Americans are Reaching a Breaking Point

by S. Paul Forrest

This article was originally written for an interview with New Dissident Radio's Lakota Phillips on Breaking Taboo.

A look around this country, reveals troubled times. The Average American; John and Jane Doe, are more now than ever, struggling to make ends meet.  At the base of these troubles there exists a corporatist state where politicians, Supreme Court Justices and news agencies funded by large corporations and their investors, serve only their own interests instead of We the People’s.  In another time; perhaps in an alternate America, the corporatism infecting our Nation would have been stopped.  Now though, it is growing unchecked, working to negate the Constitution and our civil liberties “guaranteed” by it while greatly profiting from our struggles.

We are seeing it daily; the incessant moat building around the castles of the rich while corporate guilds continue to be funded with the sweat equity of the American poor, downtrodden and disenfranchised.  Where in the past the Constitution had protected citizens from oligarchic representation and corporate monopolistic endeavors, the greater populous is now seeing the unequivocal empowerment of those entities from which our founding Fathers had worked so hard to escape. 

Some of our politicians perched upon their ivory towers of corporate greed, have maintained the idea that somehow low taxes and capitol incentives for mega-corporations will create jobs.  If We the People had real representation, these incentives would center on the premise of reward for job creation and investment in American industry in lieu of monetary platitudes. Only when a corporation or small business increases their employment of Americans or opens businesses in this country should recompense be granted by our government; not the other way around.  Merely throwing money over the wall only guarantees one thing; loss of that money.  And how are these tax breaks for being paid for?  By increasing the taxes on the middle class and eliminating programs for the poor: A plan deceptively employed by America’s corporate representatives.

While poverty is on the rise and children are living on the streets, legislators, paid for by these same corporatists, are increasing the despair of the people.  They are doing this by creating larger tax breaks, lessened environmental controls, promoting free trade and even working toward the abolition of minimum wage.  When combined, these steps will ensure only one thing; the negation of life, liberty and pursuit of happiness for many American families. 

The corporate dictate of our nation’s policy driving this corporatist take over of Washington was set into full force when Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, a landmark decision by the Supreme Court whose sole responsibility is to uphold the Constitution, had decided to release that responsibility by deciding that corporations are in some way people who are entitled to the same protections and rights of We the People.  It opened the floodgates of corporate control of our politicians and by proxy, the erosion of American Civil Liberties.

One of the greatest complaints across this nation is that of jobs.  Currently, the unemployment numbers sit at 9% but some sources say the real number in some where closer to 16%.  “Where have they gone and why isn’t anyone in Washington or at the State level doing anything about it?” is the main cry of those despairing souls stuck trying to provide for their families but having no luck in finding work.  The answer some say, is Free Trade.

No matter how some media outlets and politicians sugar coat it, free trade is at the base of the decline in industry and by proxy, jobs here in America.  NAFTA started the free-for-all export by enabling the auto industry fore fronted by Chevrolet and the Ford Motor Company to establish plants in Canada and Mexico to escape Labor Union demands and consequent lessening of their profit margins.  The base idea was sound but like most business plans centered on profit, it only enabled opportunists to take advantage while opening the door for our loss of American based industry and our common, equitable futures.

With the advent and proliferation of faulty initiatives like free trade, these entities only end up with additional monies exported to the international workforce rather than here in America.  Though the idea of enabling American corporate power to control the global economy assists in the capitalist expansion of the American political agenda, ergo; our pseudo democracy into those areas controlled by dictators and oppressive regimes, the end result of free trade is the export of American industry.

Our modern politicians are caught in a bit of a conundrum with these policies.  On the one hand, they are working for the corporate state of global expansion to please their contributors but on the other, they are still obligated to provide and represent the American people. The Right and apparently now many on the left including our President, see the solution as helping industry by restricting the EPA, eliminating the high costs to business for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid payments as well as disbanding unions which protect the worker from unfair labor practices.  In this way, industry can operate here in America as they can in Indonesia or China, where environmental and labor controls are not in place, and still be profitable.

The supporters of this initiative which so many across this nation are standing against, claim there is no problem.  They watch corporate sponsored news, corporate sponsored entertainment shows and corporate sponsored politicians whose speeches rarely premise the real struggles facing our nation’s people.  Even if they were to become educated, searches on the internet do not steer them away from the sphere of thought they have been suffocating their mind in. Intellectual inbreeding is fed by internet search engines designed to direct users to predetermined sites based on that user’s political affiliation and search history. 

The idea is to market advertisements to focused demographics but the end result is quite damaging to our ability to distinguish between what is truth and what is political rhetoric.  When searching a particular topic such as abortion, a user with historically left or right wing search preferences, will be directed to that opinion rather than viewing both sides of the issue easily.  This disparity of news viewing leads one to believe the popular opinion relates to theirs, misleading them to denounce the opposing side’s claim that their view is the correct one.

Television and radio as well, utilize this type of biased approach and censored views, which only serves to further divide We the People.  If we remain separated, movements representing the reclamation of our mutual Liberty can not prove successful.  Abraham Lincoln in an 1858 Illinois address, said it best; "A house divided against itself cannot stand."  This has become the working creedo of corporate media: If we the people are divided, we cannot stand against their endeavor to favor profit over the people.

Evidence of this separation can be seen with what is happening in New York, New York.  Occupy Wall Street is minimally being covered by Mainstream Media and those few who are covering it, have dismissed the participants as a communist or Marxist.  As they did in the case of the protests in Madison, Wisconsin last year, corporate media is telling the blind, befuddled masses that the protestors are only causing problems rather than admitting they are there for a patriotic cause of Liberty’s preservation. The news brownout of this event is proof that American media and their televisionist tools employ purposeful deception to keep the We the People in our place. 

The good news in this debacle is how so many are now awakening to the deception.  People across this nation are casting long, hard states to our Federal and State Governments, realizing how very precarious our balance on the razor’s edge between fascism and freedom, really is.  The media black out of Occupy Wall Street cannot stop We the People from seeing the reality of the growing Police State in America. It cannot take our minds, the reality of the corruption infecting our government. It also cannot maintain the status quo of silence that we are expected to succumb to while they rape our nation, work toward the deletion of our Constitution and further the corporatist state. 

THIS is what the march on Wall Street is about; people standing up against corporate contributors receiving bailout funds, tax exemptions and political control of our nation while those of us who once blindly believed in the American Dream further find ourselves in the quagmire of corporate greed and governmental corruption. 

With all that is happening, one cannot help but wonder whether the movements in New York and Wisconsin will spread with greater ferocity.  The simple answer is, yes.  When a system acts against the very people it has been charged with protecting, the backlash from those people is inevitable.  The simple reality is Americans are reaching a breaking point and there are far more of us that there are of them.