The Republican Party: Draping Unfettered Greed in American Flags

In response to a question about income inequality, Sen. Rand Paul said this:

"I think it's both government policy and some of the way that economic fruits are distributed. And I think it would be foolish for anyone to argue that it doesn't have something to do with work and effort, and also doesn't have something to do with the way the public approves of the way you're doing, whether the public approves of something you're selling."

"Wal-Mart is phenomenally successful cause everyone votes every day that they like their products and their prices," he added. "And that's the way the market economy works."

Donald Trump and the Koch brothers are where they are because they work harder than I do? Wal Mart is your shining example of capitalism at its finest?

The Republican Party is no longer a political party, but a political action committee for this country’s one percent, a propaganda machine for the elite tasked with dressing up unfettered greed in American flags and white cowboy hats.  The greatest con job ever perpetuated in American political history is the Republican Party’s ability to convince average Americans that the GOP cares about their interests.

Peppering every speech and interview with time-tested buzzwords — tax and spend Democrats, the makers and the takers, political correctness, culture of dependency, stifling rules and regulations, the list goes on — Republican candidates mesmerize the faithful while at the same time working behind the curtain to beat down, divide and subjugate middle and lower class Americans.

Yes, Democrats have their issues as well and play the same money games as Republicans do to get in and stay in office, but I don’t believe many of them actually want to destroy the America of our founders and replace it with a corporate funded theocracy.

President [add Republican name]? Welcome to America’s nightmare.

Welcome to the plutocracy formally known as the United States

The insidious tentacles of the corporate state are tightening their grip around our hearts and minds as they reach into every facet of our daily lives. From naming sports arenas to product placement in every form of entertainment we view (read the Salon article about the music industry selling out) to the government using the NSA and CIA for corporate spying, our business overlords pretty much own us and are shaping our sense of reality.

Even US foreign policy is controlled by the .01 percent. Noam Chomsky said of the controversial TPP agreement, it is “designed to carry forward the neoliberal project to maximize profit and domination, and to set the working people in the world in competition with one another so as to lower wages to increase insecurity.” Despite Obama’s spin, the TPP will benefit the wealthy at the expense of working Americans.

We live in a plutocracy now, were the wealthiest Americans and largest corporations call the shots. Politicians in Washington, D.C., including the President, are bought and paid for and have been reduced to merely carrying water for the true powers working behind the curtain. Need an example? We are living in the midst of catastrophic man-made climate change, yet the greedy, short-sighted titans of industry like the Kochs and their minions in Congress have successfully confused the public and prevented any meaningful action to address this important issue.

To the corporate state, our only reason for being is to purchase products and our senses are under continual assault from marketers 24/7 to buy, buy, buy. Our worth as human beings is based on what we wear, drive and eat, not on who we are. Creativity is only tolerated if it can be packaged and sold, and even religion, primarily fundamentalist Christianity, has morphed into a selective rationale for why greed is good.

Like the Germans of the 1930s, I fear the American people will realize what’s going too late to make a difference. Distracted by shiny objects and deluded into believing myths about American Exceptionalism, my fellow citizens continue to live under the illusion that this is still a democracy where their voice counts. I also fear that it will take a catastrophic event to shake them from their slumbers, and that event is coming sooner or later.