As I look back on my sixty plus years as an American citizen it becomes more apparent all the time how much propoganda I, and every other American, has been subjected to.  It seems to me that this propoganda accelerated to almost BRAINWASHING starting in the eighties as the republicans figured out how to gain a “stranglehold” on the White House and the media.  Republican operatives started their “dirty tricks” campaigns during the Nixon years, spawned by people like Donald Segretti and Lee Atwater, which led to the likes of Roger Ailes, and most recently Karl Rove.  The one thing we can be sure of is there are many more “dirty tricksters” who have managed to stay “under the radar” – and, more to come, thanks to “Citizen’s United” and our right wing Supreme Court – assuring us the republican philosophy of “the end justifies the means” will continue to be a part of America’s political process for the foreseeable future.  Corporate interests have managed to “trick” Americans into voting, or camaigning, against their own self interest over and over again during the previous 30+ years as the media has grown in power and been consolidated into a small conservative block of corporatations.     

Here’s an example of what I’m talking about.  Let me preface these next comments by saying that I’m not a fan of the recent “health care reform,”  But that’s a good place to start for me to make my point.  During the debate over the health care legislation I’ve been hearing endless claims about how we have the “greatest health care system in the world” from one republican after another.  Of course, they’ve also been making claims that the bill would “bring the government between you and your doctor,” that there would be “death panels,” that health care reform will “cause an increase in premiums,” and other frivolous and/or ridiculous claims en masse.  All of these claims are easily refuted, but for the sake of brevity let’s concentrate on our own system of health care.  In reality, our system that the republicans are claiming is the “best in the world” ranks around 37th by most non-partisan standards.  In fact, our infant mortality rate ranks 42nd internationally, worse than nations like Slovenia, Cuba, and Hong Kong.  As far as life expectancy, the United States ranks 47th worldwide with a life expectancy of 78.14 years and DECLINING!  We are the only  wealthy, industrialized nation IN THE WORLD that does not have a universal health care system.  One statistic after another defies the claims of the republicans and supports the claims of those who believe our system is essentially broken.  I’m choosing to give the benefit of the doubt to President Obama and the democrats that the “reform” bill recently passed will be a step in the right direction.  However, the truth is that we still have NO UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE SYSTEM – even after the so-called reform.

Another of the GREAT REPUBLICAN LIES is that we have a “free market system.”  I guess, at this point in time, you could say that it’s a free market system because our biggest banks are getting BILLIONS (maybe trillions) of FREE MONEY from the fed.  Corporate heads and their supporters are on a continual campaign for “lower taxes,” as if all the benefits they take for granted are paid for by someone else.  Just this morning I heard a republican congressman inciting a group of what are becoming known as “low information voters” by shouting out at a rally opposing health care reform, “Who’s going to pay for it?”  Well, if you follow the actual actions of republicans when they’re in office, they think nobody should pay for anything – we should just borrow EVERYTHING.  Well, relating to health care, WE’RE (that is, “we the people” – including those in the audience of the congressman doing the inciting mentioned above – I believe it was John Boehner of Ohio) ALREADY PAYING FOR IT – if what he’s referring to is the cost of health care.  This is such a specious argument on the part of the republican party – it’s predicated on the audience being poorly informed – because, people are going to the hospital NOW whether they have health insurance or not.  I’ll give the example of a person I know who had to have gall bladder surgery without health insurance.  The reality is that the 30 plus THOUSAND DOLLAR bill that the hospital graciously credited to “charity” is part of the health insurance bill for those of us who are lucky enough to still be able to pay our premiums.  The reason my acquaintance was without insurance is because the premiums are so expensive he couldn’t afford it on a truck driver’s wages.  The end result was someone going without treatment for a condition which could have been avoided with preventive care before it got “out of hand” and his life was in jeopardy.  So, not only are we already PAYING FOR IT – those of us with insurance that is – but, the bills are much higher than they should be due to ALL the people avoiding doctors due to their lack of ability to pay for the services.

The truth is that everything ultimately gets paid for – one way or the other.  So, in our “free market system” – which, I might add, at present is virtually the result of 30+ years of “trickle down” economic theory “spun” by republicans – we’ve eliminated welfare for the poor (well, most of it) while increasing welfare for the corporations exponentially.  For example, our oil companies in the past few years are making profits that are approaching the 50 – 100 BILLION per year neighborhood, all the while doing this as they receive corporate WELFARE from the federal government also in the BILLIONS.  And, everyone seems to be up in arms about the TRILLIONS promised to the Wall Street banks preventing companies like Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley Chase, Bank of America, etc. from collapsing by the weight of their own reckless “gambling” losses – but, the republicans are seemingly standing arm in arm to prevent the government from passing regulations aimed at preventing a recurrence (and, by the way, these companies are already back to the same GAMBLING that created the collapse in first place).  Our “free market” is set up to allow the large corporations to find cheaper places overseas to produce their products and then give them “free reign” on our markets without tariff one to sell the resultant products – because tariffs wouldn’t be “free market” policy.  The loss of jobs that has resulted from that “free market” thinking seems to be of no concern to the corporations, the republicans, and evidently to a lot of democrats as well.

