It seems that whenever someone tries to address the serious problems of income inequality in this country, someone from Faux Noise or the Tea Party will declare that it is “Class Warfare”. As soon as those two words are mentioned, Democrats cringe and retreat from what they had been proposing so that little, if anything, is accomplished.
IT IS TIME FOR THAT TO END! NOW!
Rather than running from the term “Class Warfare”, we should embrace it. We need to point out that “Class Warfare” is EXACTLY what the 1% and their minions and lackeys have been doing since the time of Ronald Reagan. The drastic reductions in the tax rates for the wealthy while the middle class gets a few scraps, corporate welfare while the safety net for the poor has been shredded, the establishment of private charter schools while slashing spending for public education, the obscene amounts spent on the military while our roads and bridges crumble around us, the gutting of regulations designed to protect the public health and welfare, the fight against affordable health care, and a multitude of other examples I could mention, have all been battles in the “Class Warfare” which the wealthiest have perpetrated on the great majority of the people of this country.
So far, the 1% has been winning this war, but it is not over by a long shot. I liken it to the dark days following Pearl Harbor, when the United States was reeling from the Japanese sneak attack and was not prepared for war. Like the Japanese during the 1930s, the 1% has been quietly amassing the resources it needed to fight this “Class War” against the rest of us. Slowly and patiently, they invested in their pet politicians of both parties and brought their full resources against those whom they could not buy to limit their effectiveness in combating them. Then they began to challenge the laws regulating campaign contributions in the courts, getting their lapdogs on the Supreme Court to throw out even those limited laws, effectively legalizing bribery of our public officials.
They began with pushing through drastic tax cuts while sneaking through deregulation and other measures which limited the possibility that those not a member of their class could fight their efforts. They were able to get the Fairness Doctrine abolished in the 1980s which eventually led to the advent of right wing talk radio and Faux Noise. In the 1990s, they were able to push a bill through Congress, which Bill Clinton signed, removing the limits on media ownership. This bill had been sold as increasing competition and enabling a more diverse range of views to be presented to the public, but it has had the opposite effect. As a result of this law, ownership of the media is now concentrated in the hands of a few large corporations who only present to the public the pablum they want them to have, and ignores or dismisses news which runs counter to their interests, labeling those who fight for the common people against the 1% as kooks or crazies.
The economic meltdown which occurred at the end of George W. Bush's administration is another example of how the 1% were able to carry on their “Class Warfare”. Although there was some grumbling among the hard core deficit hawks, the banks were bailed out using taxpayer money while any attempts to assist the middle class were fought against tooth and nail. Attempts to reimpose the regulations whose removal had led to the debacle in the first place were fought against with all of the resources at their command, including careful allocation of campaign contributions and stories planted in the media about how the world would end if regulations were re-instituted. As a result, only a very watered down bill, the Dodd-Frank Act, was enacted and any talk of more effective reforms were thoroughly squelched.
Now, six years after the economic meltdown, those of us not in the 1% realize that we are getting screwed without being kissed. People see what's going on in this country and they are pissed! It is time for us to call a spade a spade. It is time for us to acknowledge that the 1% has been fighting “Class Warfare” on the rest of us. It is time that we harness the energy and the anger of the American people to take back our country and our government from the lackeys of the 1%. It is time to acknowledge that we ARE involved in “Class Warfare”, to embrace it, and to fight that war with all of the tools at our disposal, especially our most potent weapon, our votes. By doing this, we CAN, like the United States in World War II, win this war, no matter how dark things may seem right now.