Given the intentions, the pattern, and the results – what would a reasonable person conclude?
So far in our journey through the 1980-2021 SABOTAGE of America by the radical “right” and Republicans we’ve spent time mostly talking in broad generalizations of the many CRIMES committed. This continues, but now we turn to stories of people victimized – a few names of the millions of Americans victimized by the GREED, ZEALOTRY, and inhumane CRUELTY of “conservatives.”
This is the story of how the rich and powerful hurt innocent people – DELIBERATELY – to get richer; of how they used the power of government to rewrite and rig rules; how they used the economic power of corporations to rig rules.
ABOVE ALL – this is the story of monumental GREED – and NOT caring who gets hurt in order to make yet ANOTHER million or billion; also the story of monumental ARROGANCE – they “earned” their ill-gotten gains.
This has been recently illustrated by the 2008 Crash and Recession, and by the climate crisis denial [for 40 years] – a brutal and 100% uncaring about consequences [“collateral damage”] to fellow workers, and to planet earth.
There has been a willingness to CORRUPT anything and everything to get richer – truth, government, history, science, law, America, earth – and – ABOVE ALL – an absolute CONTEMPT – for other human beings.
It didn’t have to be this way – other, civilized, nations did things differently, and still do; other, more civilized, nations cared about the lower 90% – so they have better health care, child care, better educational achievement, better standards of living, are far less likely to be shot – are HAPPIER and HEALTHIER.
In other chapters we’ve told you about the ENGINEERED economic inequality [“The Spirit Level”], the master plan [“Evil Geniuses”], corrupting law [“Supreme Inequality’}, sabotaging government [“Broken Government’], financing corruption [“Dark Money”]. Yet to come” attacks on the very concept of TRUTH, the very deliberate MISINFORMATION, the unconstitutional RELIGIOUS ZEALOTRY, and much more.
Here we turn to “Who Stole the American Dream” and the shattered lives that followed. We begin to examine “Why Our Families Can’t Afford America,” and “The Disposable American,” and “Illegal People,” and “The End of Work,” and “Disaster Capitalism,” and “Predator Nation” [corporate criminals & the “hijacking of America”].
Behind all of these master stories is this: the shattered lives of millions of innocent Americans, some of whom kill themselves in “deaths of despair.” There are the two Dunlaps – one rich and cruelly uncaring, on the victim. Some of the stories of “creative destruction” are told – MILLIONS are not.
One of the keys is how the rich and corporations “packaged” this – the masterful narratives and “code words,” and “bumper sticker” slogans that were/are created to LIE to the victims [the lower 90%]. Simple, emotional, “divide and conquer” methods to convince many of their victims that the “real’ cause of their misery was “the Other” – selected targets to distract attention from the true REAL VILLAINS – the rich and corporations.
Who the REAL VILLAINS are is beyond dispute – the rich and the corporations, a matter of historical record [1865-1901 greed, 1929 & 2008 crashes, 1930’s Great Depression, aid to Nazis in WW II, etc.]. All this and more – corruption of the Constitution and law, outsourcing, attacks on labor unions [including murder], top 1% tax cuts & subsidies – needs to be “packaged” into believable LIES to cover it up.
What can’t be covered up are the millions of victims – homeless and hungry, unemployed and underemployed – the TRUE VICTIMS OF GREED, CRUELTY, and ZEALOTRY – the Smashed Dreams and Shattered Lives.
The clues for YOUR detective work are simple! As in the [Republican] Watergate scandal, take the advice of “Deep Throat” – follow the money. In this case, follow the I.R.S. statistics for pre-1980 and post-1980 income distributions. This has already been done for you by many analysts. A table of this is in the March/April, 2011 “Mother Jones” magazine on page 63. Thomas Picketty’s 2020 book, “Capital and Ideology” has numerous graphs illustrating this, as does other work by him, Emmanuel Saez, Jacob Hacker, and Paul Pierson. There’s NO DOUBT, “It’s The Inequality, Stupid” [page 25, March/April, 20ll, “Mother Jones”].
Like everything else discussed in Sabotaging America” – none of this is an accident. As has been much documented – it is all part of the ‘Evil Geniuses” master plan. That plan is a PLUTOCRATIC AMERICAN THEOCRACY. An America controlled by the political, economic, social, religious “right.” They’re all in this together. Membership [when not kept secret] in many groups is interchangeable. Funding by far right rogue billionaires is shared.
The intended result: return America to at least 1950, or 1919, or 1880. The fact YOUR dreams are smashed, YOUR life shattered – is of no consequence to them. In order to “save America” – some people will be hurt [“collateral damage”]. But it won’t be them.
Pulitzer Prize winner Headrick Smith’s “who Stole the American Dream” [2012] states: “Over the past three decades, we have become Two Americas…no longer one large American family with shared prosperity and shared political and economic power…Today, the gravest challenge and most corrosive fault line..is the gross inequality of income and wealth…The danger is that if the extremes become too great, the wealth dichotomy tears the social fabric of the country, undermines our ideal of equal opportunity, and puts the whole economy at risk…contrary to political arguments put forward by not taxing the rich…concentrated wealth works against economic growth.
