“For Whom Does The Bell Toll?”

I vividly recall when Barack Obama gave the Keynote Speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. I, like so many, was totally mesmerized by the oratorical ability of this young, charismatic black man. I, too, saw him as the brightest star on the horizon of the Democratic Party for President. I did not hold a shred of doubt that he was destined to become one of the greatest presidents the United States had seen in a very long time.

Then came the declaration of his candidacy and the ensuing campaign leading up to the Democratic National Convention of 2008. His exposure and composure were pause for concern. His appearance in Berlin brought a chill down my spine. I began to ask myself “who is this man and from where did he come?” The ghosts of Nuremberg came to mind. Was Obama more than we had imagined? Who engineered his dramatic rise to political prominence? What was his real mission to be and for whom? Was there more to be feared than celebrated?

When Barack Obama’s election was history and he greeted the massive crowds of adoring admirers in Grant Park in Chicago, the sheer magnitude of the crowd and the adulation gave me pause, once again, for concern as to who this man really was, what was his real mission and, again, for whom?

The staging for his inauguration was hardly dismantled when it became apparent that William Jefferson Clinton was to play a significant role as one of the key players in Barack Obama’s Administration. This was the same Bill Clinton that had conspired with Phil Gramm and a host of Wall Street cronies in the dismantling of Glass-Stiegel and the total deregulation of the financial structure of this country. Robert Rubin, Alan Greenspan and Larry Summers were just the beginning of a cadre of those to whom our economic future would be entrusted. The spoils were there for the asking, and no time was wasted in making it available to all of the lean and hungry barons of Wall Street who had coveted that economic feast, about to be set before them, for a very long time. They were quickly brought into the fold and occupied every significant position in the new administration. The battle plan was clearly evident to anyone who had a modicum of curiosity, interest and concern about what was in the offing. What was ours was soon to become theirs. The very foundation of our economic system was beginning to crumble. The vision and the wisdom of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the good men who followed were beginning to fade. The common man was to become the fuel for their engines of avarice.

Those who had been perceived as the complete antithesis of the Middle Class and the working people of the United States where given carte blanche to every influential position in the Obama Administration. Scions of big business, big money, power and influence became an army of “advisors” to the new President. It was becoming patently clear that any semblance of what had been the Democratic Party had been marginalized, and the powerful and influential comprising the oligarchic and plutocratic elite were in the drivers’ seats. The noose was tightening around the necks of all the “true believers” that better days would follow in the footsteps of the new administration. Not to be.

Wise words once echoed by a very astute person to the effect that “You are known by the company you keep,” were given new meaning.

I regard Bill Clinton one of the most compromised and morally bankrupt individuals to have ever sat in the White House. Once his tarnished image was cleansed, he wasted no time in divesting himself of his relationship with all those who helped to burnish his character, he became the great hero of the Democratic Party, and he cast his lot with those who were to become the power house operating in the shadows of the Obama Administration.

The front door of the White House was reserved for every sleazy, corrupt and compromised character wielding wealth, power and influence for the benefit of the few at the expense of the many. People of character were no longer welcome. It was to become the renaissance of the huckster, the corporate capitalist, the masters of the financial shell game and a whole host of others who basked in the light of a new emperor reigning over the entire landscape of what was well on its way, and destined to become one of the worst and most corrupt systems of government this country had seen since the days of Calvin Coolidge. The conquest was complete. The spoils were set before them.

Empty rhetoric spewed forth and soon became the means for peddling lies, deception, broken promises, massive secrecy and the abuse of power to the masses who still wanted to believe only the best about the newly crowned Democrats elected or appointed to positions of power.

The wagons were circling and would soon harbor the real power structures of government for those who would benefit most from all the evil they peddled. As much as we might like to think otherwise, it doesn’t take much to conclude that the role of the electorate in the process is nothing more than to elect or re-elect the happy band of thieves to their positions of power, wealth and privilege.

Believe what you will, but none of them does an honest day’s work. They all have part-time jobs, inflated salaries and perquisites that would be the envy of the most privileged of the world, all accorded them by their own actions. Believe what you will, but the phrase, “conflict of interest” in reality means “privilege for the few at the expense of the many.”

We have what I believe to be an Executive Branch that covets the power and privilege of office, operates in secrecy, talks out of both sides of its mouth, and panders to a constituency that could not be further removed from the values of the common man. They could not be any less concerned about the commitments they have made to the electorate. At best, we are a minor annoyance to the real world of politics that we would like to believe is there for all of us, not just for a select few. It may be pretty to think so, but that is as far as it goes.

Where the Executive Branch may be the personification of banditry, it is the Legislative Branch that most personifies the stereotypical ladies of the night. They may profess to be vestal virgins, but it is apparent the pleasures they thrive on couldn’t be further from that reality. Just barely peel away the veneer and there you have it, in all its glory!

Then there is the Judicial Branch. They may look distinguished and foreboding, but they, too, are there to ensure the continued viability of the privileged few they look out for, on and off the golf course. Judicial purity and integrity is the least of their concerns. Citizens United is but one of their most glaring examples of this conclusion.

It was once opined by a wise sage, “People can only do to you what you permit them to do.” That is where we, the people of this country come in. We revel in such a vast state of self-imposed ignorance, the pursuit of affluence and pleasure, and a complete indifference to the plight of the common man, that those who own most of the country have no trouble manipulating them at will. They are secure in the knowledge that they are pliable and will, at the end of the day, do what wealth deigns to be best for them and the most lucrative for their masters.

So long as we attach importance to living in more house than we can comfortably occupy, drive cars that we can ill afford, live on credit we cannot pay and covet the material and hedonistic pleasures that only serve to denigrate and destroy us, we are there for the asking. We will have decayed from within, and those who salivate at our demise know it. They know that we will not take our eyes off Facebook, Twitter, and all the other aspects of the contrived “fun” we see as our inherent right, long enough to question what they are really doing to us.

Sad to say, but I honestly believe that, so long as we are getting what we want, we really don’t give a damn about all those who are living on the edge. As long as we don’t have to look at people who live in abject poverty, who don’t have enough to feed their children and who stand in line for jobs that cannot support the needs of the average person, it is really not my problem. The folly of that mind set is, “what you most fear today may well become your reality of tomorrow.” It has happened before in history and there is no reason to believe it won’t happen again.

When despair morphs into desperation that is when people start asking themselves who and what has brought them to this state of life? That is when people start weighing the alternatives they have at their disposal and assessing the relative efficacy of the means vs. the ends. That is when we start to reach critical mass in our evolution. That is when the kind of change none of us want to see becomes the reality of the day. History has and will repeat itself.

If there is any dictum in the world I believe to be true, it is that “Greed is an insatiable appetite. Those who feed on it never get enough. But, they do so at their own peril.”

Equality is the most basic of human rights. We of these United States had it once in our history and we shall, by the hand of Providence, surely have it once again.

However, if we don’t open our eyes to the urgency of the reality staring us in the face, the wrath of the universe may well become the death knell for us all. No matter how much that may be denied by those who cannot divest themselves of all they covet, it is our common lot. Are we going to sit passively on the sidelines and just let it happen because we did not insist on being key players of our own destiny in this ominous scenario?

Do we have any alternative? I think not.

Cowboy Bob
The Sagebrush Philosopher
April 10, 2013