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<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">----- Original Message -----
<DIV style="BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; font-color: black"><B>From:</B> <A
title=tanstl@aol.com href="mailto:tanstl@aol.com">David Sladky</A> </DIV>
<DIV><B>To:</B> <A title=usgp-media@gp-us.org
href="mailto:usgp-media@gp-us.org">usgp-media@gp-us.org</A> </DIV>
<DIV><B>Sent:</B> Thursday, April 15, 2010 2:26 PM</DIV>
<DIV><B>Subject:</B> Tea Parties, Espresso Snobs, Freedom and Equality
</DIV></DIV>
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<DIV><STRONG><EM>If the so-called progressives of this country can't snap out of
their Obama-induced slumber, take to the streets and vocally break ranks with
both corrupt parties that are driving this country into the ground – if the left
can't offer a serious, grassroots, anti-elitist alternative to rightwing
populism, but insists on maintaining the ridiculous illusion that we live in a
democracy, then the future will indeed be bleak, and ugly, and filled with
“patriots.”</EM></STRONG></DIV>
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<DIV align=right><FONT face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"
color=#990000 size=-1>April 15</FONT><FONT
face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" color=#990000 size=-1>,
2010</FONT></DIV>
<H1 align=left><EM><FONT face="Times New Roman, Times, serif" size=+1>Tea
Parties, Espresso Snobs, Freedom and Equality </FONT></EM></H1>
<H1><FONT face="Times New Roman, Times, serif" color=#990000
size=+2>Breaking Ranks </FONT></H1>
<DIV><FONT face="Times New Roman, Times, serif" size=+1>By DAVID ROVICS
</FONT></DIV>
<DIV class=style2><FONT face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"
color=#990000 size=+3>I </FONT>can't stand talk radio of any political
persuasion, it's all too repetitive and emotional. But I like to keep tabs
on the media landscape out there, and in terms of who's talking on the
radio in much of the USA here are your choices, in order of prevalence:
football, Jesus, Rush Limbaugh and, late at night when folks are
apparently good and ready for it, shows about the government hiding the
existence of aliens from outer space who are living in Nevada. If you find
the “public” radio station and the classical music playing all day hasn't
put you to sleep yet, for an hour or so in the evening you can listen to
chirpy graduates of Ivy League schools with upper-class New England
accents review the latest in French cinema or the newest innovations in
poodle-grooming techniques. On TV it's even worse. Through this static
there are a lot of people who are out of work and living in an
overcrowded, dilapidated shack somewhere in Michigan or Texas who are
desperately trying to make sense of the world around them.</DIV>
<DIV class=style2>The one redeeming thing about talk radio is that they
actually allow people to call in now and then and the conversation isn't
entirely one-way. It's clear who has the mike and who's steering things,
but I'm always impressed at how often the disconnect comes up. That is,
the caller is usually a good “ditto head” as long as we're lambasting
hippies or the cultural elite or drug addicts or poor people attempting to
take advantage of the remnants of our welfare system. But as soon as a
caller says something negative about the corporations, corporate welfare,
the corporations who took their business to Mexico and China and left
unemployment and poverty in their wake, Rush quickly corrects their
impression that the rich are in any way to blame for this situation – no,
the unions are to blame for demanding a living wage, in case you didn't
know.</DIV>
<DIV class=style2>For Rush, the pundits on Fox, and so on, it's all about
freedom – freedom from the tyranny of the Democratic Party, who, according
to their narrative, are intent on spending all of your tax money on
helping people inside the US and around the world who are too lazy to help
themselves, leaving you, the hard-working white American man, ignored and
exploited. For Rush and company, above all, freedom is about freedom from
government (when Democrats are involved) and the great importance of
individual liberties – freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom to
home school, the right to bear arms and be left alone. The Democrats want
to make your children go to school and turn them into atheists, raise your
taxes in order to waste more of your money, and take away your guns.</DIV>
<DIV class=style2>These are people who are often working two shit jobs to
make ends meet whereas a generation ago one would have done just fine.
