[This post originally published for Shane Brooks’ blog, “Whiskey With My Coffee.”]
This week, I saw something different on television. This week, I saw a man, paid by a large multinational corporation to talk about national events on a major corporate cable news channel, lose his mind. And while he may not have intended to set a fire under middle-class Americans, that is precisely what happened.
MSNBC’s Dylan Ratigan, host of the Dylan Ratigan Show, went off the rails when one too many guests spouted political talking points, ignoring the reality facing our nation. Here’s a small taste of his comments:
“This is not some opinion; this is a mathematical fact. Tens of trillions of dollars are being extracted from the United States of America. Democrats aren’t doing it, Republicans are not doing it, an entire integrated system, financial system, trading system, taxing system, that was created by both parties over a period of two decades is at work on our entire country right now. And we’re sitting here arguing about whether we should do the $4 trillion plan that kicks the can down the road for the President for 2017, or burn the place to the ground, both of which are reckless, irresponsible, and stupid… It’s being extracted through banking, it’s being extracted through trade, and it’s being extracted through taxation, and there’s not a single politician that has stepped forward … to deal with this… I would like [President Obama] to go to the people of the United States of America and say, “People of the United States of America, your Congress is bought, your Congress is incapable of making legislation on healthcare, banking, trade, or taxes because if they do it, they will lose their political funding and they won’t do it.”
Apparently, his inbox flooded with support. And fair enough, because what he said was both intensely honest and something most of us probably do not expect from a cable news host in the post-Kieth Olbermann-on-MSNBC-Age. (How sad that I just wrote that most of us do not expect honesty from our news programming…) For more on the Dylan Ratigan rant see my post, “Dylan Ratigan: American Moses” at my home blog, “Solving America.”
It is on the heels of this momentary lapse into honesty that I sit down to write my first post for “Whiskey With My Coffee.” And in honor of Mr. Ratigan, this writer thinks a double-shot of truth may be on the menu…
Our country’s government is broken. It is clear as we look around us that no political system, rooted in the tenets of democracy and promising a voice to its people, could be said to be in working order and remain this dysfunctional. In a nation of over 300 million people, far less than half of eligible voters, or in a banner cycle perhaps sixty percent, take part in electing 536 people to make our decisions for us. The candidates for those positions are chosen, not for the content of their character or the boldness of their ideas, but for their ability to talk a good game, ferret out photo-ops, and most importantly, raise mounds of cash from donors who can afford to give them the legally allowable limit.
Our country’s economy is broken. The richest 1 percent of households earn as much each year as the bottom 60 percent combined. The median household income in this nation is around $50,000 per year, barely enough to survive. And yet, some of the most profitable corporations in America, including Exxon Mobil, Bank of America, and General Electric, earning profits in excess of $25 billion combined, paid zero dollars in income tax last year. All three of those corporations actually got refunds.
There is no doubt that the United States of 2011 faces a crisis unprecedented in its history. Never has so much wealth been concentrated in the hands of so few. And while the wealthiest of the wealth, the moneyed interests who helped create this system through a cycle of corruption, buying members of Congress, and the White House, and then extracting wealth through their patronage, are free to jump ship at any time, taking their trillions to whichever port will harbor them next, the American middle class–the people who built this country, educated its children, constructed its roads, clothed and fed its masses, and provided the purchasing power to prime the most powerful economic engine in the history of this world–are left to drown.
Those who survive will be the ones that rally together, ending their dependence on a system that cares little, if at all, about their fate. Those who survive will do it by ending their desperate need to be part of that system. These are truly the Dark Times, but the future can be brighter. We must make that future for ourselves. “We must be the change we wish to see in the world.” A famous politician recently used that quote. It was never more true than it is today.
Solving America 