The Divided State of the Union: Americans Versus The Banks

A great deal of attention has been given to the advent of a third party, or a secondary more conservative faction of the Republican Party, and their response to President Obama’s State of the Union address.  The appearance of a divide within the Republican Party, or more generally within conservative America, has become the focus of political analyses.  Unfortunately, the true division within America has been eclipsed by the misinterpretation of this trio of performances – offering their own renditions of a familiar tune,with only minor variations on the theme – as representative of anything other than a singular view, and singular plan, for 99% of American citizens to be left with the obligation of paying the debt incurred by the wealthiest 1%.

Obama’s message allows for a few more crumbs to be dropped from the table, on loan, to be paid for with interest at a later date.  Basically, his right of center prescription is tempered the same way that the restructuring a loan might be.  The day-to-day might feel easier, and getting by might seem a little more possible.  However, in the end you’ll pay the original debt and a little more for the privilege of having that debt spread out in such a way that you are more likely to keep on paying it. That way, one is  less likely to revolt, default, and tell the bank to kiss your ass.

Tonight, all rhetoric aside, Obama promised more war, an ‘effort’ to maintain social services and education, a reallocation of the debt burden to include more from the wealthiest while allowing lower corporate taxes, and America’s support to the people of Tunisia.

The war will continue, as America’s state of war has for so long.  The lowering of corporate taxes will find little opposition.  The increased tax burden to the upper 2% will be borne by the lower 50% amongst them (the doctors, lawyers, entrepreneurs, small business owners etc. – not the financial elite of the upper 1%).  The dreadful state of American health care and education will get a maintaining ‘effort.’  The people of Tunisia will receive support for any form of government they democratically choose, as long as it serves the same financial system that America promotes.  Loans will be made available, and corporate investment encouraged, and, if all goes as the banks would like, they will have a democratic society with a massive debt.

Representative Paul Ryan (R-WI), on behalf of the Republican Party, presented a different way of servicing the same ends (those ‘ends’ being the banking and financial institutions that hold the American economy for ransom).  The Republican plan, in short, includes throwing American citizens directly under the bus, without any amelioration (restructuring of the loan), with added measures (tax relief for corporations and the wealthy) in order to protect corporate America (who they seem to be even more beholden to, at least outwardly, than even the Democrats do) from having to participate in the forced repayment.

In short, Ryan called for a smaller government with limited powers in exchange for more personal responsibility to the predatory capitalist system and the repayment of debt to the bankers.  Cut services, take less pay, work longer, harder, and faster, and pay the banks before the banks make things as hard on America as they did on Greece and Ireland.  Pay lots now, keep the banks happy, or keep a little of your money for your own social services and pay later.  They offer some crumbs with allowance for a limited social safety net, but the crumbs are smaller than the Democrat’s crumbs.  Crumbs from both parties… but crumbs nonetheless.

Both plans serve the same master.  Both plans offer up the American citizens as repayment. Both plans provide extreme profit to the financial system that tanked the economy, threw millions of Americans out of their homes and jobs, and have already raided the country’s coffers for trillions of dollars.

The only choice between these two options are whether you prefer to be thrown under the bus or dragged behind it.

Then comes the magical mystery bus with Michele Bachmann.  You’re still going to get thrown under it but, it’s painted in pretty colors, festooned with Old Glory flags, has a neon cross as a hood ornament, and an ambiguous, redacted version of the constitution plastered to the front windshield as it careens, sans driver, across the country.  This particular rendition is insidiously dangerous.  It replaces the culpability of the financial and banking elites by blaming immigrants, homosexuals, liberals, secularists, and anyone else that their prejudice, bigotry, and bias identifies as unlike them, and in disagreement with them, and therefore a threat.

In her speech, Bachmann (with the teleprompter, or secondary camera, set so far to the high-stage-right that it seemed as though she was talking to someone several feet to the viewer’s left), offered nothing more than austerity and nationalism.  She smiled, flashed her eyes in a way that made you wonder if she was capable of blinking, and delivered a completely specious political oration.

Bachmann blamed the current economic crisis, created by the Bush administration, on Obama, who, aside from his complicity, was left to pay the banksters ransom.  She shilled for the private health insurance companies and corporate America, and exhorted American militarism.  All in all, she offered a superficial borrowing of Republican economic strategy, wrapped it in the flag, piled it on the backs of minorities and the poor, and proposed the marching of ‘patriotic’ Americans strait to the laughing banks.

An incoherent nationalism overrides any role in the economic extortion and enslavement of the citizenry in favor of using it to further a socially conservative, extremist, right-wing social agenda.  This effectively allows the banking and financial sector to pursue their own ends uninhibited by anything as mundane as a responsible government while the people blame each other, and the minorities among them.  The banks don’t care if we fight amongst ourselves.  They’ll finance the civil war, support both sides, and tack the expense onto the debt.

