Bush: Ruining the American Dream

Stephen Crockett: 'Bush: Ruining the American Dream'
Posted on Thursday, July 21 @ 10:10:52 EDT
Smirking Chimp
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By Stephen Crockett
I believe Americans will look back later this century to the rise of Bush Republicanism to explain why the American Dream became the American Nightmare and why the great American Democratic Experiment started by the Founding Fathers failed. The names of Bush, Cheney, Delay, Frist, Rove, Rice, Harris, Scalia, Thomas and Blackwell will be linked forever with the decline of United States. Corporate America will be the institutional power blamed for the political rise of Bush Republicanism and the resulting destruction of America’s greatness!
America was a great nation long before it was a world-class military or economic power. America was great based on the ideas advanced by our Founding Fathers. We were to have a government of and by the people. We were to be a nation of laws. Wealth and power were to play a role in government but not be the government. The power of the elite was to be curbed by principles.
The set of principles advanced by our Founding Fathers defined America. They were the American Dream. They began the great American Democratic Experiment! For the next two hundred years, American history was the story of making the American Dream a reality and the great American Democratic Experiment a success.
These struggles were not easy. Elite elements constantly struggled against both the American Dream and our expanding Democracy. We had to overcome slavery, expand voting rights to include the poor and women, struggle to devise an economic system that would permit the American middle class to grow and prosper and fight to curb tendencies toward racism and religious intolerance. Excessive concentrations of wealth were always threatening to undo the good work of millions of Americans accumulated over generations.
Only in the last few decades of the 20th Century did America start to suffer the excesses of success. The working classes and middle classes made America great in economic and military terms by strictly supporting the great American Democratic Experiment. The American Dream had for most Americans become a reality. Most Americans took this situation for granted and did not see that threats to it were always going to exist.
The seeds of disaster were being nurtured by the increasingly bitter, resentful economic elite. The idea had grown among these elements that their wealth should give them the right to rule over the American nation. They systematically gathered their forces and set out to undermine our system of government and politics.
Billions of dollars were eventually expended to distort the political processes and corrupt both political discussion and government. Rules concerning both elections and economic monopoly power slowly were assaulted until they were no longer obstacles blocking the elite from ruling the nation basically unchecked.
Politics became nasty to discourage the average citizen from getting involved. Media fell almost exclusively under Corporate control to keep citizens in ignorance of their declining political and economic role in America’s future. The economy was opened to foreign wealthy elements to increase the collective power of the elite and put pressure on America’s working classes and middle classes. The poor and minorities became the popular scapegoats because the wealthy financed these efforts to shift the blame from themselves for their policies. Tax burdens fell for the wealthiest and Corporations while rising for others. The wealthiest and Corporations created a national debt and profited by financing that debt collecting interest. The standard of living of the average Americans began to decline. They started wars to make themselves profits.
Other nations created very successful systems of national healthcare for all citizens. In America, wealthy political figures like Bill Frist, Tom Delay and George Bush stopped this from happening. Millions of Americans suffered ill health and premature deaths because of their actions. The Corporate Media abetted this horrible political policy crime against the American Dream.
Our system of free elections fell under the control of private, Republican connected corporations. The voting counting systems became both private and secret. They could no longer be trusted. Government actors like Ken Blackwell and Katherine Harris seemed to act to promote Republican victory instead of honest counting. Supreme Court Justices like Scalia and Thomas ignored long-standing judicial precedents and conflict of interest standards for federal judges to secure election victories for Bush Republicans. Americans lost faith in our election processes. Corporate elites rejoiced.
Dick Cheney held private meetings with oil industry executives to set government policy in government offices with government staff. Many believe that these meeting included detailed plans where American oil companies were dividing up Iraq’s oil fields in a post invasion plan long before the 9-11 terrorist attacks. Many believe that the current high oil prices were planned at these same meetings. Cheney refuses to release the details to the American taxpayer. Scalia and Thomas expanded executive privilege power to protect Cheney and deny American knowledge about their government’s actions.
George Bush started appointing federal judges holding radically elitist, anti-democratic views and pro-Corporate political philosophies at every opportunity. Judges were appointed who held views like “Social Security is a communist idea” and “government has not power to regulate pollution” and “money is free speech” to life-long positions of power in the federal courts. Bill Frist threatened to change the rules of the US Senate and thwart the intentions of our Founding Fathers just to get these radical judges into positions of power.
Failing a serious political revolt and a shake-up in our current political system, I fear the future for the American nation and the American Dream is extremely bleak. I think Bush Republicanism may finally have killed the great American Democratic Experiment. I will spend the rest of my life fighting to rekindle the flames of both the American Dream and American Democracy but I am unsure of victory. I am just one little guy and relatively unimportant. To my fellow citizens, I ask one question “Are you with me?”
Stephen Crockett is the co-host of Democratic Talk Radio. Email: midsouthcm@aol.com.