The State of the Class War

What is the state of this class war?

• The wealthy are winning, decisively. Calling it a "class war" is almost too generous. It's more like a quiet, dystopian occupation. The class war has long been over, replaced by an illusion that everything is as it should be, even as tax cuts for the rich keep coming, national debt spirals, and the corporate elite plot to reshape our democracy into something far from democratic.

Recognition of this class war is dismissed, and any attempt to fix it is swiftly crushed with ruthless bullying force. We as the one's being bullied can only turn this into any kind of true contest if we get out of the fetal position, up and off the ground and throw a few punches back.

• Regressive tax cuts prioritize benefits for the wealthy over paying down debt, funding education, or supporting entitlements. By creating massive debt through tax cuts without spending reductions, a debt crisis is manufactured to justify cutting entitlement programs: a tactic used in the class war for over 40 years.

• The Citizens United ruling unleashed a flood of big money and its self-serving priorities into our politics, drowning out the voices of ordinary Americans and shifting the balance of power ever further from We ("the people").

• Conservative ideologues on our Supreme Court consistently rule in favor of powerful corporate interests, protecting them and eroding protections for citizens from them. They are increasingly leaving democracy at the mercy of those with wealth & influence.

• Hecto-billionaires like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg are on track to become trillionaires in a few years. While their achievements deserve recognition, the extreme inequality they represent is celebrated as if it’s a strength, not a glaring weakness, of our society.

• We have un-enforced/impotent monopoly laws and the emboldened monopolies they’ve fostered. American Corporations in general are drunk with power manipulating every circumstance to their favor and making sport of the American People:

Our pharmaceutical/medical insurance industry...

Along with their puppet politicians gave the American people what is still the most expensive, least effective national health care system in the 1st world in the ACA. Even so, the establishment seems absolutely hell-bent on returning to the era of pre-existing conditions, soaring health care costs, and more not fewer uninsured Americans. They were desperate to prevent the ACA from becoming yet another Untouchable entitlement like medicare or social security. Thankfully they failed. It is one of the few bright spots in the class war, so... Thanks Obama!

There are many good things about the ACA, but we believe extending Medicare in stages, adjusting to the added strain with each new group, until it covered everyone, alongside the same (brilliant!) patient bill of rights, would have been the better solution.

Our Banking and Financial industry...

lobbied to repeal the Glass-Steagall Act, which for over 60 years had kept investment and retail banking separate to prevent risky use of depositors’ funds. Once repealed, banks quickly exploited depositors' funds in risky, deceptive ways to boost profits, leading to over-leveraging that helped trigger the Great Recession, costing 8 million Americans their jobs, and many their homes.

Our citizen-elected, corporate-controlled government bailed these financial institutions out with tax payer dollars, leaving both the under-regulated system and the corporate players essentially unchanged. The banks that were "too big to fail" before the financial crisis are bigger than they were before. It's been a decade and some years since passing reforms with some teeth. Many of those reforms have been adjudicated away by our corporate friendly supreme court.

Of note: The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), created after the Great Recession to protect consumers, was initially independent of executive interference. However, under pressure from President Trump, the Supreme Court allowed the president to fire its director at will and under Trump, the CFPB protected fewer Americans from being fleeced by bad actors in the financial industry compared to Obama and Biden.

Our Military–Industrial–Congressional Complex...

has given us an enormously wasteful, defense budget that knows no limits, inclines us towards military expenditures and conflict all over the globe. In recent years warriors for the one percent have actually cut taxes during a time of war which disproportionately benefitted the wealthiest among us while creating annual deficits in the hundreds of billions of dollars/year.

Corporate Abandonment of America & rural Americans...

it was class warfare in action as waged by the manufacturing class on working class Americans when the corporations eliminated their jobs and moved them overseas to take advantage of cheap foreign labor. They've called it any number of things over the years free trade, globalization, inevitable, etc..., but in the end it has largely done what the corporate elite wanted for their companies: to grow them from national or regional corporations to trans-nationals global conglomerates while simultaneously breaking the bargaining power hard working blue collar Americans enjoyed for decades (in the form of strong labor unions) as their jobs were out-sourced from under them.

Many retired, took available service jobs, or just never worked again. The jobs thye did get paid less and offered fewer benefits.

In a final act of betrayal, American drug companies exploited communities devastated by job loss, flooding them with powerful, addictive opioids to profit from their pain. This has severely impacted the health of working-class Americans, causing the average life expectancy to decline, as we now die younger than previous generations. All of this stems from callous corporate decisions and a federal government that prioritizes corporate interests over the well-being of its constituents—right here in America.

Clear Cut Solutions and no Political Will to Implement Them

None of this was inevitable. Other first-world governments faced similar challenges around the same time and chose to prioritize their citizens over corporations and the wealthy. The difference lies in how our politicians have sold out to corporate interests.

Any politician attempting to address these issues is vastly outnumbered by corporate puppets. These bought politicians are poised to undermine any populist agenda. Moreover, genuine representatives of the people often face primary challenges for daring to prioritize average Americans over big business.

As a result, even well-meaning politicians play it safe, doing just enough to avoid angering the 1% Corporate Class. Year after year, we are left choosing between those offering half-hearted solutions and those intent on furthering corporate interests. Meanwhile, the wealthy continue to reap tax cuts, loopholes, and corporate socialism, further entrenching their power.

And once again what's left are these sad conclusions that:

We ("the people"):

• are not at all in control of our democracy even though we decide who gets elected at every level of government in every election.
• have absolutely no clue who our allies are (or should be) and who our enemies are (or should be)
• do not have the understanding, will, let alone a strategy to take the fight to the enemy

We can change all this if more of us will fight for what is in our economic interest and stop fighting for what the wealthy want.