When Propaganda Fails, It Fails Spectacularly!

I admit, I used to get angry. Now though, I'm starting to laugh whenever I hear the absurd propaganda messages coming out of the mouths of Limbaugh, Beck and so many others - including many of our politicians. The thing is, you can only tell the poor it's their own fault they're poor for so long. We've been doing that for decades now, effectively enough that most of the poor who were born poor have been made the scapegoats of the middle and upper classes. We've all been trained to blame the poor for being a drag on our economy, for crime, for the moral decay of our nation and for hampering our ability to "keep up" with the rest of the world. It's been a media campaign of hatred and division that has created some remarkable results, not the least of which is that it's obscured the ongoing, thirty-year confiscation of wealth by the power elite that's been happening right under our noses in this nation.

A problem arises though, because the elite don't know when to stop. The idea that "enough is enough" seems not to cross their greedy minds. And so it is that many new and clever wealth confiscation policies - implemented by the power elite - have lately begun to render poor the entire middle class. They've done so by systematically reducing the value of middle class homes, binding people to underwater mortgages, reducing average wages and benefits, increasing monthly costs for basics like food, energy and education, and offshoring jobs so workers must compete more fiercely with each other and have an even harder time making ends meet. While doing all that, the elite propaganda message that the poor are responsible for their own situation - accompanied as it is by the message that poverty represents a personal moral failing - has been ratcheted up within the right wing media.

What the elite, who are financially supporting this message by taking control of the mainstream media outlets, have failed to realize, however, is that the educated and hard-working people who are suddenly finding themselves poor as a result of predatory corporate activity, corruption in the entire banking/financial system and the elite's callous disregard for their workers' quality of life aren't pushovers. The former middle classes (including those who are still just managing to hold on) are presently waking up to the fact they KNOW they're not really to blame for their financial struggles and stress. And if they're not to blame for their own misfortune as is now being proposed by the elite, than the question that must arise in them - quite naturally - is whether perhaps those "other" poor people (whom the middle class have been blaming for decades as a result of the media propaganda machine) may also not be to blame for their poverty and misfortune.

These two former enemy classes have been pitted against each other for decades because the wealthy - rather than caring for the needs of the poor themselves or uplifting them out of poverty - have forced the struggling middle class (through modern regressive tax policies) to grudgingly provide necessities for the poor. As these two former enemy classes now unite in opposition to the pyramidical, financially based power structure that ruthlessly oppresses us all, they're producing amazing results - PEOPLE POWER!

United, the suffering create an enormous force that the outnumbered elite cannot control. Nor can the elite afford to physically destroy the masses through the use of military force, since the elite count on those masses to labor in the businesses that produce and support their luxurious way of life. Not to mention the fact that most military personnel, courtesy of the "all volunteer army" are the children of the poor and working class. They're highly unlikely to attack their families and friends in the streets where they live.

The more absurd and hypocritical the right wing propaganda gets, the more obvious it becomes that their arguments have no moral center. As more and more people grasp the true intent of the propaganda - which is what happened recently in Wisconsin - the more likely it is we're approaching a social eruption point. Frankly, what would be more worrisome to me than a continued ratcheting up of the lies and rhetoric would be belated attempts by the wealthy to "give back" tiny amounts of wealth to the masses to appease them temporarily. Thankfully, the greedy can't seem to find it in their frozen hearts to care enough about the plights of others to do that, as was proved by the recent demands for additional tax cuts for the wealthy. Even the political progressives, who support limited redistribution of wealth because they believe it will help to stabilize the overarching system, can't seem to convince the greedy to part with their plunder.

The ongoing and expanding confiscation of what is, in reality, our national wealth and resources, demands a massive counter-response from those from whom this wealth has been confiscated to forge a new and dynamic social equilibrium. The farther the scales of power and wealth continue to tip toward the very wealthy few, the more likely it is that the reactive energy from the growing ranks of those who are suffering will be volcanic, and will cause a social upheaval that won't be easily reversed.

The good news is, humanity is in dire need of a brand new social order. The best thing that could happen to us would be for us to gain an opportunity to design a world that is grounded in a win/win paradigm. That would enable us to consciously set a shared vision for what it is we want humanity to achieve, and to aim for that. Such a world would be founded on principles of regenerative and sustainable living, environmental and species preservation, less labor and more creative and scientific exploration, more harmony and cooperation and less cutthroat competition, an accumulation of wisdom instead of material possessions, and generosity of spirit rather than personal hoarding, fear and greed. Our achievement of that vision would depend upon the establishment of a vibrant, creative, empathetic and healthy human society that freely supports and willingly provides for human self-actualization and then elicits the grateful contribution of ALL its self-realized individuals, rather than one that promotes power and wealth for a lucky few and willfully ignores the suffering of all others.

I happen to believe that for humanity to survive, for us to overcome the many self-created challenges we face as a species today, we need to put an end to many millenia of win/lose human behavior. So I'm no longer interested in protecting the wealthy from the follies of their own choices, though I will continue to try to mitigate suffering wherever I encounter it in person. Even so, I sense we've already passed the tipping point, so when it comes to the coming social revolution I say...bring it on! Let's see what we can design with a higher vision for the greater good. Let's do so for the sake of future generations, as well as for all of life on this beautiful planet.