In Francis Ford Coppola’s second Godfather film we see Michael Corleone, head of the most powerful Mafia family in the country, having a ‘ tete de tete’ with Nevada Senator Pat Geary. The Senator, as crooked as the Corleones, is attempting to shake down Don Corleone over a Las Vegas casino license. When Don Corleone balks, Senator Geary gives him the old ‘ I’ll do business with you but I despise what you stand for’ speech. Michael Corleone then sums it all up for the audience: “Senator, we’re both part of the same hypocrisy.” In Ron Perlstein’s blockbuster book Reaganland he relates a little anecdote about that ‘ Great Statesman’ the book title refers to. Perlstein mentions how in 1948 then ‘ Liberal’ Ronald Reagan campaigned for Harry Truman. He actually stated that ” The profits of the corporations have doubled while workers’ wages have increased by only one quarter. In other words, profits have gone up FOUR TIMES as much as wages… High prices have NOT been caused by high wages, but by bigger and bigger Profits!” Of course, once he got himself on the campaign trail for the presidency, Reagan continued, as he had done as California governor, to push for more and more aid to the Super Rich at the expense of the 99+ % of us. Cutting the top bracket from 70% down to 28% after he took office in 1981 was in direct contradiction to what Reagan alleged in 1948. Michael Corleone could have easily said to him ” Mr. President, we are BOTH part of the same hypocrisy”.
Listen, I have NO choice, due to living in the key ‘ Swing State ‘ of Florida, but to cast my votes for ALL Democrats on the ballot. Why? As stated in previous columns, and in agreement with wise thinkers like Prof. Cornell West, this threat of the rising Fascist and even Neo Nazi culture in my dear country is as real as the pandemic. It is downright scary! It is more than just White Supremacy. That is the ‘ tip of the iceberg melting on our doorstep’. This far right wing movement, financed by the Super Rich, wants to use millions of dupes, especially those ‘ Trump thumpers’, to then control everyone who is part of the 99+ %. They cleverly use millionaire or near millionaire media and elected officials to ram through this agenda: No strong unions or none at all; eliminating a woman’s right to choose’ and gay marriage; corporations to continue to strangle and then eliminate more and more Mom and Pop small businesses; the privatization of more and more government run services, all ‘ For Profit’; Big Pharma, Big Insurance and Big Tech increasing their hold on our pocketbooks ( especially in health care ); obscene amounts of taxpayer money going down the rabbit hole of military spending; allowing private absentee landlords to run roughshod over the tens of millions who have to pay rent… with NO accountability; and as we should all see in this latest ‘ Two Party/One Party election con job’, the co opting or outright exile of third party movements.
If we are fortunate, and enough citizens out there vote this terrible and criminal administration out of office ( without too much Repugnantan suppression), then we on the ‘ Real Left’ have our work cut out for us. It may take one full year for many who still hold the illusion that the Democrats can be reformed to ‘ wake up’. If enough of us walk away from them while challenging their leadership on KEY ISSUES, perhaps….
PA Farruggio
October 2020
The presidential election is a grostesque punch and judy show.
The outcome produces a glove puppet president.
Rare exceptions are emasculated or assassinated.
The real power continues to usurp the facade of democracy.
The 0.000001% controls all the real levers of power.
All the organs of government,the deep state,the military,the media,the judiciary
Anyone who tries to put their head above the parapet,can expect increasing retributions.
A career can be neutered with a word here or there.
Why aren’t the ,medical profession exposing this current planned demic ?
Too much time invested in their careers,a gentle reminder to toe the line is usually enough.
How true
You seem to want the financial elites to share more of their profits with ordinary Americans. I think this is wrong because Americans are already consuming massively more than their fair share of what the world produces. The financial elites (AKA fat cats) are parasites who do no real work but siphon off most of the profits. The financial elites could keep all their profits for themselves, paying Western workers the same sweatshop wages they pay the 3rd world. (The West is the countries from Italy west, including N. America.) Instead they give some of their profits to their base, the Western masses. As long as Westerners have “the Good Life,” they’ll never rebel against their murdering & thieving masters. The big issue in all US elections is “the economy.”
All Westerners are bribed for their approval of Globalization. Many of them go farther and choose jobs which aid & abet Globalization, working in international banking, corporate stocks, importing, PR, or the millions of Western office jobs that manage or “push paper” for the 3rd world sweatshops, mines, & plantations. These Westerners know they don’t really work for their big paychecks. They all remember their grandfathers who had real jobs.
These W. parasites are “dumb as a fox” in all this. The Germans said after the war that they didn’t know that what Hitler was doing was wrong. How can you not know that invading the USSR & killing tens of millions was wrong? No BB, don’t give them the convenient excuse of just being stupid. Colonialism (AKA Globalization) pays the 3rd world next to nothing for its labor & raw materials, and everyone in the West knows it.