They very legitimately feel disenfranchised and they're being told by the
only voices on the airwaves that seem to resonate with an appropriate
level of anger that their problems were caused by the Democrats and
Democratic rule will make everything still worse. If you actually talk to
these people, it often doesn't take long to realize that many of them feel
almost as alienated by the Republicans as they do by the Democrats. You
realize that if there were appropriately pissed off voices of the radical
left broadcasting across the airwaves, reaching into the trucks on the
highways and the trailers in the prairies, as long as these were the sorts
of radical left voices that support individual liberty and aren't trying
to take everybody's guns away, a good anti-corporate message would
resonate perhaps more now than ever.</DIV>
<DIV class=style2>In fact, much of this stirring among the self-proclaimed
“patriot” groups predates Obama. Many among this milieu were outraged by
the bank bailout that happened under Bush's watch, just as most of the
rest of society was. But it was only after the election of Obama that the
Republican media mouthpieces (Fox, etc.) began blaming the new government
for the imploding economy, as if the years of corrupt Republican rule
never happened, as if the deregulation of the banking industry and the
bank bailout was not supported by the Republicans as well as the
Democrats.</DIV>
<DIV class=style2>Rush and Fox and company do their best to keep their
listeners in a permanent state of confusion about where we've been, where
we're at now and what the solution is – they do their best to make it look
like the problem is anything but monopoly capitalism, rule of the rich,
control of the government by the Fortune 500. But while many of their
listeners may be skeptical about letting the corporate elite off the hook
in terms of why so many hard-working, rugged individualists are in a state
of deprivation despite their formidable efforts, it's not hard for them to
agree with the pundits and “patriot” group leaders on one thing – that the
Democratic Party is a hopelessly corrupt institution led by people who
constantly say one thing and do another.</DIV>
<DIV class=style2>Now, most people, especially people who define
themselves as progressive, would say exactly the same thing about the
Republicans – and of course they'd be right. Both parties' leadership
claim they're on the side of Main Street, not Wall Street – ordinary
people, not the elite. The truth is quite evident to people who actually
study the facts, rather than listening to the propagandists of either
party: both of our ruling parties are thoroughly corrupted institutions
serving the interests of the corporate elite, at the expense of the
ordinary people of the US and ordinary people around the world.</DIV>
<DIV class=style2>The leadership of neither party questions our massive
military expenditures. Both parties claim we're trying to bring democracy
to other people, to better the lives of women and the oppressed in the
Muslim world, when what the leadership of both parties know full well is
that we're fighting wars for oil. For decades the Democrats, in and out of
power but always part of the power structure, claim they stand for
equality, for an egalitarian society. They always claim their social
programs are going to house the poor, improve the schools, give people
jobs – and, fundamentally, again and again, year after year, decade after
decade, they lie. The schools continue to deteriorate, the jobs are harder
to find and pay less, the opportunities for most people decrease, the
society becomes increasingly divided, whether Democrats control the
Congress and the White House or not.</DIV>
<DIV class=style2>The truth is in our country the rich and the big
corporations are hardly taxed, while the working class and the small
businesses bear the lion's share of the tax burden, and this is the
program of both the RNC and the DNC. In our country neither party really
supports social programs that could seriously lift our people up because
both parties are too busy spending much of our money on nuclear bombs,
corporate kickbacks and armies of private mercenaries. Both parties rule
by a system of legalized bribery, called lobbying, that would land
politicians in other ostensibly democratic countries in jail.</DIV>
<DIV class=style2>And if these angry listeners of Rush Limbaugh go looking
for alternative versions of reality, let's hope they don't discover Mother
Jones magazine, because they'll just be pushed right back into Rush's
arms. In this month's issue we have a fearful expose of the Oath Keepers,
and the editors lamenting that people like Rush “are actively negating a
fundamental principle of American politics: that the government, no matter
how much you might disagree with its representatives, is of, by, and for
the people.” What a crock of shit. Mother Jones herself would be appalled
at such drivel.</DIV>
<DIV class=style2>This is a government of, by, and for the corporate
elite, which controls both parties. To regular people in the rest of the
world this is fairly obvious. The “patriot” rank and file sense this but
they've been actively misled by their supposed spokespeople for a long,
long time, going way back before the invention of talk radio. But liberals
whining that the “patriots” just need to play by the rules isn't helping
at all. These people are angry for all kinds of good reasons –
unemployment, poverty, and yes, most definitely taxation without
representation – they are just confused about how things got this way, and
this confusion is a state some very large corporations and their lackeys
work very hard to maintain and benefit from.</DIV>
<DIV class=style2>I don't want to downplay the possibility of a serious
fascist movement in this country. With forces like Rupert Murdoch and Dick
Cheney at work, with a widespread perception that democracy has failed us,
combined with growing hopelessness about the future prospects of “the
American Dream,” the prospects for a real fascist movement are alarming.
But let's not get into this stiff “us and them” dichotomy when it comes to
the “patriot movement.” These are people with very legitimate complaints,
and dismissing them as racists or whatever other label people on the left
want to put on them is simplistic. They have certainly been fed a steady
diet of pro-corporate and most definitely racist propaganda from the
corporate media and from both major political parties for decades or
longer. This doesn't excuse bigotry, but it certainly explains it.</DIV>
<DIV class=style2>Whether or not the “patriots” know it, neither corporate
party is going to make things better for them, and under different
circumstances, with accessible, local voices of real anti-elitist,
anti-corporate, pro-human reason around them they might be a lot angrier
and they might know what they're angry about. The grandparents of many of
these disgruntled “patriots” were probably, in their youth in the 1930's
throughout the midwest, taking back farms and homes by force which were
foreclosed upon by banks, and joining massive unions of the unemployed.
Rush is telling them the Democrats only care about “special interests,”
which is entirely true (it's just that the special interests in question
aren't the same ones Rush says they are). For their part, the Democrats
are responding to the bubbling rage of this growing underclass with calls
that they should just play by the rules, while steadfastly refusing to
make the kinds of changes that could really make a difference – doubling
taxes on the rich, outlawing corporate lobbying, ending corporate welfare,
slashing the military budget, bringing the troops home, and hiring
millions of new teachers and windmill-builders, for example. The
“patriots” are outraged, whether or not they really understand why, and
you should be, too – it's about as true now as it ever was, though many
Democratic voters have removed their old bumper stickers: if you're not
outraged, you're not paying attention.</DIV>
<DIV class=style2>If the so-called progressives of this country can't snap
out of their Obama-induced slumber, take to the streets and vocally break
ranks with both corrupt parties that are driving this country into the
ground – if the left can't offer a serious, grassroots, anti-elitist
alternative to rightwing populism, but insists on maintaining the
ridiculous illusion that we live in a democracy, then the future will
indeed be bleak, and ugly, and filled with “patriots.”</DIV>
<DIV class=style2><STRONG>David Rovics</STRONG> is a singer/songwriter
based in Portland, Oregon. His website is <A
href="http://www.davidrovics.com/"
target=_blank>http://www.davidrovics.com</A>. He is about to head off for
tours in Alaska, Ireland and Britain, among other places, and is currently
booking a fall tour that will take him all over the continental US.</DIV>
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