“The opposite has happened in America since the late 1970s. The soaring wealth of the super-rich has brought the unraveling of the American Dream for the middle class..”
“Germany took a different fork..in the 1980s and it has fared far better than America…German leaders worked hard to keep their high-wage, high-skilled jobs at home…The difference is not in technology, but in our government policies and our corporate strategies.”
“..downsizing, offshoring, and wedge economics have backfired. For the economy, they don’t work. For the nation, they don’t work.”
The only double Pulitzer Prizing winning reporting team, Donald Bartlett and James Steele’s “The Betrayal of the American Dream’ [2012] states:”The Betrayal of the American Dream” is the story of how a small number of people in power have deliberately put in place policies that have enriched themselves while cutting the ground out from underneath America’s greatest asset – its middle class
“Their actions, going back more than three decades, have relegated untold numbers of American men and women to the economic scrap heap – to lives of reduced earnings, chronic job insecurity, and a retirement with fewer and fewer benefits…..America is now ruled by the few – the wealthy and the powerful who have become this country’s ruling class.
“What happened to the middle class in the 1980s and early 1990s wasn’t just a blip, but part of a disturbing pattern….The country that once offered so much to its people..has begun to eat its own.”
The economic elite have accomplished this by relentlessly pressing their advantage,,that exists for the simplest of reasons: the rich buy influence….With the Supreme Court “Citizens United” ruling..the message was driven home to the middle class…that the ability of average Americans to influence elected officials would be overwhelmed by [the top 1%’s] money.”
Chapter one has Barbara Joy Whitehouse’s story; and Lisa Gentner’s. Chapter 2 has Judy Bowman’s story; and “Boeing’s Faustian Bargain.” Chapter 3 has Randy Badman’s story; and Bill & Christy Stamp’s story.
Award-winning Alissa Quart’s “Squeezed Why Our Families Can’t Afford America” [2018] is full of stories describing what has happened to people in the post-1980 “winner take all” America. Teachers with second jobs, adjunct professors on food stamps, 24-hour day care centers for stressed workers, people co-parenting because they can’t raise their kids by themselves, workers without sick leave; people blaming themselves for what has happened to them. Page 6: mentions economist Guy Standing’s term for :this just-making-it group, “the Middle Precarit – people, often college-educated, for whom the supposed “American Dream” has not occurred. Page 8: what the term “Middle Class’ USED TO MEAN..
Page 37: Justin Thomas’ story – “For me to help my daughters with their dreams, I have to give up my dreams.” And the Thomas family’s nightly macaroni and cheese with baked potatoes diet. Page 45: Linda Tirado wrote “Being poor while working hard is fucking crushing.” Page 97; the “thirtysomething lawyer and his wife live with her parents to save on rent. Page 153: former Pulitzer nominee laid off, now an Uber driver.
Award winning Louis Uchitelle’s “The Disposable American Layoffs and Their Consequences” [2006] states; “More than two decades have passed since the modern layoff first appeared as a mass phenomenon in American life. Until that happened, companies tried to avoid layoffs. They were a sign of corporate failure and a violation of accepted business behavior. Over the years..permanent separation of people from their jobs, abruptly and against their wishes, gradually became standard management practice, and in the late 1990s we finally acquiesced….Three myths help us do that.. {a promised] payoff [which doesn’t occur]; the laid -off must save themselves…;…the pros and cons of layoffs are entirely measurable in dollars and cents..”
Chapter one is the story of how one town is devastated by losing the quality of its main main industry. Chapter three is the story of laid off airline mechanics [from the top shop] training to get themselves “retrained” – but for what? Chapter four is up-close stories of some of those laid-off mechanics trying to adjust. Chapter 5 is the stories of Virginia Gibbs and Diane Holthausen. Chapter eight is about the mental aspect of Erin Brown, his wife says: “I think the lay off destroyed his self-esteem.”
Award winning photojournalist David Bacon’s “Illegal People How Globalism Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants.” [2008} discusses [pg. 32-33] how rich corporations run Mexico; how NAFTA led to one of the biggest Mexican migrations to the United States [51] – part of the corporate transformation of Mexico [53]; hoe Mexican “reforms’ led to privatization which benefitted Mexican billionaires and American corporations [58-59]; the effect of World Bank and IMF policies [60] were good for the rich, bad for workers; how 1994 U.S. speculators [usual Wall Street suspects!] created a crisis [61]
“The same system that produces migration needs and uses that labor…’The economic interests of the overwhelming majority of [U.S.] employers favors borders as porous for labor as possible.”…but labor must arrive in a vulnerable, second-class status, at a price they want to pay.” Employers use government against labor [134-35]. Pages 150-53 – using I.N.S. raids as a political tool; pressure on Congress to get laws making it easier to recruit foreigners. Page 172 – employers go to India to recruit whenU.S. labor gets organized and demands legal rights
“This system of casualized employment {is] …growing throughout the United States…The economic pressure of competing layers of contractors, recruiters, and labor agencies would inevitably exert THE SAME CONSTANT DOWNWARD PRESSURE ON WAGES AND CONDITIONS.” [182]
Bestselling author Jeremy Rifkin’s “The End of Work The Decline of the Global Labor Force and the Dawn of the Post-Market Era” [1995; 2004] lays out the possible ultimate question: EVERY NATION WILL HAVE TO RETHINK THE ROLE OF HUMAN BEINGS. Why? Because the possibility exists by 2040-2050, all earthly work might be done by 5% of adults. What comes next? Who are the winners and losers [need we ask?]? Do adults all become ‘disposable?”