The Western fat cats make sure to give part of their obscene profits to the Western masses. This is to secure the fat cats’ base. That’s why the economy is the primary emphasis in every Western politician’s speech. The W. masses are conditioned to think exclusively of their standard of living. The glaring disparity between W. life & 3rd world life is explained by Am. exceptionalism. We have a “strong economy” because we are “Free,” we are America, UK, the EU, etc. We deserve much more than they do even, though they make almost everything we consume. Americans don’t even do their own farm work any more. Most of it, and the hardest part, is done by migrant farm workers from across the border.
Mass murdering thieves like the Roman Empire and Napoleon are revered. No one mentions that all empires, including “Globalization,” operate by invasion, mass murder, enslavement, and gargantuan theft. All that is spun as “development.”
The financial elites & their slavering politicians (e.g. Blair, Trump, Merkel) reward and secure their base, the W. masses, in 3 ways:
1.) The Western masses are paid artificially high hourly wages, 15 times as high as those paid to the 3rd world workers. This allows them to purchase over-powered & over-equipped cars, homes much too big for them, vacations in $150/night luxe hotels, pre-prepared frozen foods @ $10/lb, closets stuffed with 20 pairs of shoes per person, and so on. Overconsumption is like alcoholism; the more you do the more you want. It’s never enough. The politicians constantly stoke the greed by commiserating with the masses, calling the masses “working American families struggling to make ends meet.” [Air horns, stomping of feet] The main point of every political speech or party platform is more economic growth. This growth is simply a bribe to the loyal supporters of the machine.
2.) The second way that the financial elites reward & secure their base is by selling everything to that base very cheap. Westerners gleefully load sweatshop goods into oversized shopping carts at Best Buy, Target, WallMart, the Gap, etc, thanking their lucky stars that they live in “the Land of the Free.” Their sons “proudly serve” in the military, to keep this Greed… er, I mean Freedom going!
3.) The 3rd way the financial elite overlords reward & secure their base is to provide Westerners with “prestigious” jobs. Western men used to pride themselves for “doing an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay.” Almost everyone in the West was a craftsman, working in diverse jobs such as foundries, furniture plants, rug mills, shoemaking, etc. As “Globalization” started to destroy this robust honest way of making a living, and replacing it with men working in offices, some began to decry the loss of work ethic and the transformation of the West into a rust belt. People intuitively felt (but few mentioned) that an economy that makes almost none of the products it consumes, is a false economy, a parasite economy.
This discontent was easily allayed by a simple & innocuous phrase, “get a good job.” The propaganda went out, “go to college and get a good job,” i.e. an office job. White collar. Go to college and be somebody. “Being somebody” means being a non-working parasite, making money of the labor of others in far-off sweatshops, mines, and plantations. The unseen Asian & Indian masses who toil for $1 or $2 per hour with no benefits. Having a “prestigious” W. job of [junior] executive, banker, stock broker, consultant, public relations, etc., is simply to be a cog in the machine of colonialism… but forget about all that, say the spin doctors, look at the $$ you make! Look at the bourgeois prestige! Relax behind a desk, go to a few meetings, hold your nose in the air. You are superior to those doing the physical labor, that’s why we (the financial elites, the globalists) pay you 15 times as much per hour as we pay the 3rd world workers. Every dog has its day, and this is yours!
Empires always need the home masses, to count the beans, shuffle the papers, and “serve their country” in the Roman Legions.
Why do the financial elites pay the western masses so much? Why do they order the politician puppets to prevent minimum wage laws? After all, the fin. elites order their 3rd world puppet regimes, installed by the CIA, to NOT pass minimum wage laws, and if they did the same in the West, they’d have more profits. The answer is that throughout history financial elites have feared revolution. So they must keep their base secure. The Western masses are their base. As long as the fin. elites bribe the W. masses with high wage, cheap goods, and cushy office jobs, the W. masses will never rebel. The masses will even send their sons to fight in wars to steal oil, land, etc. for the financial elites.
Who got Iraq’s oil fields? Did the US masses all get free tanks of gas for their cars? If any journalist or TV commentator ever revealed the answers to these questions, he’d probably be fired. None of them ever touch such issues.
The sons of the financial elite never die on the battlefield. This and the many other facts of this posting are never revealed by the mainstream media, nor by 90% of the “independent” Internet media. All this silence is purchased. No one wants to rock the boat, disturb the gravy train.
To summarize, the Western masses are bribed & secured by 3 things: 1.) Paying them 15 times as much as the rest of the world; 2.) By selling them artificially cheap sweated goods, and 3.) By giving them “good jobs,” soft office jobs where they don’t really have to work and don’t produce anything.
The last thing the W. masses want to do is let morality upset the apple cart!
James Hannum