by Ed Klein, Peoria, IL
After Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s union busting bill was signed, Mahlon Mitchell of the firefighters union said, “It doesn’t feel like America. Where the hell are we?”
I can answer that. We’re in an era where a larger number of people have stopped thinking for themselves because they apparently found it easier to submit to the coercion of a party that sold itself out to its corporate overlords, along with the likes of the radical Tea Party and self-appointed know-it-all Grover Norquist.
That was in Wisconsin. But in state after state all across the country, people who are fighting for their rights against corporate power and political chicanery are feeling that the forces of greed and destruction are winning, forces oblivious to the millions whose rights they are stripping away, all for a patronizing smile, a pat on the head, and a fistful of dollars courtesy of big money.
America, the land of the free? The creeping takeover by corporate interests will make that hard fought-for freedom, like Kris Kristopherson sings, “… just another word for nothing left to lose.”
All the victories of America’s growing up years … the 40 hour work week, public education, banning child labor, minimum wage laws, voting rights, health care benefits, environmental protection, bargaining rights, Social Security and Medicare are slowly but surely being stolen.
Chris Hedges, award-winning author and journalist (American Fascists, Death of the Liberal Class, and others) say, “We have very effectively been pacified by the pernicious ideology of a consumer society that is centered on the cult of the self – an undiluted hedonism and narcissism that has been a very effective way to divert our attention while the country is being reconfigured into a cult of neo-feudelism, with a rapacious oligarchic elite and an anemic government that is no longer able to intercede on behalf of its citizens but cravenly serves the interests of the oligarchy itself”
Must we look back at our history, the great, stirring pageantry of America as only a memory of what we used to have: the Constitution and Bill of Rights, the dreams and sacrifices of all those great men and women who have dedicated their lives to help make us what we are today?
It’s easy and convenient to consider warnings such as this and dismiss them as the product of overwrought imagination or the rants of a calamity-howler. But read the newspapers and periodicals, listen to the radio, watch the TV news and if you have the ability to analyze the situation, you should be able to appreciate what is happening. Instead of it being morning in America, it could quite possibly be evening in America – and the light is fading.