The Politics of Cruelty

I'm coming off of my Thanksgiving week high, settling down, and what's the first thing I think of when I get back to my desk to do some writing?  Cruelty. Institutional cruelty, at that.  Political cruelty.  The kind of cruelty that knows no bounds and fears no punishment.  A new kind of cruelty, right out in the open and expecting rewards.  The New America, courtesy of the Tea Party, the Koch Brothers, Leviticus and Deuteronomy.

I had a lovely week.  Our dinner was great, I avoided Black Friday, we celebrated a good man's birthday, and our 350 mile trip back home was uneventful.  No wind or snow or traffic jams, and the ferry, our lifeline, was running on time.

Maybe it was because of that fine respite--I don't know--but at my desk those thoughts about where we are on the inhumanity front kept coming through. 

If there is a catalyst, I blame Joe Arpaio, the infamous, publicity-seeking sheriff of Arizona's Maricopa County.  He's the guy who thinks it's cute to keep his prisoners in pink underwear.  He stays awake nights trying to come up with ideas to humiliate and demoralize the inmates in his care.  He gets a real kick out of it and never misses a chance to publicly tighten the screws.

To save money, Arpaio says, he feeds his prisoners only twice a day on between 15 cents and 40 cents a meal.  The meals are vegetarian, no salt and pepper.  He's working on charging them a dollar a meal, because, he says, "Everybody else has to pay for their food, why should they get freebies?"

Last Wednesday he took the time to tweet his Thanksgiving menu: 

"Thanksgiving menu is all set! Hope the inmates give thanks for this special meal being served in the jails tomorrow." 

 

Five ounces of turkey soy casserole and donated brownies.  56 cents a meal.  Did he do it to save money?  Sure.  Did he have to do it?  No.  (Did he eat it himself?  Have you seen him?)

But Joe is small potatoes compared to the various Federal, state and local leaders busy thinking up ways to stick it to the little guy.  Governors refusing Federally endorsed Medicaid for their citizens.  A $40 billion cut in food stamps.  A fight to block minimum wage hikes.  Cuts in unemployment benefits.  Cuts in Veteran's aid.  Cuts in public education.  Complete and total neglect of crumbling infrastructure.  Refusal to recognize the Affordable Care Act, along with a hearty wish that that damned website would just die already. 

Cruel, cruel, cruel, cruel, cruel, cruel, cruel, and cruel.  Every "no" vote, every obstruction sentences hundreds of thousands to needless suffering.  But because that kind of cruelty is now the American version of politics-as-usual, some of us rail (and not for the first time) while some of us cheer, but in the end, the power is no longer with the people.  Endless, needless, avoidable suffering and nobody goes to jail.  

Except Joe Arpaio, but only long enough to torment his inmates for yet another day.  Then he gets to go home, where nothing can hurt him.  Ever.

Why Do we Plebians keep blaming the Super-rich? Because, Dammit, They're to Blame

We're an odd bunch, we Americans.  We've had a hate-hate relationship with the very rich for as long as we've existed as a country, but damn their golden hides, we can't stop taking care of them.

After all these years we've become used to sparring with the super-rich over how much they get to keep and how much they should share.  They want to keep it all.  We want them to behave like responsible citizens, and they don't think they should have to.

It's a long-standing battle, but it was infinitely fairer when they needed us as much as we needed them.  Most of them built their fortunes while still being Americans in America, by being major forces in the building of the strongest, richest country in the world. Now there is almost nothing American about the major corporatists, but we still insist on treating them as if they were a part of us.  We can't help ourselves.  We cling to our nationalism, to our sense of superiority, and even after decades of sliding downhill, of watching our resources leave our shores for parts unknown, we can't believe our industry, our infrastructure, our wealth, is gone.  We refuse, in fact, to believe it, even though our roads, our bridges, our buildings, our very way of life is crumbling around us.

We are slow to learn.  It's one of our least likable traits. As our factories and our mills closed, one by one, we heard over and over that we would be stronger as a nation if we adjusted to becoming a service economy.  Many of us knew a scam when we saw one, and protested mightily.  Others kept harping about buggy whips or some such. 

A service economy meant only one thing:  The many would be serving the few, with no real rewards for the many. If we stopped building things, we would be dependent on other less stable economies for our goods.  We would lose an entire sector of workers without making provisions for a new kind of labor.  If wages went down--or became non-existent--our tax base would shrivel, as well.

So what did we do?  We went along.  We rewarded the super-rich, those vainglorious bastards who shipped our jobs and our wealth out of the country, not just by cutting their taxes to bare bones, but by treating them as whole-cloth Americans while they turned their backs on us and refused to do anything more for our country than live here.

We really should have known better, but once again, we've let big money nearly destroy us.  They've grown stronger, thanks to us, and now they've invaded our lives, right down to choosing the politicians most likely to let the super-rich maintain the status quo.

These are not the Rockefellers or the Vanderbilts--the money people who, ruthless and greedy as they were, hauled us into the industrial age and built this country, brick by brick.  They wanted it all, too, but at least they knew to keep it within our shores. They weren't above buying politicians in their day, but their power only went so far.  They were rich but their riches didn't own us for decades on end.

Now it does.  It buys politicians and courts and it buys silence.  It buys respect where respect is not deserved.  And we're growing poorer and shabbier every day.  We're a shadow of our former selves while the stockpiles of the very rich have grown beyond their wildest dreams--and our wildest imaginations.

They don't need us.  They don't want us.  And as long as we keep insisting that everything's gonna be all right, the super-rich will be alive and doing exceedingly well in America.

As for the rest of us--we'll be exactly where they want us.


(Read the article in Truthout that prompted this. It's an issue that needs to be up front and on our minds come the next election cycle. If we stop blaming them we'll have nobody to blame but ourselves.)

Note:  Cross-posted at Dagblog and Alan Colmes' Liberaland.  Featured on Crooks and Liars MBRU. Appreciate it!)