Ending The Reign Of Greed And Fear

Listening carefully to the President’s State Of The Union Address, I was surprised he omitted the most significant accomplishment of his administration. His leadership of arrogance, ignorance, and incompetence has succeeded in revealing to the world what Liberals have always known; Conservatives are driven by greed and fear. Further, it was only a matter of time before these emotions would destroy the Republican Party, like a flesh eating virus.

It didn’t happen over night, pandemics never do. Originally the Republican policy of greed and fear made sense. Conservative dominance began in 1980 when Ronald Reagan asserted all Americans “pre-rich”, and policies favoring the wealthy to be in everyone’s best interest.

The facts show that economic well-being has much more to do with your father than it does with your president, 90% of Americans are in the same financial class as their parents. Neo-cons promised obtainable wealth by reducing government intervention and letting the markets self regulate. Of course the wealthy would reap the most benefit, but financial success would surely trickle down to the middle and lower class.

For a while it seemed to work. Interest rates came down, profits rose, the stock market soared, and everyone was happy. Well almost everyone, excessive corporate profits were due to lay-offs, reduction of employee benefits, and illegal accounting practices, but that didn’t matter as long as we all rode the wave on Wall Street.

Funny thing though, as much as everyone claimed to be in the stock market the actual number of successful investors was quite limited. Recent studies have shown that in the go-go market of the 90’s, less than 1% of investors received 40% of the profits. The top 10% of investors, the wealthiest individuals, corporations, and trusts, collected 85% of all realized gains.

By decade’s end it was obvious that greed may have been good, but only for those previously entitled. To keep the masses in line Republicans would need to utilize a more primal emotion…fear. While floundering for a cause celeb, such as illegal drugs, taxes, urban crime, immigrants, 9/11 provided Conservatives with an exploitable evil, and they took full advantage.

Aware al Qaeda, a relatively small band of terrorists, was solely responsible for destroying the World Trade Center; the neo-cons chose to broaden the enemy, and its objectives. Knowing Osama Bin Laden was a clerical fanatic who could be quickly contained, eventually caught, and permanently stopped; Conservatives needed a bigger threat, so they declared war on Saddam Hussein and all terrorists. This not only gave them a face for evil, it gave them a perpetual enemy.

The fear mongering was horrific, Dick Cheney all but declared a vote for John Kerry would result in Armageddon when he said, “It’s absolutely essential that eight weeks from today, on November 2, we make the right choice, because if we make the wrong choice then the danger is that we’ll get hit again, that we’ll be hit in a way that will be devastating.”

In fact the administration’s fear of terrorism was at peak during Bush’s reelection campaign. Leading up to Nov 2nd, we had constant terrorist alert upgrades. The colors changed daily, yellow, red, orange, it meant nothing to anyone but it kept fear in the public’s consciousness. Post reelection, domestic terrorist alerts abated, having served their purpose they soon disappeared.

Then there was “dancing with wolves”, GOP propaganda showing blood thirsty packs roaming the woods, looking for the weak and careless. The most insidious campaign since Willie Horton, it succeeded in making voters forget that one presidential candidate was a decorated war hero; the other AWOL from National Guard duty.

Greed and fear, it brought the Republican Party to prominence and got them reelected. Ironically, under this administration, the same two emotions will lead to its demise.

Greed, (and arrogance), has fueled the Republican Party’s creation of a “pay to play” government more beholding to K Street than Main Street. The resulting scandal over no-bid contracts, lobbyists’ bribes, and felonious mismanagement of funds will far exceed Teapot Dome.

Fear, (and paranoia), has caused Republicans to trash the Constitution and ignore the Bill of Rights. Illegal wiretaps, clandestine torturing, and media cover-ups define this Presidency as the most corrupt since Richard Nixon. Hopefully it suffers the same fate.

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