It was bound to happen, the disenfranchised and marginalized in our country taking to the streets and screaming for the world to hear, “We’re as mad as hell and we are not going to take this anymore!”
The Occupy Wall Street protests and all the other spontaneous demonstrations that have taken place in several cities is the American version of the Arab spring!
Many politicians like Rep. Eric Cantor, and mass media political pundits have proposed that the protesters that call themselves the 99 percent are nothing more than shiftless, unruly mobs. According to Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain, the plight of the unemployed is their own fault. "Don't blame Wall Street, don't blame the big banks, if you don't have a job and you're not rich, blame yourself. It is not someone's fault if they succeeded, it is someone's fault if they failed."
Mr. Cain like Rep. Cantor and the rest of the naysayers and political pundits all seem to conveniently forget that wall street and the banking industry played a significant role in the 2008 economic meltdown. The recession that has gripped our nation and played havoc with the global finical markets is not a natural economic phenomenon. The ugly truth is our nation was robbed and the banks and people responsible got away it…. and worse yet, the robber barons and their cronies have gotten richer on the dime of the American taxpayer.
The numbers as they stand -- 14 to 20 million unemployed in our country, the nation's poverty rate rose to 15.1% in 2010, about 46.2 million people are now considered in poverty, 2.6 million more than last year.
And the guys responsible are sitting on trillions of taxpayer dollars bemoaning their lot in life and the anger directed their way. In case anyone who reads this blog is keeping count, a measly six finical institutions control over 60 percent of the assets of the United States of America! After “we the people” bailed them out because they were to “big-to-fail,” 3 out of the 4 of the largest finical institutions in question actually became bigger.
Another point that politicians and mass media political pundits have a problem grasping is the notion that every man, woman and child on the face of the planet have an inalienable human right, to peacefully gather and petition their representative governments for political redress.
Nothing in our collective human history has ever been changed for the better without somebody starting the process by saying,“This is wrong. I don’t know how to fix it, but this is wrong.” Then other likeminded people gather and say “this is wrong” and then a social movement develops which in turn demands that the government in question addresses their grievances, and passes legislation to correct the problem. Government “for the people, by the people.”
Admittedly this is a hard concept for some politicians and media intellectuals to understand, but it’s the nature of democratic governance.
The problems that face our nation are not insurmountable. We have been through worse times; slavery, the civil war, Jim Crow, segregation, the great depression, WW II, and we have always come out on top. Our nation doesn’t lack courage, ingenuity, education, or vision. We have all those things in abundance…what we lack is leaders that have the political courage to do what is right for our country rather than what is in their best interest.
It has become increasingly obvious to the Occupy Wall Street protesters and most like-minded Americans, that our political leaders, on both the left and right are incapable of fixing what is broken, of getting our nation back to work, and breathing life back into the American Dream.
We the people are going to have to hold their feet to the fire, force them, all of them, Democrats, Republicans and the President to do their jobs, or lose them.
Yet again …we're as mad as hell.
To Be Continued.
