Editor’s Note: The contradictions that ostensibly baffle the author are simply rooted in the system’s inherent dynamic of social relations and its social imperatives, and by that I mean capitalism. Capitalist control and ownership of the government and the media-military complex has brought us to this infernal crossroads. And we have reached such a level of deterioration in all areas of society that at this point reforms cannot begin to restore a semblance of normalcy. The crisis is too deep, too radical, and therefore it can only accept a radical solution. Incidentally, the author says that Reagan marked a turning point for the worse in America, which is entirely correct, but his phraseology seems confusing. Reagan and his clique represent the moment when the more savage aspects of free-market capitalism began to come to the fore following the electoral and propaganda victories of the right, but capitalism was there all along. One last point, a lot of articles published on Veterans Today are permeated with blatant anti-semitism, while others give way (not surprisingly considering its original military audience) to outbursts of chauvinism, neither of which we approve nor endorse. That being said, VT is a large site with many non-establishment articulate voices speaking freely, many irrefutably progressive, including well-known left analysts and commentators who themselves are Jewish. It’s a contradictory place and it has its flaws, but as an informational ambit it’s a much more open resource than a local mainstream newspaper. In sum, we pick what we think is worthy of attention and leave the chaff out. —PG
By Sami Jamil Jadallah, Veterans Today
No need to wonder what went wrong with the “Right Nation”. Every thing that could go wrong with America did since Reagan aligned himself with Christian Evangelical Fundamentalists and their Zionist allies and adoption of Milton Freedman economic policies and the American capitalist system that is ruthless, reckless and elitist.
One has to wonder what went wrong with a nation that has all the fundamentals to be a great nation, great with its ideals of freedom and liberty for its people and the world, a right nation that abandoned its people to poverty, unemployment, lack of health care, expensive higher education, deteriorating infrastructure and abandoned and run down urban cities and rural areas that has seen better times even in the Great Depression. We became a nation where middle class citizens pay more in taxes than multi billion dollar corporations and where Congress and Wall Street declared war on the nation and its citizens.
America is a nation that can boast the best in higher education (albeit expensive and unaffordable to families and students) in the world with the majority of American universities in the top 500. While 85.5% finish high school only 22% earned bachelor degree, nothing to boast about.
America is a nation that boasts of the best of medical colleges and institutions attracting kings and heads of states p from around the world. Great institutions such as Mayo Clinic, Cleveland Clinic, Mount Sinai, and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, among many private clinics and hospitals yet the majority of citizens hardly could afford medical care fit for this nation.
America is a nation that boasts the best business schools in the world such as Harvard, Yale, Michigan, Stanford, Chicago, Indiana, yet the leading crooks, thieves and corrupt leaders on Wall Streets are among the top graduates of the best business schools in the country. Wall Streeters, bankers and lawyer that took the nation and the people to ruin while earning tens if not hundreds of millions in salaries and bonuses. I wonder whatever happened to “business ethnics” courses we studied while in graduate schools? I guess greed and lost value system became the model of a corrupt and corrupting Wall Street.
America is a nation with best law schools in the world colleges such as Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Princeton, UCLA, Berkeley, Michigan, Chicago and Indiana with great constitutional scholars with many of the graduates heading to Wall Street to earn multi million dollars in annual fees charging corporations hundreds of millions of dollars in legal fees for single merger and acquisition, public offering among other services. Consumers of course end up paying for these billions charged by Wall Streets in the form of added costs to products and services. One has to question the rates and fees charged by these Wall Streeters without any added value to products or services.
America is a nation that boasts of having the best IT and engineering schools in the country such as MIT, Stanford, Illinois Institute of Technology, Purdue, Berkeley, Virginian Tech among others, yet our government entrust our national security to foreign companies and foreign citizens from country (you guessed it) that killed and murdered our citizens in cold blood, spies on us, endanger our national security, took us to many wars, yet this country and its citizens are at every level of our national government from the White House, to Congress, to Homeland Security, entrusted with the nation, its safety and yes endangering our lives and liberties.
