To the altar of capitalism

JP de Lutz's picture

While we watch the corporate oligarchy funded health care circus one wonders how machiavellic industry captains can be. Look westward to California where the first step in the privatization of Medicare is being quietly attempted through the Republican establishment. http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/08/19-8
How far will greed for power and capital take the United States, I single us out as we are the only democracy slowly but surely bucking the trend of civilized nations, a trend that regulates the imperialistic drives of capitalism and prioritizes the well being of its citizens.
Imperialistic we are, immoral we have become as our actions are driven by motivations that have little direct benefit to our citizens, yet they pay the price in the hope of some trickle down benefit somewhere down the road. Was it for WMD or the Oil Patch? Surely the answer must lie with that almost one out of two Americans who continue to believe the “death panel” myth.
So here comes Halliburton, once again "helping the government serve the people", after Iraq now Medical to do at a profit what government seemingly cannot do? I suppose it is their springboard to having the Pentagon subcontract the VA heath care for a profit, but the question begs for whom! Our veterans and politicians are very happy with their public health care...
The wholesale takeover of our democracy is astounding, that same oligarchy has already bought out our legislative process with field operations based on K Street, and the only remaining loose end is the executive branch where sometimes a good plan goes afoul. Then again it’s just a question of how big an advertising/PR budget needs to be deployed to make sure the policy product maintains its leadership. Advertising and PR campaigns can be fun to watch, its cutthroat business and anything goes, just like our current HC circus, but where is Mr. Loyal? He moved to Fox, pay is better.
In quest of some moral rectitude for the show, we now look to the religious establishments for what our democracy can no longer find within. Perhaps the altar of compassion will provide a competitive edge over the altar of capitalism?
No, this is all wrong, it just can’t be. Yet it is.
Sometimes I wonder if our inability to summon character from within lies in the non-polarized political spectrum, I say non-polarized as we do not have a left, least not in the European sense. Perhaps we have relinquished our societal moral fiber to the Sunday feel good preach from the pulpit, mea culpa for the week’s sins and that feel good clean slate until the next confession.
No, that can’t be the answer. I look back at those to whom we have bestowed our trust and realize that if our intent to express a voice was pure we do not have a politic that is effectively committed to representation of those voices, it cannot be as it is committed to serving the special interests. In the end the process is a self replicating offer: buy the politic so he may return from the electoral process to be bought again. There can be no consensus building in favor of the many when the non-citizen has a monopoly on the process.
Where can we go from here is the question I cannot fin an answer to. There is of course the innate sense of revolt but that has already been pre-empted by a recent re-branding of the tea party, then there is the imponderable, where the citizen tires of being gun fodder for profit, where the middle class continues to dwindle instead of grow, where that ever widening gap between the haves and have nots becomes so unsustainable, a measure of inequality usually used to characterize developing nations. What happens then and why can’t we fix it now?





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