ORGANIZE! UNITE! WIN!

 

Well, here we are, back to the 1930s. The great, mostly white middle class produced by postwar legislation and the boom on which it rode, is now mostly gone. Sixty percent of Americans are again living hand-to-mouth. And yet, our ignoble oligarchs are still not satisfied. And they won't even be satisfied with medieval-style ownership of all us peasants!

Most of you have, courtesy of Faux News and other such fascist media, have fallen for the lie that the political and economic descendants of the planters have been using on us ever since Bacon's Rebellion in the Virginia colony of the 1670s.

One of that rebellion's remarkably rich ironies is, it actually began because enough newly-freed indentured servants thought that the colonial legislature wasn't grabbing enough of the natives' land quickly enough!

But whatever its roots, Bacon's Rebellion terrified the Virginia planters because black and white indentured servants made common cause against the Virginia aristocracy. From then on, blacks were to be slaves all their lives and whites would be indentured for a few years, then used to do the planters' dirty work while being fed the lie that THEY were now part of the ruling class!

How many of you have been told that lie and swallowed it in its current form? That you, too, might be rich one day and it'll all be by your own efforts?

Sorry-not-sorry to tell you that you've been sold a bill of goods! IF your grandchildren are lucky, they'll be doing exactly the same work you're doing now! If they're UNlucky, they'll be literal beggars and some will have their their starved, probably unburied carcasses merging with landfills! And you can guess what your granddaughters might have to do in order to keep breathing, can't you?

One lie you've been told is, y'all, or your grandparents, made it by their own efforts while others (and we know who THAT means) 'had things handed to them'.

THAT lie started the day after the 13th Amendment made technical slavery illegal in the whole country. Some of you may remember that the Emancipation Proclamation applied only to the 'states in rebellion', not to the loyal slave states. And, since so few of us have known any African-American, LAtino or native individuals, too many of us have swallowed that LIE, generation after generation!

And now, as a pretty direct result of too many of us allowing ourselves to be pitted against other working people of different skin shades, what every president beginning with FDR and ending with Carter has built, fostered and maintained is....gone, gone, GONE! No more middle class majority; too many of us started to think of ourselves as aristocrats! Not a smart move when your family's middle-class prosperity was built on the GI Bill and FHA insured home loans!

This next item is something neither most of you, or parents and grandparents, could have been expected to know or even ask after: those programs were secretly 'labelled' 'For White Men Only, or Almost'. Almost no African-American, Latino or Native applying to those programs got anything from them!

Again, this is something almost none of you could be expected to know.

I know about it because I heard about it and did my homework and because my daddy was also a Southern white anti-racist. And probably mostly because of him I was lucky to grow up in what is still too rare in our country: a successfully racially (AND economically) integrated neighborhood. Three cheers for West Mt. Airy!

This is how I know no person of color ever got anything we didn't get first and out of which they were initially shut out for too long! Yes-sir-ee! Y'all got help and they didn't, at least till the 1960s! And even then they were only added to the list. Which is to say, you were never excluded from help on racial grounds!

But you, and/or your parents and/or grandparents,swallowed the hornswoggle!

Now, if we are to return to the days when there were no billionaires (although there've always been wealthy individuals, and that's OK) we need to TAX the rich according to their ability to pay! Maybe in order to do that, some of you need to understand that the likelihood of your families becoming wealthy is about as likely as being able to reach the moon by flapping your arms!

Most of our current billionaire class is making sure that none of you or your grandkids will EVER be able to join their ranks! If you want our children and grandchildren to have a real chance at better lives, first requirement is: you have to want this for ALL our children of all colors and act, especially vote, accordingly! Don't fall for ANYTHING that tries to pin our problems on some low-power group that can barely hit back OR onto honestly earned, disinterested expertise, but FOLLOW. THE. MONEY. As the citizens of the Roman Republic once asked, Cui bono? Who benefits?

Our oligarchs try very, very hard to prevent you, or anyone honest and not downright worshipful towards them, from finding the money trail! Every single law that makes following the money harder for ordinary folk has to go into the trashcan!

Organize across the lines of race, ethnicity and faith!