America is a nation with a history of ingenuity, creativity, entrepreneurship that created such great companies as IBM, Boeing, Ford, GM, Dow Chemical, Google, Microsoft, Apple, Eastman Kodak, Hewlett Packard, with great geniuses entrepreneurship such as Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Thomas Edison, Thomas J. Watson, Howard Hughes, among many of the great and greater who built this nation into an industrial power and the largest economy in the world and who created the best and highest paying jobs in the nation.
America is a nation in less than 10 years took man to the moon and back, and recently landed the space ship “Curiosity” on Mars. Great engineers, committed scientists, brave astronauts and test pilots defying gravity and failures, yet we are unable to upgrade our failing and deteriorating infrastructures of bridges, roads, railways, electrical grids and power lines that with the slightest of storms hundreds of thousands of homes remain without electricity for days if not weeks. A nation unable to reach down to earth and fix our own neighborhoods, streets and schools.
We are a nation of dedicated scientist, medical researchers, research institutions winning many Noble prizes, that succeeded in developing miracle medicine, vaccines and cures for many diseases, eradicating or controlling diseases such as polio, tuberculosis and small box among others yet we have failed so far and after years of research yet to succeed in finding cure for cancer, diabetes, malaria, Alzheimer among many of the diseases that kills hundreds if not millions of Americans every years. We even discovered the Genome of mankind the first nation in the world to do so, thanks to great-dedicated minds and private and public partnership and thanks to scientists and researchers such as Craig Venter and Francis Collins and yes, thanks to NIH and CDC for their contributions.
America is a nation that rose from soup lines, Great Depression; high unemployment went on to win the Great War, liberating hundreds of millions of people, rebuilding nations and cities destroyed. And with our help, Japanese and European cities such as Frankfurt, Hamburg, Munich, Dresden, Nagasaki, Hiroshima are now thriving cities, while our own cities that produced the machines and weapons to destroy these cities are dying of neglect, cities such as Detroit, Cleveland, Oakland, and St. Lewis among others. What a great contrast between those cities we help destroy and our now destroyed and run down cities.
We are a nation that declared War on Poverty and yet after 40 years the level of poverty in this nation is the highest ever in its history with some 40 millions below poverty lines. And tens of millions of our children suffer from malnutrition and could not afford a balanced breakfast. We declare War on Drugs yet our nation is infested with drugs that our leadership helps bring to this country by sponsoring drug lords in Afghanistan, perhaps in Columbia and Mexico. The only War America won is the one against America and the American people.
America is a country of declared equal opportunity and equal rights for its citizens yet our jails, corporations, Wall Street and universities tell us otherwise. Our schools are unequal in funding with such large disparity between schools in rich affluent districts and those of poor and ghetto neighborhood. Yet we want our kids to compete fairly and squarely in the job market. And worst we wonder why kids of poor neighborhoods turns to drugs, crimes and prostitution.
We are a nation that spent three trillions ($3,000,000,000,000) on illegal wars, thanks to George Bush and Israel, under false flag pretenses and lies taking the nations to financial ruins and putting generations of our citizens and tax payers under great financial burdens for decades to come, mortgaging our nation to countries like China, thanks to Wall Mart.
America is a country that claims freedom of speech, assembly and associations, yet our media is perhaps the most corrupt, biased, unfair in its reporting, beholding to foreign nation and ideology. With few exceptions nothing but garbage coming out of the likes of Fox News, CNN and the mouths of Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly and Howard Stern, guys who are paid tens of millions in annual salaries only to insult our sensibility and intelligence. A media that is embedded with government (the War on Iraq, and War on Terror) and act as a cover providing excuses for ill-conceived policies failed to inform the nation and people and stifled the debate on such important issues as war and peace, War on Terror and 9/11 and national security. Now mainstream media lost the courage to “news fit to print”.
We are a nation of generous people and yes decent, hard working and honest, who give and contribute more than $80 Billions annually, to charity at home and aboard. We are a nation of great philanthropists such as Bill and Melinda Gates who gave away billions and continue to give away billions fighting poverty and disease in developing countries and the likes of Warren Buffet. We must not forget foundations such as the Hewlett Foundation and the Ford Foundation that contributed millions if not hundreds of millions to worthy causes here at home and abroad.