All three versions call for austerity on behalf of American citizens in order to fund the predatory capitalism of the banks and financial system.  All three prescriptions offer the same:  the American people, their human and natural resources, and their current and future production, as payment on a debt created by the global banking and financial elites.  They are already reaping record profits from the ‘crisis,’ and plan to do so for years, decades, and generations, to come.

The true division in America is not between the political parties.  The differences between the parties are inconsequential when it comes to the relegation of 99% of the American public to the status of the expendable class: the chattel property that will be used to PAY THE DEBTS CREATED BY the wealthiest 1%, TO the wealthiest 1%.

The financial system crashed, or was crashed.  The banks raided the public coffers to supposedly salvage their institutions.  Over the past two years, since they took that money, they have reported record profits.  Now, it is apparently the job of the people, whose money was taken by the banks and financial sector, to now repay that money to the banks and financial sector.

Republicans and Tea Party politicians, and pundits, have railed against the absurdity of American citizens actually being empowered enough that they might have ownership in what their money, labor, and resources, have been used to purchase.  Accusations of “Socialism” and “Communism” have been used to describe anyone (including the current, center-right, capitalist administration) unwilling to allow a completely free, unregulated, self-serving, laissez-faire system without at least providing adequate health-care, education, and basic social services, with the money taken from the people, the expendable 99%.  Anyone that might even suggest that an economic system serve the citizens, rather than a debt created by those that demand payment, is accused of being un-patiotic, un-American, and extremist.

Anyone who thinks such things is without representation in this political system.  You have no representation in government.  Your only choices are how to pay the debt to the bankers, and who among you are going to pay what share.  The poor, the middle class, the business class, entrepreneurs, managers, laborers, unionized workers, migrant workers, doctors, lawyers, and candle-stick makers are all part of the expendable class.  You’ve clawed, scratched, climbed, and done everything possible to become the best you could be.  And, in the end, all you are, all you think you have, and all that you are able to do, or produce, is in service to the banks.  Whether it’s payments on a McMansion, private school tuition, the best medical insurance money can buy, or a two room flat and a bus pass; all your money ends up at the bank.  What they don’t get from you directly, they take from your collective resources through your government.

Neurosurgeon, entrepreneur, automobile salesperson, teacher, student, and single parent.  You are all part of the Expendable Class– the have-nots.  Some of you may have more than others, but all of you service the same financial elite.  Those of you with more simply end up giving more back to the banks.  They profit off your labor, skills, insurance, and investments.  You are allowed to keep a share, some more than others, but they take that from you in any way they can.  You are valuable property, and will be allowed incentives that will keep you producing profits for the banks.  Whether through higher taxes, lower services, higher tuition, increased interest rates, insurance payments, or privatization of your land, resources, and utilities, you are all paying the same debt, all to the same global financial institutions, whether directly or indirectly.

The current system, and your representatives, assist only in allowing you to fight amongst yourselves.  You get to decide whom amongst you pays what share.  None of your representatives, nothing in your political system, is fighting against those that have indebted you.  They all have the same plan.  They all plan to use you, and your resources, to pay off the bankers.

There is no voice in government telling the banks that they are responsible for the debt they created.  For anyone thinking that the banks have paid anything back, remember that as soon as that money was given to them (T.A.R.P.  / Bail-outs) it became part of the debt.  Whatever they say they’ve repaid to American citizens is going back to the international banking system as payment on the original debt… with interest.  With this system, they can’t lose for winning.

The true division in America is between the 1% that controls the wealth, resources, property, and the economy, and the expendable 99% that are offered up to service it.  This disparity, when forced to extremes that are only slightly worse than the current situation in America (crashed economies, bail-outs, massive debt, unemployment, and austerity measures, all in service of the debt to global banks), has resulted in citizen uprisings from Greece, England, France, Spain, and Ireland, to Tunisia, Algeria, and Egypt.  A global movement against the predatory capitalism of the wealthiest 1% has begun.

The co-mingling of government representatives during the State of the Union address is not so much a representation of their desire for civility as it is a symbol of their singular purpose.  Under the bus, behind the bus, or trippin’ inside the bus, it’s all in support of the same system, and all benefits the same elite few.  People around the world are waking up to this reality.  People of the world are drawing a line in the sand.  People around the world are standing up, taking to the streets, and saying ‘enough is enough.’  They’ve seen through the illusion of their supposed democracies. They’ve chosen to not be the property of global banks, financiers, or wealthy elites. They’ve chosen to join forces and resist.  When will America’s 99% finally stand up and join them?