WE now stand on the brink, if we do it together, of creating something that human history has not yet seen: a multiracial, multiethnic, multi-faith, secular, representative, democratic republic!

Until now, we Americans have been pioneers of one form or another! And now history is giving us another chance to be pioneers again--this time for all of us! White, Native, Black, Latino, Asian, Christian, Jew, Muslim, Buddhist, Sikh or whatever! Let's return to what we have been in this respect and NOT let the greedy, ruthless, dam' near psychopathic billionaire class knock us apart!

STICK WITH WESTERN CIV, FELLOW LIBS, PROGS, ETC.

 I have what might be seriously unhappy news for a good many of my fellow liberals, progressives, 'greenies', etc.
If you cherish such ideas as democracy, the rule of law and justice for all (including other creatures and ecosystems) under that law, the only civilization that even entertains such quaint notions is that which has in large part grown from the creative tension 'between Athens and Jerusalem'--that is, Western civilization and its subsidiary cultures.
Because of what Jerusalem brings to the table, there is some understanding that the strong should uphold and strengthen the weak. 'A flickering wick He will not quench,' etc. Does Muslim culture say or live this at all? Do the civilizations of China, the Indian subcontinent, or of the Americas say or do likewise?
Athens brings the faculty of clear and acute observation; Jerusalem a cultivation of compassion which stood alone in the ancient world, along with the ongoing attempt to apply divine revelation to human life. Both may well have self-critical faculties probably unequalled in the ancient world and still all too rare in today's world. I defy one and all to show us any culture or civilization with anything like such setups!
I've heard a little of the concept of ubuntu, summed up as 'Because we are, I am'.
Well and good. We of and in the West have, indeed, historically not paid enough attention (at least for perhaps the last two centuries) to connections between ourselves and other creatures and life-forms. Certainly in the US of A, neoliberal individualism has gone some ways too far; I'll be one of the first to agree with that!
Two things are important to remember here: first, as I've written before, democracy is based not on any Romantic claptrap about the (on life-support) Goodness of Humankind but on exactly the opposite: every single hoomin is equally corruptible by economic and political power, which are almost always the same thing, and only other humans can check the corruption of others. If we want God to keep us free of such corruption, we must ask Him to do so and ask that on a continuing basis--and be prepared for responses to come from unexpected quarters.
Second, by reminding the rich and powerful that they are as human and as mortal as the rest of us, we are actually doing them a mighty service. Without such reminders, wouldn't they find themselves diving towards Dives in record time? I certainly think so. As we contain and constrain their power, we also pull their eternal souls back from the lip of the Fiery Pit on the edge of which they totter!
I know of no other culture or civilization that, at least in theory and at least sometimes in practice, puts such checks on those entrusted with such power. If anyone else does, well, friends, speak up right now and hold not your peace! Expound on the arcadias of which most of us won't know and tell us how they do it! After all, democracy is not yet complete and will probably not be within the lifetimes of nearly all of us currently breathing! We can still use quite a bit of help that way.
Two places in the ancient world strike me: first, Cahokia, where it seems that the natives of that area tried 'civilization' but eventually gave it up as not worth it. Second, Mohenjo-Daro, which seems to have been remarkably democratic inasmuch as it shows it had sanitation facilities for all its inhabitants and no monarchical great palaces or temples or anything like that. We've probably only begun to scratch the surface of what each place will be able to tell us today!
Dr. Franklin acknowledged the Six Nations as being (at least in part) as being more politically and organizationally advanced than us colonists and he sought to copy certain sections of how they ran their business. Another strength of Western civilization: the ability to note and, when beneficial to at least some folks, adapt parts of other cultures.
Anyhow, fellow liberals, progressives, etc., stick with Western civilization. Yeah, it's had and has its own shortcomings. Find me a culture and civilization that doesn't have them on our fallen planet!
Stop trying to be better than Jesus Who asked the rich young man, "Why do you call me 'good'? There is none good save God."
And, finally (I hear the relieved sighs!) don't forget that the underpinning for the Enlightenment which provides much of our intellectual fuel has very definitely Judeo-Christian underpinnings. Ponder that long and well, brothers and sisters.