Despite what you may have heard from the incumbents in Washington DC last night, the state of our union is not strong. It's fractured and in peril.We've let our politics be hijacked by reactionary conservatives who are nothing more than lackeys of the powerful multi national corporations. They seek to divide us along racial, economic, sexual, and age lines so that they can increase their influence and line their pockets with yet more cash. Their use of fear based tactics is unprecedented and has been unrelenting in the past two years since Obama has been elected.
I reject their lies and their attempts to run my country like it's a private bank account for obscenely rich wastrels and their flunkies. I reject the notion that we have to cower in fear of Muslims, gays, the poor, the working people, of anyone who is not rich, white, and entitled. I reject the corporate media narrative that we need to grow up and take drastic measures to make our economy the one that the corporations and the IMF wants.
I reject calls for cuts to entitlements. I reject calls for Social Security to be privatized and for Medicare to be scaled down. I reject those who refuse to cut defense spending. And I reject the notion that the wealthy and business needs to pay less taxes.
The fact is we need to pay more in taxes to keep our country running. We need to make those who have the most, pay the most. We need for businesses to pay more so that we the people can buy what they make, so long as what they make is economically and ecologically sustainable. We can't keep cutting taxes and expect things to pay for themselves. Taxes pay for the things we want, like roads, schools, parks, street lights, school lunches, etc. If we want better things in our country then we need to pay for them and we pay for them through taxes. One way to raise more tax revenue is to legalize marijuana for recreational and industrial use and to tax it. Doing that will fulfill two missions, it will finally put us on the path to winning the 'war on drugs' and it will raise billions of dollars for our national coffers. Another way to raise tax revenues is to tax all places of worship, Jewish, Christian, Muslim, all of them, it's time religions stopped dividing us and start helping us all.
We need to take the lead in getting everyone off fossil fuels and into sustainable energy. We need to stop kidding ourselves into thinking of coal and natural gas as 'clean.' They aren't. Wind and solar are clean but since they aren't a finite resource that can be monopolized by a few greedy corporations, the multi national corporations won't permit their wide spread use.
It's time we grew up as a nation and we put our long term goals back in front of the lust for short term profits. We need to reign in corporations, regulate this unrestrained capitalism we've been saddled with, we need to end the fiction that says corporations are people, and we need to stop allowing powerful interest groups like the NRA and the Koch brothers run things and set national policy. We need to get private money out of politics and get it back into out schools. We need to stop being greedy and treating the rest of the world like it's ours to plunder.
And finally we need to get religion out of the public sphere. It's ruining us and making us dumber. If you want to practice or believe in private, fine, go for it. But you should not be allowed to use your religion to make public policy, laws, or anything else to do with things that affect non believers. You're free to pick and choose whatever Bible or Talmud or Koran verse you like to justify your hatred of gays, women, or red headed step children but you have no right use it to make laws or policy that discriminates against those folks.
Our nation faces many grave dangers and if we keep facing them like we've been doing then I see nothing but decline and ruination for us. But if we act with vigilance and an eye to sustainability and what's best for everyone and not just for the rich white folks who run the corporations and our government, then we might have a fighting chance. When we care as much about the hungry kids in the projects as we do about the stock market, then we'll be getting closer to where we need to be as a nation and as a people.
So get off your asses people, and organize. Organize the workers, the poor, black folks, Latinos, young people, women, and gays, because the one thing those in power fear the most is a non violent popular uprising. Organize from the ground up because all lasting change and all great social movements in this country have started from the bottom of society and worked their way up.
0 Yorumlar