise and millions will follow this great leader. They will truly believe he is the leader or prophet of his people. Because Islam use's Sex to gain young mens souls to die for God, Because Islam use's fighting to convert instead of love and because Islam has a leader without a face because of the fear of looking into the eye's of a false prophet or that the man was just a man who used the poor people of the day to motivate them to steal the riches of Christianity and the fall of Rome. The false prophet is Islam and the leader of Islam. The Billions that follow the war, the 72 women that will be at the end of young men's suicide deaths is so easy to see it is false. Everyone I have ever talked to has admitted it can not be. So if it can't be that millions will die for a lie then how can the religion that believes illiteracy and only knowledge of the Koran is a good thing. How can Women be bound to home and hide be a blessing of God. Because of his own inability to control him self, covering women helped him succeed to be a better person. I have met many good Muslims yet never have I met a Muslim that truly has seen the light of day or the blessings of God.

Thanks for Dick Cheney Joel S. Hirschhorn When someone in high elected office shows the nation how vulnerable our Constitution is, we should be thankful for the wakeup call. Like many ruthless dictators, evil kings, and monster generals, Dick Cheney is the leading practitioner of the ends-justify-the-means mentality, where only his vision of the desired ends counts. And if this means disregarding and disobeying the Constitution, torturing prisoners, killing thousands of American soldiers, disrespecting Congress, destroying our environment, embracing the invasion of illegal immigrants, increasing out national debt, and disregarding the will of the vast majority of Americans, so be it. Serving corporate interests rather than serving the people is Cheney’s brand of patriotism.

Are Americans Unready to Boil? Joel S. Hirschhorn The frog-in-boiling water model helps us understand political upheavals: how citizens wake up early enough (or too late) to respond to social and economic oppression. Sometimes the greed and arrogance of Ruling Classes makes them careless and social waters heat too quickly. Sensing doom, alert citizen-frogs escape or revolt. Or they stay complacent and boil. The Bush Administration has turned the heat up on us, explaining why nearly 75 percent of Americans believe their country is on the wrong track and 70 percent think the economy is worsening.

"Arab oil kingdoms were net buyers of as much as $6.9 billion thru their brokers in London in September, after adding $11.1 billion to their portfolios in August. Arab oil kingdoms are recycling part of their petrodollar surplus into US Treasury bonds, to help finance the American war effort in Iraq, which costs about $2 billion per week. But the British pound has been a stronger currency than the Euro against the US dollar recently, dealing a bigger blow to Arab holdings of US bonds. But United Arab Emirates central bank chief Sultan Nasser al-Suweidi is avoiding the US Treasury market, "I expect the Euro to become the currency of international trade and investment in 10 years. If we add tourism, the Euro will surpass the dollar as the first currency in the world by 2015." The UAE central bank is shifting 10% of its $25 billion reserves out of the dollar and largely into British pounds and Euros."

Please note: A NWO based on mass murder and slaughter will never prevail! Please dont be scared!!! Its simply impossible. The law of cause and effect will destroy all these responsible butchers and black masters sooner or later. Just wait and see how the responsible persons of 9/11 and of all other blatant events against humanity and therefore these perpetrators will be judged and destroyed either officially or secretly... be they Zionists, the US itself or Bin Laden and Co. Please do not manifest anger and hatred when you watch the film, just try to accept whatever truth is and trust in cosmic intelligence/God... everything will be perfect at the end... you will see..

On a scheme to hoodwink America's poor: Hugo Chavez enlists a Kennedy for his anti-U.S. campaign By Pedro Mario Burelli | PMBComments 22.11.05 | It might be fair to say that without oil Hugo Chávez would have never been elected president. By 1998, bountiful oil had made the task of governing Venezuela seem like a simple – i.e. requiring little talent – routine of distributing relatively easy to exploit natural wealth. This flawed conception explains why the two main political parties, AD and Copei, brazenly fielded a former beauty queen and an untrained septuagenarian in the 1998 election. As a result, Chávez’s victory, feasible in theory due to decreasing standards, was also effortless in practice, and a surprise only to the winner who had started the year with less than 3% in the polls.

