(RI — 12/10/2017) -- Contrary to GOP belief, the word "reform" does not mean to "destroy, undermine, or diminish". It means to IMPROVE!
One does not "reform" government by undermining its ability to serve the very people that created and paid for that government to serve them. The overall good and advancement of the nation is not served by abandoning them. Nor does “reform” mean denying promised, earned, and (often already paid for) Social Security benefits or Medicare services to the elderly and disabled. Neither is it “reform” to deny Medicaid benefits to the nation's poorest children, or to destitute, battered, or under paid mothers, or refusing to care for the mentally ill or physically handicapped. What the GOP proposes is not reform: It is naked greed, needless cruelty, betrayal of the public trust, and outright thievery. Nothing less.
Religion, Patriotism, and Debunked Economic Theories
Slyly slashing social service and other programs that GOP donors dislike under the guise of it being “reform” while, in fact, it is to finance a trillion-plus dollars in tax benefits to the well connected and rich borders on criminal theft of public funds: It is thievery of the worst and lowest kind. It is the community-wrecking, nation-undermining action of “leaders” driven not by a commitment to improving the nation, but a singular focus on self-service, one propelled by thinly disguised blind greed on one hand and an obscene lust for holding onto or gaining ever-more power on the other.
By hiding behind the cloaks of religion, patriotism, or debunked economic theories; these “leaders” are engaged in a ploy to erode the very foundations of democracy, decency, common sense, and fiscal responsibility.
Why
The USA today is suffering the chaos that inevitably results when a propagandized public (one for which Goebels would be pleased to take credit) loses its grip on facts and reality and, instead, falls into the steely grip of purposefully inflamed emotions. A third or more of U.S. citizens now fall into a group that is either uninformed through its own apathy, under informed via its tunnel vision on narrow or single perspective sources of news/facts, or drastically misinformed via a purposefully structured assault on truth and logic as well as upon science, history, law, government institutions, and basic economic principles...not to mention an assault on common decency.
Democracy can not long stand on the shoulders of an ignorant or misled populace, and there are powerful social, economic and dictatorially-oriented powers that prefer democracy not stand, for it impedes their interests. Their law and justice and raison d’être is “money rules”. Nothing less, nothing more.
Now, more than ever before in our history as a free and democratic republic, too many Americans are either apathetic or willfully ignorant, which makes them easy prey for becoming emotionally driven puppets of propagandists both here and abroad. We remain apathetic or willfully ignorant at extreme peril, not only to ourselves, but also to our country and the world it so often sought to positively influence. We appear to be on the cusp of trading our ideals (while acknowledging our failures) for something crass and shady at best and downright evil, if there is such a thing, at worst.
The Terrible Strength and a Nation in Peril
Propaganda, disinformation, obfuscation, deception and consistent lying have a terrible strength: Together they constitute the tools of orchestrating a society’s insidious self-destruction, one that rots and ravages a democracy, for instance, from the inside out.
The peril they present in today’s America looms ever larger over the political landscape. Each passing day brings another ruse, another step deeper into darkness. Common sense is imperiled as many now accept a sexual predator and inveterate liar as our leader, role model, and President; a gun waving, cowboy-hatted, twice unseated judge who is a sexual predator and accused pedophile as a presidentially-endorsed candidate for the U.S. Senate; and a House Speaker who is, in his own words, ready, willing, and eager to cut the legs out from underneath Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Education, and and various scientific and medical research endeavors. The immediate victims of his plan if implemented: the nation’s elderly, its children, the disabled.
He proposes to give millionaires and billionaires a trillion dollars in tax reductions that he says can be paid for only by betraying the very people he is supposed to be serving and protecting. Remarkably, this “plan” is supported by a third of the population, a large portion of which will be severely and permanently impacted by it!
Lost in the Foggy Mists of Propaganda
Only in an uninformed and seriously propagandized populace would a third of its people support a plan that would so negatively impact so many of them, their families, and their friends in so many ways for so many years as the GOP plan would. The aberrant support of such a destructive plan by the very people it would most hurt can only be explained by their minds having been deviously “seeded” with illogical, untrue, and carefully crafted statements containing so-called “alternate facts”, facts designed to play on their strongest emotions: namely fear and greed. These are the same emotions that drive much of small time stock investors’ buy/sell decisions.
The foundations of such counterintuitive plans as the GOP’s are invariably constructed of the same building blocks. Mr. Goebels deployed them with such terrifying expertise that he helped set the entire world ablaze in warfare. These tools include obfuscation, lies, deceptions, diversions, and condemnations (no matter how factually invalid) coupled with a relentless barrage of convoluted implications that law enforcement, judicial processes, investigatory agencies, and any factual analysis that exposes the folly or true intent of those in power for what it is. Invariably it is about themselves and their own narrow self interests. It is about Their Money. Their Power. Their Greed. Their Self Aggrandizement. Their Ego. Their Control of all people and all things.
Sadly, without exception, they are destroyers, not builders. In the end, they represent only their own best interests, and these come at the disproportionate cost of everyone else’s needs, earned benefits, just rewards and best interests — and at the cost of the nation’s best interests. And, in this particular case, the world’s.
And thus was it ever so...
