Political Fiction

Americans for Limited Government HAS to be a publishing arm of a science fiction writer. It’s as if they have a draconian embellished dart board with various topics, then a smaller wheel with various names for the characters and worlds that inhabit their fictions. Today, the story is of German Morales, small business owner and painter of houses and such.

The great thing about these short stories provided by the Americans for Limited Government, is that they always start out with a vaguely connected topic to the fiction at hand. The writer, Bill Wilson, starts the tale with the meager “controversy” of Solyndra, a solar panel manufacturer who closed it doors a few weeks ago to bankruptcy. Also, China produces a better solar panel, so it loses on the battlefield of the “competitive marketplace” that Mr. Wilson so proudly supports. Sadly, Solyndra laid off 1,000 workers, which is in turn, tied to another “green energy initiative” in Seattle which only created 14 jobs. The thing to note when reading a lot of this right wing bologna is the specificity of some of the writing versus the near lack of anything other than “This one thing that one time in Somewhereachussetts”. It sets off my bullshit alarm every single time. Why can’t there be constant specifics? Your omission only leads me to believe that your argument is already faulty to start at best, or the point your striving for moot at worst.

I think Americans for Limited Government would have a point, say 30 years ago, before the overreach of Government reached a fever pitch under Reagan. Not that he was the first to begin the overreach, but merely to frame the modern problems we faced today. The seeds of our economic decline were sown during this time, to be sure. But Americans for Limited Government’s point is rendered obsolete by the fact that Ma and Pa Public have, nor have the ever, possess the ability to put the entire society on their backs and jump start the economy. They have at most the ability to toil and sweat for their own sake, and the lives of their kin. But they do not posses any larger power than that of voting for representative government, which has largely been taken away from them by corporate lobbyists and their interests.

The German Morales short story paints the average American as grateful for the suffering it is currently being put through. He wakes up every day with “hope” of doing a good job, so he can continue to struggle. Mr. Wilson believes that Mr. Morales is a great example of the entrepreneurial spirit that’s so waning in America. Sacrificing and cutting back, risking his security for a better life. You’ve got to be kidding me.

The next couple of sentences really hit home the general derision that the right wing elite have for this country:
“The genius of the American economic system is that there are no guarantees. The Declaration of Independence says Americans have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, no a guarantee of happiness.”

In other words, go fuck yourself the poors! This is why people like German Morales should rise up and strike these people from their perches. Not only for looking down their nose at over half of American society, but for talking behind the working American’s back to those who fancy themselves “not one of the poor’s” with bullshit like this editorial.

I can guarantee that most of the right wing blowhards/punditry did not pull themselves up by the boot straps, as they are wont to preach to everyone. When people like Bill O’Reilly threaten to stop employing people if he’s taxed anymore, when the truth is Bill O’Reilly’s taxes are the lowest they’ve been since the Great Depression, we have a problem here. There’s a dishonesty being peddled to the masses as fact, and it’s not going to get any better.

The “competitive marketplace” as Mr. Wilson puts it simply does not exist on the ground floor of the economy any more. Not since the days of the horse and buggy has the individual been in command of anything beyond the macro level of employer and a group of like minded employees. Success is however a great side effect to this thinking. But it is the exception and not the rule. If it was in fact as simple as that, everyone who met a need would be millionaires.

The real threat of the think tanks like Americans For Limited Government is that they always look inward to cut the public off at the knees instead of say the unending cash water flow that goes in to our defense spending. America has yet to shake this the bitter winters of the Cold War and continues to build and amass a giant army, of which a LOT of monetary waste is the order of the day. Lest I remind you that a 6 billion dollar pallet of money just up and disappeared in Iraq. How does a giant stack of cash just go MISSING? The no bid military contracts, the failure of said contractors in providing usable infrastructure to our soldiers or even civilians. Yet you never ever read a think tank piece saying “You know, that defense budget is kind of out of whack.” No, you will get the obligatory “Oh no, if you cut just one dollar from defense, we will be annihilated!!” Never mind the 700 odd military bases all around the world, and America’s station as the “Police of the World”. Americans For Limited Government can’t even look in that direction to suggest some useful in the way of spending far far less. Hell, their fiction would prove more useful, in that Tom Clancy sort of way. People would eat that up!

Finally, a nasty trend of the right wing sound machine has been steadily catching my attention. Mr. Wilson’s article reminded me of it. The Declaration of Independence is indeed not part of the constitution. I don’t know how this thought came to be or why this is being tirelessly bandied by the right wing, but increasingly I’ve been seeing this denial to the middle class in general that they aren’t “guaranteed” anything. The Declaration of Independence has no real modern application other than our society’s unwritten rule not to be assholes to one another, a reminder to not be a tyrant to our common man like the British Empire was to the colonists, who penned the Declaration in order to tell the King what for. It is NOT a part of the Constitution. The Constitution, however, does give us rights and freedoms (and rules and law). The only thing the Declaration and the Constitution share is the fact that they are historical documents.