The question that bothers me and I am sure bothers hundreds of millions of America if not the world why with so much talent, decency, and fairness, do we have corrupt incompetent if not criminal political, economic and financial leadership as we have. Republicans and Democrats, Liberals and Conservatives. A Congress under the control of lobbies and is for sale to the highest bidder and in collusion with financiers and Wall Street. Political, legal and financial system that produced the worst in America.
No one would believe that America’s business leadership does not give a damn about the nation with companies like such as GE, Boeing, Citigroup, AT&T paying their CEO tens of millions of annual fees and bonuses while paying hardly a dollar in taxes and worst, many receiving tax breaks. According to Freedom Tribune “Eighteen of the 26 companies received cash back or credits to apply against tax in the future”.
America is a nation of immigrant, a reminder to the White Supremacist, ADL and AIPAC. Early immigrants came here seeking freedom and new opportunity, others mainly the Blacks came here as slaves by Whites. Later many came seeking a better life, or escaping prosecutions like East European Jews. We the people of America, White, Black, Brown, Christians, Jews, Muslims Hindus, Sikh and we must not forget the rightful owners of this country, the American Indians we all what makes America such a great nation. Our diversity is our strength, enriching our nation and people, with many immigrants contributing to the greatness of this nation. Certainly not the Skin Heads, the KKK, the ADL or AIPAC that made this country a great powerful country in science in technology, in industry, in social science in medicine, and education.
Now and since the criminal gangs of the NeoCons and the alliance of Evangelical Christian-Jewish Zionists took hold and control of this country, we became a country of hate, a country of many angry people who takes their failings and the nation failings on other simply because they looks different. Hate groups became an industry lead by over 25 different Jewish Zionist organizations the likes of ADL, AIPAC, Campus Watch well funded and well connected to the main stream media and Congress, incite little minded people to hate, anger, blames with some going further, shooting and killings.
However this racism and hate in this country is not limited to private organization, it has become mainstream with leading institutions such a the military (not like when I served) developing courses and teaching hate to military commanders and soldiers such the case of Lt. Colonel Mathew Dooley “ urging senior military officers to wage” total war” on Islam”. Colonel Dooley “spent weeks arguing that the US was at war with Islamic faith”. Of course any idiots would know that since the War on Iraq and Afghanistan was not War on Terror but war on Arabs and Muslims. False flag wars that killed millions of them and us, destroyed nations and almost destroyed our own country.
Just imagine how America would look like in 20 years if the Republicans and the likes of Romney and Paul Ryan and the majority of the Republicans in Congress and their allies on Wall Street and in Israel, succeed in taking over America for 10-20 years. We will be a nation with hundreds of millions unemployed, without health care and social security, with majority of the labor force earning minimum wage working at McDonald and Wall Mart. What remains of American industry will move overseas, thanks to tax incentives by a Republican control White House and Congress.
Unless there is a true American revolution, a revolution of ideas and minds, that brings America back to the right track, a revolution that re-invents America, its political and economic system, and bring it back to the basic rules that made it such a great nation. Unless that happens and quickly, we are as a nation doomed forever. A good start would be to fire 1/3 of members of Congress in the next election and put the Tea Party out of business once and for all and then go after the other 1/3 and in 6 years have a completely new Congress, a truly representative of the people. Unless we do some major reforms on our political, financial and economic systems as practiced in Washington and Wall Street our nation will fail, just like the Communist system and the former Soviet Union.
Note: The Right Nation is a book published in 2004 by the British authors Adrian Wooldridge and John Micklethwait.
_______________________________________
Short URL: http://www.veteranstoday.com/?p=221604
The views expressed herein are the views of the author exclusively and not necessarily the views of VT or any other VT authors, affiliates, advertisers, sponsors or partners. Legal Notice
Let’s keep this award-winning site going!
Yes, audiences applaud us. But do you?If yes, then buy us a beer. The wingnuts are falling over each other to make donations…to their causes. We, on the other hand, take our left media—the only media that speak for us— for granted. Don’t join that parade, and give today. Every dollar counts. |
---|
Use the DONATE button below or on the sidebar. And do the right thing. Even once a year. |
Use PayPal via the button below.
THANK YOU.