Thursday, December 1, 2011

Right-wing commentator most helpful in elucidating the Occupy Wall Street movement's "point"

I haven’t been paying much attention the “Occupy Wall Street” movement, mainly because it is hard to take seriously--a “movement” that is essentially leaderless and without apparent focus. Of course, if the media actually told the truth about what is said at “informal” Tea Party get-togethers, that “movement” would also appear to be something rather less than palatable to mainstream sensibilities; the media, of course, is merely taking what it assumes is the "pulse" of the country, which apparently means an essential narcissism in the U.S. character in that it is difficult to persuade people to actually do something that does not directly benefit themselves. Still, I understand and sympathize with the issues that motivate the “Occupy” people, in opposition to the Tea Partiers, who are bought-and-paid for by corporate billionaire interests.

If one can glean some sense from the "Occupy" movement, it is that there needs to be some balancing act between budget cuts and revenue increases. One of the commonly believed fallacies is that taxes should be raised in time of plenty, and lowered in times of want—although to be "fair," Republicans tell us that taxes shouldn’t be raised under any circumstances, and that revenue will “naturally” increase as the economy recovers. The reality is that it hasn't been a time of "plenty" for the greater proportion of the population since 2000, and what money there was, thanks to George Bush and a Republican Congress, has been sitting idle (when not used for big-budget war gaming) while more and more people entered a suffering state, whether through unemployment, underemployment and increasingly diminutive wages, with looming storm clouds on the horizon that few people chose to take note of. Meanwhile, millionaires and billionaires hid in their castles holding on to their money in order to insure their own lifestyles--money that could be used to alleviate the suffering, but instead is sitting idle. We have continuously been told by the Right that this extra loot gained at the expense of working class living wages has been and is being expended for useful purposes since 2001, when all the evidence points to the fact that they have either gambled it away or salted it away in tax havens.

The rich have to be forced to put their largesse to “patriotic” use, and if that means taxes, then so be it. I’m frankly sick and tired of listening to the deliberately misleading propaganda of the Right, about how if we only pamper corporations and the billionaires, everything will eventually “work out.” Make me puke. We have been told that since George Bush and the Republicans first pushed tax reductions that reduced revenue as a percentage of GDP from 17 percent to 15 percent. Even if we didn’t enter into pointless long-term wars, there still would have been those massive deficits which a Republican-controlled Congress rather mendaciously did not attempt to “fix” by proposing significant budget reductions—apparently because they wanted someone else to do it, like a Democratic president who would subsequently be the scapegoat for further hardship inflicted on the less well-off.

Thus I was incensed when I heard John Carlson, right-wing extremist commentator on Seattle’s KOMO News radio, respond in the most mendacious manner to the question of a caller after spending a few hours ridiculing protestors in Olympia expressing their angst against yet more massive education and health care cuts from the budget (Carlson has his education and cushy job merely expressing his mendacious opinions, so what does he care about everyone else?). The caller admitted that some of the protestors could clean-up their language, but why wasn’t the media addressing the other side of the issue? Carlson applied typical right-wing ignorance, patronizing the caller as if he was an idiot; hadn’t he heard the previous hour conversation, in which the "other side" was addressed? Hadn't he heard another right-wing “expert” suggest that the protestors were just getting in the way of "needed" budget cutting? Huh? Is that all the Right is willing to concede as the "other side" of the equation? No wonder it is seemingly impossible to fix what is the wrong with this country. This is proof that the Right has zero real empathy for the suffering, because such thoughts don’t even creep into their clogged-up minds minds that even a toilet plunger can't fix. No, no, no, said the caller; he was talking about the harm caused of continued budget cuts while allowing the rich to escape responsibility for their cupidity. The question was a body blow that took the air out of the arrogant Carlson, who mumbled and stumbled past incomprehension. But luckily for him, the bell rang for the end of the day’s show, so he was able to snatch a “victory” while still lying on the mat. And on the mat is where Republicans will leave us if we let them.

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