The liberals all took this field trip to Egypt, stood too close to the ledge, and fell in De Nile. Now they're realizing that De Nile isn't just a river in Egypt. It's running full tilt through the Democratic party, and there may not be enough of those cute little life jackets to save them.
Liberals are in way too much denial
Davidson Loehr, June 10, 2010
Hundreds of doom and gloom news stories are becoming like a “perfect storm” of both cynicism and denial. Corporate lobbyists outnumbering elected officials by ten to one, health care corporations spending hundreds of millions of dollars to defeat a national health care plan – or collectively investing more than a billion dollars in McDonald’s stock – an investment they know will help make our nation unhealthier. (See here: Health companies invest $2 billion in fast-food stocks or here: The medical care companies have invested $2 billion in the fat food industry. Isn't that like shorting your client?). Or consider the well-placed public disgust with our elected representatives, expressing itself in an anti-incumbent rage. We all know this unending litany of accurate but impotent charges.
What we don’t want to see is that the system is working very well: this is the "New World Order" -- where profit is freed from, and placed above, all other considerations: nation, race, life, ecology, ethics…. The rise of this life-devouring monster can be dated to a variety of times and decisions: like the legal precedent set in 1916, when Henry Ford tried to give rebates to all who bought his cars because he felt he had made TOO much profit from them. The Dodge brothers, who owned a lot of Ford stock, took him to court, and the judge ruled in their favor: the primary duty of publicly traded corporations is maximizing their investors' profit.
Since 1980, other inconvenient "duties" have been sloughed off. Money is not bound to nation, and under laws set in the 1990s, corporations may sue nations for infringing on their profits. Once our official allegiance is to profits alone, the rest follows. When workers are laid off or their benefits cut, stock prices rise. When the U.S. military cheats wounded Iraq veterans out of ever collecting disability or getting insurance by making them sign forms reframing their battle wounds as pre-existing "personality disorders," those in charge have saved the taxpayers billions of dollars. (see here: http://www.thenation.com/...
Our all-volunteer military is increasingly drawn from the poor, uneducated and desperate -- our version of the Untouchable Caste. We are the only industrial country without a public health care program. Our infant mortality rate is higher than many, our educational quality is falling – especially in math and the sciences. Worker unions have been castrated, and a couple dozen nations rank above us in freedom of the press. These aren’t flaws: the system is working as planned.
The powers running this brutal economic model seem to feel no shame. Some of them seem incapable of shame. We liberals keep acting like this is a nation where rational people are in charge, and will be persuaded to do the right thing if we can just make our arguments clear. But that was another time, another world.
The oil companies are using our soldiers as they always have: to insure their profits. That’s what it means when officials say we are sending our soldiers to protect “American interests.” It hurts to remember that General Smedley Butler said all this in his 1935 book, “War is a Racket.” And this is just the tip of an iceberg we are terrified to see.
Even writing critical and pessimistic comments like these has mostly lost the double-edged dignity of feeling like a Cassandra. It feels more like being a costumed clown, shouting “Fire!” in a crowded theater – and occasionally being applauded for how persuasive we’re trying to be. Cynicism and realism have seldom felt like such close relatives. Hell, I’ve even depressed myself writing this. No wonder denial feels so good.
AUTHOR BIO: Davidson Loehr is a former musician, combat photographer and press officer in Vietnam, owner of a photography studio in Ann Arbor, then a carpenter and drunk. He holds a Ph.D. in methods of studying religion, theology, the philosophy of religion and the philosophy of science, with an additional focus on language philosophy (The University of Chicago). From 1986 to 2009, he served as a Unitarian minister, and has been a Fellow in the Jesus Seminar since 1992. He is the author of one book that sold 9,500 copies, America, Fascism & God: Sermons from a Heretical Preacher, (Chelsea Green, 2005). Now retired from the ministry, he is building a platform to become involved in national discussions of religion, science and culture. His book in progress is The Rise of Secular Religion in America.