ILLEGITIMATE

Abraham Lincoln said at Gettysburg that “government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth.” It might not have perished from the Earth, but it’s been slipping through our fingers for the last 47 years.

The GOP is currently trying to ram through the supreme court nomination of accused sexual assaulter and corporate tool Brett Kavanaugh over the objections of the majority of Americans. Regardless of the veracity of claims against Kavanaugh, which I happen to believe, the fact remains that Kavanaugh attended the same high school as Neil Gorsuch, another right winger installed on the Supreme Court less than two years ago. How can two men who attended the same elite all-male school understand what justice is for a nation of 325 million people? I guess we could ask John Roberts, the Chief Justice who also attended a Catholic boarding school. Come to think of it, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas are also conservative Roman Catholics. If Kavanaugh is confirmed 5 out of our 9 justices will be conservative Roman Catholics, more than double the percentage of Catholics, many of whom are not conservative, to include the current Pope. Is the Supreme Court “of the people”?  Not even close.

Luckily we have two other branches of government to balance things out.

Congress, after all, was meant to more accurately represent the people in both their short term (House of Representatives) and long term (Senate) will.  Our legislative branch is chock full of white millionaires. As of 2012, the median Congressperson was worth over a million dollars. The average American household’s net worth is a mere $56,0000.  Sixty percent of the U.S. population is white while eighty percent of Congress is white. Women make up half our population but only one in five members of Congress.  It’s safe to say that our legislature is not “of the people”.

It’s bad enough that Congress doesn’t represent the American population in terms of wealth, gender, or race but it could still be passing laws “for the people,” right? Not unless those people are legal entities with market caps of over a billion dollars.  The business of Congress isn’t about the people, it’s about business. American business spends over three billion dollars on lobbying. That’s just lobbying, not campaign donations, PAC donations or phony think tanks.  If you wonder why our Congressional representatives can’t come up with a solution to the health care crisis, it could be the 543 million dollars in lobbying spent last year by healthcare organizations (pharmaceutical, insurance and hospitals/nursing homes). Want to know why Congress will let you and your children die from climate change? It could be the 241 million dollars in lobbying spent last year by oil, gas and electric utilities. Congress does not represent the interests of people, Congress represents the interests of capital.  If we’re to take our personal welfare into account (like health and a sustainable environment), Congress is not “for the people,” it works actively against the people.

Which brings us to the final branch of government, the one Abraham Lincoln was a part of, the executive branch.  Our current president, born into a wealthy family, spent his life wrecking businesses, ripping people off, sexually assaulting women and laundering money for the Italian, then Russian mafia. He claims to have superior genetics, excessive wealth and shits on a gold toilet. This is not a man “of the people”. Since taking office he has slashed the social safety net, put children in detention camps, encouraged racism, praised dictators, plunged the nation deeper into debt, alienated our allies, packed our federal court system with unqualified goons, and decimated environmental protections. He is not “for the people”, he is an enemy of the people.

I’d like to lay all our problems at the President’s feet but I can’t. Trump is merely the pus on the head of a painful boil that has been growing for decades. It’s an infection we were born with under an original Constitution that allowed only wealthy, white men of property to have a say in our governance. We grew more representative over the years, thanks to suffragettes, labor unions and the civil rights movement and then something happened: the Powell Memo was written .

Lewis Powell’s name isn’t taught in history books, although he is the man most responsible for the America we live in today: an America of extreme income inequality where corporations run the show. Lewis Powell was director of the board for Phillip Morris in 1971, when he was commissioned to write a confidential memo by the US Chamber of Commerce on how to retake America for the chamber and destroy the New Deal. The memo was a reaction to Ralph Nader’s book, Unsafe At Any Speed, which showed that auto-executives put profits over people’s lives. Powell called for constant surveillance of TV and textbook content, creation of foundations, lobbying groups and think tanks to mold America’s opinion, publication of authors and academics who supported corporatism and a purge of left wing elements. The Powell Memo laid out the blueprint for the conservative takeover of America, which is nearing its final stages.

Richard Nixon put Powell on the Supreme Court within a few months of writing the memo and it’s been all downhill from there. The rise of corporate power over citizens began with Powell and has steadily accelerated. It is, quite simply, a vast right wing conspiracy to strangle democracy in America and destroy our chance to have a government that is “of the people, by the people and for the people.”

We have been relentlessly mind-fucked by this cabal for 47 years as they’ve captured our politicians, our regulatory agencies, our NGO’s, and our media with their money. The end goal, which they’ve almost reached, is the destruction of our rights and our dignity to put more money in their pockets.

Now that you know the truth, citizens, what are you going to do about it?

Dignity – New Politics