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Egyptian Revolution 2/8/2011 10:22:01 AM
There are parallels between what's happening
in Egypt and the American political scene.
The recent upheaval in Egypt has implications for the United States some commentators may have missed. NEWSWEEK and other media sources have highlighted the approximately 30% of Arabs under the age of thirty in Middle East countries such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan etc. Many of these people live on less than a dollar a day while Arab sheiks invest in race horses and build mansions in the United States. Many worry that the Egyptian revolution will be usurped by the Moslem brotherhood, but in the United States hardly anyone, except for a few soto-voiced liberal commentators worry about something similar happening in our country.
In reality monarchs and despots have been teaming with religion to keep the people down for centuries. The Spanish Inquisition was sanctioned by the state. Religious political leaders put to death women accused of witchcraft in Salem, Massachusetts. In our so-called “modern” America fundamentalists control the Texas school board and rewrite history, claiming some slaves fought for the Confederacy.
We might not have kings and queens in America, but we do have an industrial elite that doesn’t have a problem with Republicans catering to evangelical reactionaries, some of whom argue that Christians are being rewarded financially for their beliefs. Let’s check out the old Bible, shall we? “It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye a needle than for a rich man to make it to heaven.” Then there’s “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesars.” In other words, stay the hell out of politics. Jesus Christ shows anger only once in the New Testament, the time he threw the moneychangers out of the temple. Yet religious leaders kowtow to their corporate buddies by offering a loophole to enter the Pearly Gates, despite their greedy machinations. It all started with carnival barker Oral Roberts’ “prosperity theology” where he argued that Christians should be rewarded with “blessings of health and wealth” for “positive confessions of faith” and of course “faithful payments of tithes and offerings.” Can we possibly be more naïve? Oral Roberts raked in enough money from poor people trying to buy their way into heaven to start a so-called law school. What was its curriculum based on, Hammurabi’s Code?
The gap between the rich and the poor in our country has been growing exponentially and the phrase “redistribution of wealth” has become a non starter if you‘re a politician. Isn’t it a sin for one man to be worth fifty billion dollars? In America we have at least two, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, who seem to be just a little bit worried since they’re both giving away half their wealth to the poor. Republicans oppose unions and the minimum wage, and blame public employees for the state and local deficits when in reality it’s the good old “no new taxes” scam that’s primarily responsible. Privatize public education and see what happens to your bank book. Why don’t you privatize the police and fire departments while you’re at it? What about toll roads? Do you like those? Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty tried to float that idea rather than raise taxes for infrastructure improvements. He got so many phone calls he dropped the idea. With Antonin Scalia running the Supreme Court, the new health care laws also seem to be in danger, which will mean even higher insurance costs, while health care executives receive bonuses and crazy salaries. Recently Blue Cross of California raised its rates a thousand dollars a year for individuals without insurance where they work.
Republicans also criticize the auto company bailouts and the stimulus package, but they would have been forced to do the same thing if they had been in power. Some economists say the stimulus package was too small. Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geitner was a Wall Street denizen himself and the stimulus package was his idea. For the Republicans to argue that we need to get the deficit under control is like Hugh Hefner complaining about old men marrying hot blondes. Republicans borrowed two trillion dollars from China to fight a war we didn’t have to fight, while at the same time cutting taxes. Prior to Obama, 80% of the national debt was incurred by Republican presidents. The last president to balance the budget was Bill Clinton, a democrat who had a plan to pay off the national debt. It lasted until September of 2001 when the Republican president fell asleep at the switch, despite warnings from his own terrorism expert and the Minneapolis FBI that an attack was imminent.
Obama spoke to the chamber of commerce the other day, suggesting they spend some of the trillions they’ve been sitting on to create jobs. One of the attendees was upset to say the least. He didn’t want to be told he had to spend money on jobs his company didn’t really need (the conservative press has been spreading a notion that some of the laid off workers are now obsolete and that the new normal unemployment rate is something like nine percent). But the complainer was willing to contribute to the millions the chamber spent to get religious zealots elected to Congress (Funny, they don‘t see any contradiction in supporting an anti-intellectual demographic when their success depends on innovation), and he’s willing to spend even more on tax lawyers to get him out of paying taxes. Businesses have been mired in the downsize (at the first sign of recession) and outsource model for too long. Either step up and invest in America or take your company someplace else. I know you’ve been trying: one million new jobs in Southeast Asia is an indication.
If you think those Tea Bagger demonstrations were something, wait until the poor and the working class get fed up with corporate shenanigans and conservative hypocrisy.
