by Rich Miles
It's only been 20 months since Bill Moyers, that voice of reason and the underprivileged, announced his retirement, well-earned and not surprising, from his PBS television show Bill Moyers' Journal, on which he had hosted and rabbleroused for some 4-5 years. This was, as near as I can calculate, his fourth or fifth retirement from American television. His other TV efforts included Bill Moyers on America, NOW with Bill Moyers, In Search of the Constitution, The Secret Government: The Constitution in Crisis, The Power of Myth, the original Bill Moyers' Journal, and that only takes us back to 1971. He worked in print journalism for 4 or 5 years before that.
So now that I've given you the precis version of Moyers' resume, let me urge you to watch his newest program, Bill Moyers & Company. His first guests are the co-authors of another one of those books that I think everyone should read, Winner-Take-All Politics, by Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson. In an approximately 40-minute interview, the discussion of how our country ended up in such a place of income and wealth inequality will make you raise an eyebrow or two, but all three participants present their theses so clearly and without undue passion that it is hard to dispute any portion of what they say. I suspect those who will dispute the most will be those very 1%-ers who are discussed at some length in the interview, and who are benefitting the most from the situation.
I have to say, if there is any person in America who does not know that the wealth in America is tipping toward the top severely, that person is probably one of the beneficiaries of the tipping, and is not taking notice so much.
Folks, America is in trouble. The rich are becoming richer, and the poor are becoming poorer. The middle class, of which I s claim membership, is dwindling down to almost nothing, both in influence and in sheer numbers. And the rich are unrepentant, as one might expect them to be, but they are short-sighted! As I have asked several times in the past, perhaps slightly jokingly, but not now, if the rich take EVERYTHING (Winner-take-all), what will happen to the rest of us, and what will the rich do without us to cook for them, clean for them, wipe their noses and their asses?
Do they propose to own us, so that the expense of our services is minimized? Because there is NO way I will believe that these overstuffed bags of shit are simply going to do without. That's the beauty of being obscenely wealthy - you don't have to do without anything, and you don't have to do anything unpleasant for yourself.
It sounds like an unlikely sequence of events, but we're moving toward it even now! I mean, at the current rate of events, we could reach a place where the top 1% of the population will be taking 70-80% of the resources available to the nation. They're already taking over 40% of those resources - that is a stat mentioned in the Moyers program today.
So - as the band Chicago asked in a song of the same name some years ago - Where do we go from here?
Well, I suggest you join the Occupy folks. No telling where that's going, but someone has to speak out against this insufferable greed and theft. And if I am to be perfectly frank, the so-far illogical, but moving toward making perfect sense conclusion to this is - Revolution!
Like the French Revolution - Let them eat cake, indeed!
There is more to say on this topic - I'd like to let you say at least some of it. Send your comments. I promise, all those that are not TOTALLY insane will get published.
Vive la revolution!!!
r
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2 comments:
Rich, it's good to hear your voice. I'm also glad Moyers is back in the fray. This is certainly no time for retirement when ignorance has become the norm and reason is once more suspect. Here's a site you might like, warcosts.com which further breaks down those who are profiting from our endless wars.
Got a verbal comment from a friend, one of my staunchest liberal pals, who said this was all just old news. Yes, but there's a whole new generation of potential liberals who don't know just how perfidious the Republicans can be.
And I made a mistake in bringing up Rush Limbaugh at a social gathering the other day, and the reply I got was one I really had expected to hear before then: that little girl was a setup.
OK, she was a setup - but what explains how thoroughly Limbaugh took the bait? I could go on for hours on this one - but suffice to say, if she was a setup, ol' Rush took her hook, line and sinker.
And the second person mentioned above proves that this entire premise is true. It had to be a setup - no way these assholes can accept that Limbaugh was just a thoroughly objectionable asshole on his own. He's so stupid, according to his "defender" that he couldn't avoid this little woman attempt to draw him in.
I've heard this excuse before.
It's late, and I'm tired of these assholes. More later.
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