Monday, July 25, 2011

Feed The Rich

Fact: The Earth is much older than 6,000 years old. According to Wikipedia, “the age of the Earth is (much closer to) 4.54 billion years old (4.54 × 109 years ± 1%). This age is based on evidence from radiometric age dating of meteorite material and is consistent with the ages of the oldest-known terrestrial and lunar samples,” yet there are still those who continue to believe (many of them in Congress) that Earth was created 6,000 years ago, that Man was placed by God on Earth exactly as he is today, that Man and the dinosaurs lived at the same time, that Noah built an arc with Bronze Age tools large enough to carry all of the animals that inhabit the Earth (most of which hadn’t even been discovered yet), and a host of other fantastical ideas long disproven by science. It is this same limited thinking that opens the door to denial of the Holocaust, to believing that butter is good for a burn or that climate change is a hoax (despite the concensus of 99% of the world’s scientific experts), that being gay is a life style choice and an abomination to God (even though homosexuality is a fact of nature found in countless other species), and that Obama is a Kenyan, muslim, CIA trained Manchurian Candidate dragging us into socialism.
The unfortunate factor in this battle over what is true is that it is not being waged in reality. When so many people refuse to believe the truth, especially when given overwhelming evidence to do so, how can we have intelligent discourse in America? How can we solve problems when so many people refuse to acknowledge that there even is a problem, ie. climate change, health care, etc.? How do you convince someone who has the answer to the question before it's asked? How do you debate someone who says, "Well that's my faith, and you can’t question faith?" How do you engage in intelligent debate and problem solving with someone who, the moment you say anything that challenges her belief system, takes the lazy way out by saying, "We'll just agree to disagree?" What do we have to fear by listening to opposing points of view? If our reasoning is sound and supported by fact, our position should most certainly withstand the light of public discourse and fact checking. 
It is positively maddening to watch this insane circus that our politics has become and to know that every one of our problems has a solution based in facts, sound science, and a moral center, but we lack the intelligence, leadership, moral compass, and courage to do the hard and necessary things. We continue to pollute and destroy our ecosystem, continue to maintain our addiction to fossil fuels, continue to promote U.S. hegemony and wage war by borrowing and increasing our debt, to believe “trickle down” economics and privatization and deregulation of everything are sound policy, to continue to wage a costly, deadly, and counter-intuitive War On Drugs and to incarcerate nearly two and a half million of our fellow citizens (mostly for drug offenses), to spend more than the rest of the industrialized world for worse health care that does not cover everyone, and to think we can end our country’s financial ills by destroying unions as well as every social safety net, and by giving more tax breaks to the wealthiest Americans (or “job creators” as they wish to be called and as they lay Americans off and/or send jobs overseas to increase their profits). The middle class is being decimated, yet we continue to vote, fight, kill, and die for the very people who are willing our demise. 
For the first time in history, the 400 richest Americans are all BILLIONAIRES. In 2009, this top 1 percent of U.S. households owned 35.6 percent of the nation’s private wealth. That’s more than the combined wealth of the bottom 90 percent. If you're a billionaire, you can lose 99.9% of your net worth and still be a millionaire. What if you make the median American income of $62,000? 
Giving every American health care is not going to ruin this nation. Giving corporations personhood and unlimited free speech in the form of campaign contributions, however, most certainly will. Destroying unions and collective bargaining and allowing the richest one percent of Americans to gain an even higher concentration of wealth will absolutely spell the end of the American experiment. Why do we allow this to happen under our noses? There are far more of us than there are of them. When will we stop fighting over the scraps, separating ourselves from one another over religion, color, sexual orientation, political parties and other related nonsense, and finally come together to create a more just society, a society where everyone has shelter, food, quality health care, a first rate education, and the opportunity to live his or her life to its truest potential? These should be rights for us all, not privileges for only those who can afford the market price. This should be considered an investment in our nation. The money to pay for it is there. The will is not.  
The rich will be O.K. They've always been O.K. Even when the highest earners paid 90% income tax, they were still RICH. They still lived in mansions, drove Rolls Royces, summered in the Hamptons, and went on holiday to Europe. Asking them to contribute a little more now, especially when they have so vastly benefitted from the blood, sweat, tears, labor, and decline of the middle class for so long is not a slippery slope to socialism. In fact, it is absolutely justified.