Pleasant Greetings to All, This is my first post to the site, however, I have read several posts on different topics. America is unique, trapped in the control of traditional ancient war based economic thinking, with more powerful weapons than at any other time in the history of mankind. Some people want to use these new weapons to gain control of real estate and natural resources in lands other than where they live, often to the detriment of the people in the land where the desired real estate or resource is located. Scientific research into Human personality Type is not an easy task, however much has been done to distinguish between preferential behavior choices relative to 16 core sets of definable characteristics; based on the work of Jung, or the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. I go a couple steps further in my approach to understanding the core relationship between free will choice characteristics and environmental influences that lead people, with help of traditional thinking, news bias, political bias, religious bias, etc. to behave like the current U.S. "leaders." Cutting to the point, I define "the problem" with "world leadership" as one most closely related to "the most willing to kill" attitude; attitude being a personality type issue. George Bush stated in one of the debates with John Kerry that "I know how the world should be run." I am no more a Kerry supporter than a supporter of either main U.S. political party, and I do not believe one person can "know how the world should be run."

American's need a little refresher in history to see why others see them for what they are. Read all the links... http://www.krysstal.com/democracy_whyusa.html Then rationalize all you want. The reality doesn't change. Elements with the USA are and have always been warmongers. They are unseen or 'justified' by controlling interests behind the gov't. Americans just think they have a democracy, the reality is that the important functions are almost entirely controlled by processes that are NOT at all democratic. They need to ask themselves how can someone or some org be controlling our gov't in a way that we don't know about? We don't see any foreign intervention. And how can it have been for so long? (Most of them will be in denial, but the fact is that some neo-fascist group which has a clever way of using people (on a 'need to know' basis) who we'll call 'Big Brother' is doing the controlling, creating the grounds for a long series of violations of both their own laws and the regs and objectives of the UN. The average Americans don't even know it, have their heads buried, or are feigning blindness. Of course we could say they were stupid, but that clearly isn't so, however Big Brother (BB) is doing the top-level thinking for them and manipulating public opinion so BB can do what it wants. Then BB pulls the strings to make things happen so only a handful know what the real objectives are, maybe not even willing puppets like Bush know all of what is happening but he knows far more than he admits to in public. He was elevated to President because they knew they could count on him to start a war, after all his record show he has callous disregard for the lives of others he signed execution orders for.)

"...how to engage students with American aspirations, when their dreams lead from and to so many different destinations? How to pinpoint America's great promises when such language smacks of empire? I'm reminded of a student from Lagos-by-way-of-London who responded to my synopsis of Samuel Huntington's "Hispanic Challenge" in class: "What you're saying sounds so racist that, if you were white, students would be protesting your class." Where is the happy discursive medium, between apathy and protest, necessary for learning?" Benjamin Ortiz's full response to 'My America: Letters to Americans' is at http://www.opendemocracy.net/forums/thread.jspa?forumID=87&threadID=43709&tstart=0

Well that's real easy...... Forty per cent or more of any nation in all western democracies no longer vote at all... and why? ( Too stupid? apathetic?) Bollox!... they don't vote because the candidates and policies they are allowed to choose from in no way represent thier views or thier lives, or thier hopes. Who pays the bills for the Democrats? Who are thier big donors? Aren't they the same people who fund the Republicans? Why vote Republican-lite when you can vote for the real thing? If Kerry had campaigned on say, economic justice... that if you work hard at any company making profits you are entitled to a wage that will support you and your family... he would have won.... more then one state voted AGAINST Kerry but FOR a half way decent minimum wage.

