“America is not about giving tax breaks to billionaires while attacking the most vulnerable people in our country,” Bernie Sanders
by Scott Creighton
Bernie Sanders addressed the floor of the Senate today and for an hour and a half or so he spoke a good deal of truth to the American people. It’s worth watching if you’re one of those who still believes in the fairy-tail that stirring speeches from the halls of congress do anything at all other than create great sound bite clips for future campaigns. Personally, I’m not one of them. Four years of running this site has opened my eyes a little.
I like Bernie and it’s a good speech, but unfortunately Bernie wasn’t entirely truthful. I found his honesty a bit lacking as his rhetoric moved to the lighter shades of grey. After all, the devil is in the details in D.C. land and with everything finally on the line and the people of this country ready to ignite, don’t you think it’s about time someone was brutally honest with us?
First of all he claims that America isn’t about making deals with billionaires while sticking it to the poor and working class families.
I say, “since when?”
How did we treat the Irish families (those that weren’t eaten by the bilge rats on the way over that is) when they started flocking over to our shores looking for a better life? What did they find? Starvation wages, poor working conditions, corrupt politicians and political systems that took their money and took advantage of them… all for the profit of the industrialist families of New York. If you need a reference, Cinderman would probably suggest renting Gangs of New York.
Has Bernie Sanders ever heard of slavery? Who the fuck did that benefit? Poor people or wealthy plantation owners?
I guess he hasn’t read much about how the CIA and the British overthrew Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddeq on behalf of big oil and the soon to be super wealthy dictator, the Shah of Iran.
Bernie sounds like he never read “War is a Racket” by Gen. Smedley Butler. He was the American “hero” general who was asked to overthrow the government of FDR for the benefit of the billionaires and the industrialists and Wall Street. That was called “The Business Plot“. Look it up, Bernie, and then tell me this country isn’t about screwing the working families for the benefit of billionaires. The following is a passage from that illuminating work Butler’s:
I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class thug for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902–1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.” Gen. Smedley Bulter
In April of 1914 18 men, women, and children were killed in the Ludlow Massacre. They were killed because their fathers were miners who had the audacity to want safer working conditions and a living wage in exchange for all that black lung that would cut their life expectancy in half. They were killed by the national guard brought out to defend Rockefeller’s profits. They weren’t just killed, they were burned to death when the National Guard poured kerosene on their makeshift tent city.
Maybe Bernie also never heard of Haiti.
Maybe he’s never heard of Watts either. Or Harlem, or Appalachia. Guess he’s never been to Detroit.
The point is, the real history of America is that it is and it always has been about giving away everything to the billionaires at the direct expense of the people. Sure, we got a few rights tossed into the constitution as an after thought and after much suffering and bleeding and dying, some more rights were earned along the way. We’ve even had a few leaders stand up for us here and there. One they plotted to overthrow, and a couple more they shot dead because they dared to challenge “the system” as it were.
But ultimately this country has been driving itself toward totalitarian fascism for quite sometime when it wasn’t busy installing it in other less fortunate countries. And it’s time we came to terms with it.
Continuing with this farce that America is about goodness and freedom and democracy is tiring and a tad bit insulting. If I wanted to watch the Disneyfied version of history I would have turned on ABC News.
This country is all about serving the billionaires and their apologists in politics and that’s because that is the way it was set up. If we are going to change that, stirring speeches in congress only work when it’s Mr. Smith going to Washington and it’s a goddamned movie.
We are well beyond asking, we are well beyond the make-believe that we can go back to something that was never really there in the first place. If we want our country back, we have to remake it all over anew. This time, we have to do it the right way.
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