Obviously – in a utopian world, we COULD create paradise on earth. We COULD have shared basic income. Will the work of robots, automation, A.I be used for the betterment of all? What will the current top 1% world rulers allow to happen? We COULD be asked to totally reassess the value of work. We WILL be asked to reexamine how the rewards of work are distributed. So – what is a human being “worth?” Why are we here?
Award winning Naomi Klein’s “The Shock Doctrine The Rise of Disaster Capitalism” [2007} documents how well-connected top 1% figures and corporations manage to “use” a crisis to their economic advantage – when the public is in some kind of “shock’ from a disaster. Often this involves “privatization’ of what used to be public assets – offered as a “solution” to the crisis. Privatization had been a long-held goal – the problem was how to sell it to the public. The disaster is their chance, while the public is traumatized,
Klein offers you a tour of 1972-2007 efforts by adherents of the “Chicago School” to profit from disasters all over the world. The “solution” offered is usually radical “free market reforms.” “Reforms” is often used – it sounds like a real improvement, not the radical reactionary change it really is.
Page l4-l5, how the Bush II administration capitalized on 9/11; page 126 – “free market’ ideology in Latin America; page 177 – “Friedmanism” produces economic war on 98% of Bolivian people; page 232 – the part of 1989 Tinamen Square that western accounts left out; page 276 – how Western leaders – IMF – World Bank were guilty of “one of the greatest crimes committed against a democracy in modern history” in Russia.
Obviously, the interests of ordinary people are of no consequence.
Academy Award winner [“Inside Job”] Charles Ferguson’s “Predator Nation Corporate Criminals, Political Corruption, and the Hijacking of America” [2012] documents “…the abundant evidence of widespread criminal behavior in the financial sector…that over the last 30 years, the U.S. financial sector has become a rogue industry….now a parasitic and destabilizing industry that constitutes a major drag on the American economic growth.”
On pages 190-207, Ferguson lists “prosecutable crimes” committed during the bubble, the crisis, and the aftermath by financial service firms – fraud, bribery, perjury antitrust violations, personal conduct violations.. In contrast to 1980s S&L bailout crises, virtually nobody is significantly punished for their crimes around the 2008 Crash.
Ferguson, page 21 – “The costs of financial deregulation are staggering.” 50,00-100,000 Americans benefitted – 300 million American didn’t and paid the price – which for many is still ongoing.
Millions of Americans had their dreams smashed, their lives shattered. Homes and equity lost. Lives turned upside down. Extra taxes paid to cover government losses. We’ll never know how many Americans lives were permanently damaged – because in America, you’re on your own.
From “The war on the middle class” file comes this: David Morris’ 7/19/95, column: “Republicans’ class warfare targets working class, the poor:” “About 700 very rich Americans renounce their citizenship each year to avoid paying taxes. President Clinton proposed to tax these selfish people as they left our shores. House Republicans refused. Some were downright sympathetic with the turncoats…..Multimillionaires as victims. The Republican view.”
A September/october, 2018, “Washington Monthly” had a review of Devin Fergus’ “Land of the Fee Hidden Costs and the Decline of the American Middle Class” are inflicting “death by a thousand cuts on the American dream – all done by “market forces’ under the auspices of deregulation. And, of course, private equity firms are mentioned!!! Clinton tried to provide remedies here – but [surprise!!!] “Instead, it was hobbled by Republicans..”!!!!!!
A 8/12/2018 Andrew Van Darn article; “Foreclosure study: Send a kid to college, risk losing your home.” Having child costs you $233,610 through age 18. Consumer debt would be below 2007 levels if it weren’t for student loans.
A 8/26/2018 article by Sara Coello: “‘Till Illness Do Us Part? Some parents are considering divorce in order to provide care for children.” Why is this necessary in America? June, 2019, “In these Times,’ page 9, “Estimated 530,000 families file for bankruptcy each year for medical issues and bills.” and – 44% of Americans who don’t go to a doctor when sick or injured because of cost in 208. Cost of heart bypass in 2016 USA: $75,375; cost in Netherlands: $15,742 !!!!!!!
“The Middle Class in America Is Radically Shrinking. Here Are the Stats to Prove it” Posted 7/15/2010, 02:25 pm EDT by Michael Snyder in Recession. From The Business Insider.
So – what would a reasonable person conclude on “Who Stole The American Dream?” Remember – this is only a small fraction of the evidence YOU could consider, if YOU cared what happened in 1980-2021 America.
Smashed Dreams and Shattered Lives did NOT happen by accident.
With Justice For All 