This message is for Kenneth Timmerman Dear Mr Kenneth Timmerman, Thanks for writing this book that casts a new light on France commercial interests connections with foreign politics. I cannot understand why it is not translated in french. I have a question that troubles me. I read on page 241 " French conglomerate Vivendi, for instance was negociating a billion-dollar deal to rebuild the Iraki water purification system shortly before the 2003 war broke". It happens that I know personally a senior manager at the Company Générale des Eaux", the vivendi and root company at Vivendi that carries out this type of equipment work. I have questionned him concerning this allegation and he denies strongly that his company was negociating any deal at all at this time of even for the preceeding year.

Dear Steve, I read your response with unease. As with almost all the USA commentators that I come across in openDemocracy and other forums your comment upon "our values" when you are referring to democracy, human rights and similar ideas of freedom. There are at least two billion people who are citizens of nations that incorporate and practice these ideals in their national governance. These ideals are the values of all these people (not to mention large numbers of people who have these values but live in non-democratic countries'), not the values of 280 million citizens of the USA alone.

George W. Bush's main goal is to bankrupt the government of the United States thus doing away with all entitlement programs. We will become a corporate state for real with the Pentagon at the fore. So say goodbye to your difficult friend. What I would suggest as I've suggested to the "so-called cultural elite" is to boycott this country. I suggest to my European friends-do not visit the United States and don't buy our products. British Petroleum/Amoco is one of the largest contributors to the Republican party. Write to them and tell them to stop. I haven't purchased anything but food for one week. I even cancelled my subscription to the NY Times because the complacency of all of us has allowed this to happen.

The U.S. economy and by implication, U.S. living standards depend on persuading the rest of the world to accept the U.S. dollar in payment for what the U.S. needs, whether it is cheap iron ore, oil, bauxite, bananas, orange juice or coffee. Other nations are not so fortunate. They have to actually pay for what they need. Is it not a supreme contradiction and irony, that the principal creditor of the world's supposedly richest country, self-styled champion of democratic freedoms, bastion of economic individualism, and scourge of totalitarian Communism, is one of the world's poorest - anti-democratic, totalitarian, Communist China?

I will comment only on Mr Markov's charge that America has adhered to double standards. Yes, there has indeed been a double standard. President George W Bush has stood by while Russia has committed major war crimes in Chechnya, and embraces "Vladimir" as his friend. The disgraceful aspect of this friendship is that the deaths of an estimated 200,000 (plus) Chechens and persons of Russian descent who resided in Chechnya; the ravaging of the entire territory of Chechnya; and the multiple crimes against humanity committed there by the Russian military, have not resulted in appropriate condemnation by western leaders because of a politics of expediency. This is the double standard which ought to concern western electorates. Consider, by comparison, the similar conduct of "Chemical Ali" in Iraq, who murdered some 200,000 Kurds - he is now in US custody and is to be tried for crimes against humanity.

With the utmost respect to Ms. Herold, I cannot be quite so concillatory. Most of us certainly favoured the removal of Saddam, but with the legitimacy and authority of an international force specifically authorised by the UN. Absent such authorisation we were opposed to the war precisely because it involved such a flagrant breach of international law that it put Saddam in the role of a victim and martyr. Nor did we wish to see the homes and businesses of ordinary Iraqi damaged or destroyed, their schools, hospitals and other public buildings bombed, thousands of ordinary Iraqis indiscriminately mutilated or slaughtered. We especially did not want to see Saddam ousted just so that an almost equally brutal and inept US military regime could move into his palaces and their torturers into his prisons.

Amusing dialogue. Mr Kenneth Timmerman seems really pissed off that France - along with nearly all the rest of the world, but he does not mention it - did not fall, or rather jump, into the same hole as 3 Anglo-saxon countries did. Now you feel really alone down there, don't you ? Yes, some other countries sent troops too - but do we hear on TV "The japanese air force blew out a cemetary yesterday", or "A Polish GI shot a 13-years old Iraqi whose bag looked menacing", or "Italian soldiers torture Iraqi people at Abu Graib and take photographs" ? No, they stay in their barracks, because it is too dangerous out there, and also merely because they came to help rebuild Iraq infrastructure, not destroy them more. You are alone doing the ugly work - and I doubt someone really had to do it.