The thing about an epiphany is that it shouldn’t come as a surprise. It happens when we finally feel . . . a deep-in-our-marrow feel . . . what we know to be true. It is a collision of heart and mind.Both my wife and I are teachers who live next door to Madison, WI. I’m a two-time “Nader Spoiler.” I spent last Wednesday night sleeping in the state capital. That information should provide most of the backstory needed to understand my recent “collision.”
Being compelled to break my week-long boycott of Wisconsin businesses to feed two hungry cats, I stopped by the local Piggly Wiggly. I was the only customer since it was just moments after they’d opened. Walking up the pet food aisle toward the checkout, I overheard two middle aged female clerks talking to one another across the distance of their respective work stations. It was obvious they supported Walker’s attempt to “balance” the state budget on the backs of public-sector workers.
Referring to the prank phone call of the day before, when Governor Walker was caught “fellatio in flagranti” [metaphorically] with a man who he thought was his boss . . . billionaire David Koch, one of the clerks said, “Governor Walker only said what’s he’s said all along. If they [meaning folks like me] didn’t believe him, that’s their fault.” MOMENT OF IMPACT!
I’ve long known that our “democratic” system is little more than the Oz-like curtain behind which plutarchic wizards manipulate the levers of real power . . . the power of the purse. My epiphany was the marrow-shaking concussion of the opening salvo in the second American civil war . . . a smoke-and-mirrors “rebellion” generaled by the obscenely rich and soldiered by nonunion workers who’ve been convinced the enemy is union workers who “enjoy” marginally more economic security. It is a war meant to devastate the middle class and turn the American worker into the American serf.
In our country’s first civil war the obscenely rich southern land barons, whose wealth was tethered to the lash-scared backs of their slaves, convinced poor southern dirt farmers who owned a few acres and a mule to fight to save a slave-based aristocracy with little “trickle down” . . . over 258,000 Confederate men died, give or take. Then as now, the obscenely rich had no intention of sharing the wealth had their side won.
It was obvious who was the boss and who was the lackey in Scott Walker’s recent phone conversation with “David Koch.” The Koch brothers and the wealth they wield are responsible for the propaganda that convinced the Piggly Wiggly clerks and scores of union . . . dare I say teachers . . . and nonunion middle class workers to vote Walker into office. Keep in mind, he lied and prevaricated and promised “change” as politicians are wont to do. Predictably, the casual voter had no clue as to Walker’s stealth agenda.
In 2008, Forbes magazine identified the Koch brothers as the captains of the second largest privately held company in the United States, with an annual income of $98 billion. They were number one in 2006. Their empire was built on oil and gas futures by their father, Fred G. Koch.
Fred was also a founding member of the John Birch Society, an ultra-right wing organization which opposes communism (read: unions), opposes collectivism (read: sharing the wealth) and opposes socialism (read: any government program benefiting the masses). They also want to limit the power of the government (read: environmental quality, worker safety regulations, etc.). The JBS headquarters is now located in Grand Chute, WI, while the Kochs just opened a lobby shop within view of Scott Walker’s office window.
It is not union negotiated pay scales or benefits or retirement packages for middle class workers that bankrupted our country. Lest we forget, it was the obscenely wealthy criminals on Wall Street . . . AIG, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America and Morgan Stanley . . . who intentionally bankrupted millions of union and nonunion workers and destroyed possibly trillions of dollars of the world’s wealth. Only one man, Bernie Madoff, went to jail. His only crime was that he bilked a relatively few of the rich and famous not the middle class masses. No one else has been held responsible for this crime of unimagined worldwide consequence . . . well, other than the unionized middle class.
The point is, if the obscenely rich can break the unions, the only bulwark between a nominally democratic form of government and an outright plutocratic oligarchy, the middle class will become the serf class. We will become little more than “sharecroppers” with no hope of succor or redress other than what the obscenely rich think necessary to keep us on our feet and behind the plow.
I am not the enemy of the Piggly Wiggly clerks. I ask them not to wish too hard for the misfortune of unionized public workers. If we get shot down in this battle, they will become the victims of “friendly” fire.
The first shots of the second civil war were fired in Greensboro, NC, on November 2, 1979 when more than 30 KKK members attacked a rally of workers. Five demonstrators were killed and about ten were wounded. No one was ever convicted of the shootings.
ReplyDeleteThe people who rally in support of the tea bagger movement and those who are so vehemently against union workers have no sense of history and, apparently, no sense of self-preservation.
Going back to the mid-70s when the concerted assault on unions began in this country, concomitant with the dismantling of the industrial base of our economy with the blessings of the Democratic party at the time, non-unionized workers smiled inwardly whenever an attack was launched against union workers. Why? Because those workers who weren't organized were jealous. Jealous that union workers enjoyed better benefits, better pay, and a better standard of living, in addition to more rights on the job and the need to put up with less bullshit from bosses.
Of course, by 1974, that began to change. The Teamsters Union was completely in the pocket of the GOP and the construction unions were providing goons for use against protesters at antiwar rallies. And throughout this disgraceful prelude to what we are seeing today throughout America, non-unionized workers stood a little taller every time one of their fellow workers got screwed over and lost something in collective bargaining.
What we're seeing now in America is analogous to someone waking up after being in a coma. Thirty years of orgiastic partying by people who were told they shouldn't worry about anything, the Republicans would take care of them by getting the mean old government off their backs. We are in the same place, culturally, that we were back in October, 1980 when John Lennon was killed. Nothing has changed in the mentality of the people like those in Greensboro in 1979 who attacked the communists and workers rally. And the jealousy of Americans towards their neighbors has only gotten worse. Economically we're just as fucked as we were before Reagan and his band of criminals led by the Bush family threw open the doors of the treasury to their friends.
This battle has been a long time coming. I know who the enemy is. I learned that as a kid when JFK was killed and I've never lost sight of it.