Burn Strawman, Burn!

     
     What do you do when you’re locked in a belief, a mindset, or philosophy and the force of fact, truth, logic and justice are so against you that you have nowhere to turn without exposing the error of your position? Hopefully you’d follow truth and adjust your views accordingly. Unfortunately, today’s Republicans continue to re-paint reality into a false portrait that fits their warped view (otherwise known as “creating a straw man” argument). It is their constant fight with truth, with history, with justice and with the saving grace of cooperative action for the greater good that has so locked down our national promise and progress.

       Take the latest example, the Wall St. protestors. They are painted out to be rich hating anti-capitalists who want nothing more than a handout from those who industrious few who produce in the open marketplace. What utter rubbish! Back in 2009, as soon as President Obama failed to adequately address the corruption on Wall Street that led to our economic collapse, I myself expressed the sentiments that fuel today’s protest. And by God I AM a capitalist. Lost all the capital I had in our family business when we went out in 2008. That’s okay, it is part of the free enterprise system, and I have no regrets, only fond memories and appreciation for all that system did for me and my family over the last century.

         However, what the protestors detest, as do I, is the cheating, the self-dealing, the rancid pay for play lobbying that cares not one damn for the greater public interest, but only, only for their private gain. It was such greed that led to the de-regulation facilitating impossible leveraging that garnered nothing but obscene gains for Wall Street traders, bankers and mortgage brokers but saddled US—particularly the poor and middle class citizen—with all the losses. Yet Obama let the Wall Street chicanery continue nearly unabated. He did not lift a finger to curb the wrongful bonuses, based largely on productive-for-them-but-unproductive-for-everybody-else performance.  He did not fight for true reform, perhaps hoping to woo Wall Street’s support, who knows.

         So yeah, when the guy who ran on hope instead runs the other way—whether on financial reform, half-hearted health care non-reform, reversing tax cuts that have helped deplete the treasury and help make the gap between rich and poor greater than at any time since the Roaring Twenties—and Congress does NOTHING but continue to aid and abet their larceny, then YES, it is time to take to the streets.

            Justice wins out in the end. It always does. The only question remains: how much pain must we all suffer from those who continue to fight against it?

                                                               Richard Dawahare 10/19/11