It's Up to Us!

I find it difficult to remain quiet when I am confronted with how political pathology is tearing the fabric of our society to shreds. 

Our people are drowning in unemployment, underemployment and underwater mortgages. More of our children are going to bed hungry each night and more families are homeless. Our school systems are crumbling and our children’s ability to become prepared for adulthood is being compromised.

How would we feel if we were out of work, through no fault of our own,  and we were facing the threat of unemployment insurance being stopped because we have been out of work for too long? In the op-ed world such is old news, but for those who are facing these realities, their backs are against the wall.  While they die a little each day, those who created this mess go on with business as usual.

We are being told that in preparing for “senior status” we need to accept less. School teachers, are criticized for earning more in retirement than private sector workers.  The implication of this is that something is wrong about someone working for 35 years and retiring with a 45,000 a year retirement program. A retirement program which requires the retiree to pay an additional 900 per month for medical, dental and vision coverage for the retiree and their spouse.

John Diaz’s Editorial on June 3^rd in the San Francisco Chronicle entitled More Sensible Term Limits, in part discussed robo calls that spew out misinformation on various propositions that appeared on the ballot. He states that “such calls are beyond deception.” In today’s world such dishonesty has become common place.

In truth we are living in an era where the “ends justify the means.”  This is predicated, in part, on people holding onto a political dogma.  Dogmas, it has been written, are “collective conceptual prisons... people love their prison cells because they give them a sense of security and a false sense of I know. Nothing has inflicted more suffering on humanity than its dogmas…every dogma crumbles sooner or later, because reality will eventually disclose its falseness.”

The Republican view of how the economy should be run is an example being wedded to a dogma.  Beginning with Reagan’s “trickle down” economy to the present, not one of their economic ideas has worked.  The notion that austerity or that cutting taxes will create jobs is historically untrue. The cutting of taxes during war time is unheard of.  The commitment to not raise revenue, or to compromise with the “enemy” is common place.  Playing “chicken” with the fate of the economy and the welfare of citizens is unconscionable. 

Facts do not change their beliefs.  To Obama’s “yes we can,” conservatives practice “no we won’t.” So we have gridlock.   The problem is that we are all suffering because of such falsehoods and fantasies.

Finally, we are being treated like mindless consumers and not as citizens for whom our representatives are supposedly working.  We are being fed propaganda which is predicated on ‘if we tell a lie often enough, people will begin to believe the lie to be the truth.’  An example of this is that tobacco “is not bad for your health.” Or, after the 2008 sub prime mortgage disaster we don’t need regulations in banking. Or again, government is being too intrusive.  How safe would food, medicines or airplanes be without government?

As the song says “and the times, they are ah changing.”  Where will these changes take us?  Will we wind up a third world country with poverty, poorly educated children, the old eating out of garbage cans?  Or, will we demand something more for ourselves.  It’s up to us.    

 Jim Farwell M.A. / M.F.T.
    farwelljs@yahoocom