Written by Alan Thomas   

There was a time in this Great Experiment that is the United States of America that well read, moral individuals took upon themselves the responsibility of a burgeoning nation and considered their every move in an historical context with a long view in mind. These individuals warned us of entrenched political parties in addition to other weaknesses inherent in this nation’s experimental political and social system. These true statesmen recognized that political service to this country must necessarily be a temporary service. We did not have politicians. We had statesmen. We had honor.

Our honor is now co-opted. Free speech has been convoluted to require a financial investment for which the middle class is unable to compete. Thanks in large measure to the hypocrisies and pandering of the Roberts Court, Strict Constructionist has become an activist manifesto that has equated, through operational definition, money and speech. Money is not speech. Money is the catalyst by which an individual desirous of a career in politics is better served to earn a Marketing and Communications degree than a Political Science, History or Law degree. Money is the means for advertising and propaganda. Money is not carefully considered belief, argument or policy strategy. Without term limits, or a statesman’s mentality to serve with honor, money becomes the means by which corrupted and self-serving individuals entrench themselves with “war-chests”, becoming patrons to those groups that would rather invest in lobbying than in corporate citizenry. At the turn of the 20th Century, our leaders expended significant political capital to bust monopolies, weakening corporate influence and public extortion. At the turn of the 21st, our leaders have expended almost no political capital in busting unions and other associations and aggregations of the middle class voice. Only a collective anger can rightfully collect the capital of corruption that has dishonorably robbed us of that voice.

This shrinking middle class has not only failed to make progress in their per capita GDP over the last 30 years, but have found stagnant incomes and higher cost of living. As jobs – no, careers – have been outsourced and downsized, the actual size of the middle class has contracted while the incomes of executives have risen disproportionately. The middle class has listened to the promise that certain select tax cuts and theoretically mandatory government stimuli would deliver new vocations and opportunities. This empty promise has been made over and over again. Meanwhile, corporate monetary holdings have increased. The intent of these stimulus funds was never to fill coffers. The middle class waited with bated breath for the lie of the trickle down to become truth. The lie continues. Meanwhile, the middle class is being told that the FICA contributions we have invested for ourselves must continue as our forecast services decrease – and that this is actually what we, the American People, want. Meanwhile, the middle class is being asked to be grateful for what we do have, and humble that we do not have to contribute more. How magnanimous is this insult! How egregious the lie that makes declarations of our wants and desires that are contrary to our own best interests!

Amidst all of these pressures, the dollar is weakened, the cost of goods and services has increased, and Big Business demands that we trim the public trust further. Radical populists and antigovernment ideologues intentionally ignore that basic idea of budgeting ... that there is only so much that can reasonably be trimmed; and when the cost of business exceeds income, then incomes must rise through a broader market or increase in prices. An increase in prices would mean adjustments in tax codes. A broader market would be more jobs. Reducing accounts payable liabilities would mean addressing the immediate drains of spending, such as unfunded and unnecessary wars, financial support of regimes more corrupt than ours, and subsidies to corporations that continue to post record quarterly profits while the economy as a whole continues to decline; not programs that increase the likelihood of meaningful pursuits, health and happiness.

The Tea Party, Republican Party and Wall Street executives are right to represent Marxism and Communism as a dangerous and failed ideology. It is a Machiavellian defense strategy: for it is they who would feel the greatest pain from the culmination of Marx’s theory. At the culmination of Capitalism, when money and power equate, when the rights of the individual are consumed by the economic and political machine of commerce and industry, the middle class reaches a breaking point in its frustration and no longer consents to be exploited. Without claiming that Communism is the answer, the revolt is the only next logical step to restore our democracy, to regain our voice, and to regain our honor.