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2016 Plays Out The Oldest Political Story
I’ve been in Iceland for the last week, and for some reason it was here among the ice and fire that I came upon this idea.
The 2016 campaign between Clinton and $REPUBLICAN will end up being a rehashing of one of the oldest political narratives in history:
The rich few vs. the poor many.
That’s it. End of story. It’s the French Revolution and a hundred similar situations played on loop with different actors and different clothes.
Let’s step through the political topics that will be discussed:
Wages: Republicans want to lower or remove the minimum wage, which will make already rich businesses even more rich, while even further reducing the amount of time that working parents can spend raising their children. It will also further remove their ability to educate their kids, take vacations, or save for retirement. Liberals are trying to make it so that if you work a 40-hour-work week like a good American, you should make enough money to live on and take care of your family.
Healthcare: Republicans are trying to roll back Obamacare, which has massively reduced the amount of leverage that healthcare companies had over American citizens, has given millions coverage when they didn’t have it before, has covered millions who couldn’t get coverage before due to pre-existing conditions, and looks to be poised to save the United States billions more than was even projected. But it’s making the billionaire insurance companies less money, so the Republicans are against it. Liberals are trying to make it more of what it was supposed to be, which is even more coverage for citizens and even less profit for greedy healthcare companies running up prices.
Net Neutrality: Republicans want to change the internet so that you have to pay the controllers of your connection to go to certain sites, i.e. the sites that are in competition with those they make the most money off of, or in order to get the best service. Liberals are proposing what’s called “net neutrality” to keep the internet the way it was in the past, i.e., so that once you pay for your connection it gets you to any site that you want to without extra transit fees.
Lobbying and Campaign Finance Reform: Republicans love the current system of corporate influence. They’re the ones that made it so that corporations are considered “people” so that you can’t stop them from influencing government on a mass scale. And they want to open the gates there. They want to basically buy politicians so that they can make some phone calls, have some dinners, make some contributions, and get the policies put into place that yield the most profit for their corporations. Liberals are fighting this. Liberals (with the help of a few Republicans to be fair) are trying to eliminate this type of cash and influence flow into government representatives.
Financial Regulations: Republicans continue to fight to prevent and remove financial regulations that would help prevent the crisis that happened in 2008. The super-rich profited massively from that crisis in many ways, and have recovered fully where they did lose money, so they are eager to set up another heist. Liberals know what the super rich did to the general population and are working to prevent it from happening again by putting rules in place.
War: Republicans can’t wait to go to war. If it were up to them we’d probably be fighting Russia, Iran, and North Korea right now, Not to mention Saudia Arabia and everyone else. We have our own problems here in this country, but they can’t wait to overcommit and put our military on the ground all over the world. Why? Because war makes their companies billions of dollars. It’s extremely profitable. It’s big business. Check out Halliburton’s stock price after the Iraq wars, and even today. They’re doing great. Meanwhile, who’s actually going over and fighting? Not the super-rich. They pretend they’re patriotic, but among the rich it’s secretly considered EXTREMELY LOW CLASS to enlist in the military and go to fight in wars. That’s for the help to do. The people who cut your lawn and wash your car. So what’s the liberal policy on this? Stop fighting where we don’t have to. Spend less on defense and more on fixing our education system, our healthcare system, and repairing our infrastructure.
Energy: Republicans want to keep drilling and keep burning our oil. The reason is simple: it’s still making crazy amounts of money, so why stop now? Nevermind that the earth’s ecosystem can only tolerate a certain trickle of carbon emissions at a time. When it happens naturally the earth handles it perfectly, but oil is basically the sun’s energy stored in dinosaur bones. It’s millions of years of the sun’s energy, stored in an inert state where it can do no harm. And what we’re doing is taking all that stored energy. All that stored carbon. All that stored heat. And burning it right into our atmosphere basically in an instant (in geological terms). As a result, the glaciers in Iceland for example, are disappearing at 20 times the speed they normally would. Twenty times as fast. And it’s about to be a problem. Liberals know this is a problem and are trying to stop our reliance on oil, stop the use of fracking which is causing all sorts of trouble, and move us to more sustainable systems like solar and wind.
Analysis
As I talked about in a previous post, there are a few issues I don’t agree with liberals on, with immigration, the handling of Islamic extremism, and guns being the main ones for the 2016 context. But pretty much every other issue is crystal clear:
Republicans are doing everything they can to consolidate power into the hands of an extremely wealthy few, at the expense of 80-90% of the American population.
As Republicans become more powerful, the corporations and the super rich will become the controllers of our government. They’ll drive wages down, make education more expensive and more exclusive, make it more expensive to get healthcare, etc.
The key point here is that it won’t matter to them because they’re already rich. They’re already going to the best schools (in neighborhoods or private schools you can’t afford), and they’ve already picked their super expensive college they’re basically guaranteed entry into before they’re in junior high.
It’s basically a two-world system. Those who have everything, and whose kids have everything, and those who struggle day to day to get by. And Republicans are implementing, with just about every single policy, the way to make it increasingly easy, increasingly profitable for the super rich, and worse and worse for everyone else.
What’s fascinating is that Republicans tend to cherish the idea of the 1950’s, with the one parent working, one parent at home. They afford a nice house on one salary. They have a nice car, they go on picnics, and they have retirement.
Well, which party destroyed that for the regular people like the Cleavers? Looking at the list of issues above, which party is gutting America’s ability to have that lifestyle for its people?
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Think about it. That’s what this election is about.
But here’s the thing. I’m some California (mostly) liberal guy. Why the hell would you trust me to tell you want the Republicans are or aren’t doing? That’s all poisoned information.
Here’s what I propose. Remember what I said, but basically discard it. Throw it out. Probably liberal garbage anyway. Don’t listen. Pretend you didn’t hear it. No problem.
But as you read the news, as you hear the stories of legislation coming out on wages, and healthcare, and campaign finance reform, and the cost of education, and financial crisis regulation, and ESPECIALLY the influence of corporate money on politicians, watch who is voting on each side.
That’s all I ask.
Watch who is voting for these policies and who is voting against. You don’t have to believe me to see what is happening. You only have to pay attention.
Summing up
So that’s the story. The rich are using the Republican party to get their way, at the expense of the poor and previously-known-as-middle-class. It’s not a conspiracy theory, it’s just an overtly obvious fact the moment you watch the actual voting records.
2016 isn’t about Hilary (who I don’t actually like because she seems slimy), or $REPUBLICAN (who I probably won’t like because he supports the bad policies above). It’s not about that.
What it’s about is how the candidates’ respective platforms will help bring about a healthy American population, which I define here. Anything else should be discarded as noise.
Watch the votes. Those tell you more than silly liberal blog posts.