There’s more.  (a lot more, but I’m limited in space and time :o)  How about the pharmaceutical industry.  The federal government provides grants to “big pharma” which allows for the research and development of what most of us “old” people understand to be much needed drugs.  Here’s the rub.  The government also protects these pharmaceutical behemoths to ensure them a huge profit “at the end of the day.”  While I’m not going to write anything about preventing anyone from making a profit – I’m at least smart enough to know that to stay in business you must make a profit – I don’t call what “big pharma” did when the medicare part “D” plan was negotiated during the now infamous Bush administration – you know, the defenders of the “free market” – “free market!”  The reality of that legislation was that the prescription drugs needed by our senior citizens are sold at prices through the medicare program that allow the recipients of these “benefits” to go into Canada, buy the same drugs on their open market, and return to the United States with, as the old McDonald’s adds used to say, “Change from their dollar.”  Doesn’t that seem ridiculous?  Does anyone besides me think that preventing medicare from NEGOTIATING a bulk price for the needed drugs is NOT “free market?”

Then there was the adventurous duo of George W Bush and Dick Cheney (with a lot of help from Don Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, and others – all supposedly “free market” proponents) getting us MIRED into two foreign occupations which could go on endlessly (or so it seems – Viet Nam, deja vu all over again?)  EVERY PENNY spent on both Afganistan and Iraq have been BORROWED – but that’s not the total RUB for me here.  How about all the NO BID contracts?  Contracts to the very firms that (at least) Cheney and Rumsfeld were the CEO’s of prior to their “service” for our nation – with both “earning” in excess of $100 MILLION dollars in their “estates” which were sequestered in some “innocent” trust account somewhere.  What’s “free market” about no-bid contracts?  Especially to your “own?”  I really don’t understand why no democrats have found this curious enough to investigate.  In fact, during the Iraq fiasco it was reported that $10 BILLION came up missing, and no one seemed too concerned about that.  Maybe that’s what they mean by “free market.”  I’m sure whoever ended up with the $10 BILLION is thinking along those lines.

While there are lots of examples of how the rhetoric doesn’t match the actions – hense, my interpretation that “we the people” are being BRAINWASHED – the final one I’ll bring up is the budget deficit.  This is a republican favorite.  Don’t you just love how they set the democrats up – and keep walking away with all the CASH?  (there’s that republican “free market” at work again)  During my lifetime (I started paying attention to politics in the mid sixties) it has been one republican president after another PILING up huge deficits – and then blaming the democrat who tries to “fix” the problem for the problem itself.  Nixon was the first.  I still remember him saying that it was silly for the government to own so much property and not have a debt.  He likened it to the mortgage that American homeowners have on their houses.  When he left office, as I remember it (well, actually Ford is the one who left office after finishing Nixon’s second term for him) the deficit was something like 75 BILLION per year – and that was SHOCKING to a lot of people like me.  Jimmy Carter came along and halved it – but, in the process turned off the left wing of the democratic party leading to Ronald Reagan.  Reagan, of course, was the president who instigated the “trickle down” theory of “free market” economics (the Milton Friedman diciples).  I can still remember Reagan promising to “cut taxes and balance the budget.”  Well, his eventual running mate George HW Bush gave that approach the appropriate name, “Voodoo Economics.”  However, the public fell for it (I suppose, looking back, it sounded really good) and by the time Reagan was done, and Bush the first who followed, our national debt had gone from something close to 700 BILLION (following Carter) to 5 TRILLION!  For those of you who don’t do math in your head, Reagan and Bush I increased the debt EIGHT times. 

For all that I didn’t like about Bill Clinton, one of the first things he did was attempt to reverse the deficit spending which was out of control when he took office.  The last year deficit of the Bush I was something approaching 400 BILLION DOLLARS.  Everyone knows (well, if you don’t you should) that by the time Clinton left office – despite the Lewinsky affair and other problems, including RELENTLESS attacks from republicans (this vitriol didn’t start with President Obama) – the budget was in surplus by about $250 BILLION with projections that we could wipe out our national debt in 10 years.  Well, the result of Clinton’s fooling around was another Bush (put into office by the Supreme Court) and a dose of “trickle down” economics on steroids.  George W Bush wasn’t satisfied with one huge tax cut to benefit the “upper crust” of our taxpayers, he managed to get TWO TAXCUTS through the republican congress – leading to an immediate reversal of the budget surplus into the greatest era of DEFICIT SPENDING in our nation’s history.  Combining Bush’s taxcuts with his warmongering on credit cards and deregulation of big business and he snuck out of Washington “with his tail between his legs” after virtually undermining the very fabric of our economy.  Bush’s damage was done with nary a whimper from the republican congress which controlled capital hill for most of his two terms in office.  He left our new president, Barack Obama, with a deficit of OVER A TRILLION dollars, a GREAT RECESSION, a Wall Street in turmoil, an auto industry crumbling toward bankruptcy, and the remnants of his republican congress who were blaming it all on Obama before he took the oath of office and pledging to vote NO on any reforms.

Actually, after all the damage the republicans caused under Bush you would have thought there would have been a bit of remorse for all the 401K’s which were decimated and a bit of a sense of obligation to help restore our economy to something that resembled what was once the greatest middle class the world had ever seen.  But NOOOOOOOO, that was not the case.  The propoganda didn’t just continue – it escalated – and is continuing to escalate every step of the way as President Obama attempts to “right the ship.”  In fact, as the health care legislation was in the final stages in the House of Representatives, the republicans showed their TRUE COLORS when they started throwing racial insults at Black members of the democratic party, homophobic insults at Barney Frank – an openly Gay member of the House, even spitting on one Black member of congress as he approached the House to cast his vote for the bill.  These are people who will no doubt benefit from the bill, but who have been BRAINWASHED by the likes of Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly, Sarah Palin and others to believe that anything that comes out of this White House is going to RUIN our country.  It is these talking heads who are at the forefront of the propoganda machine.  I believe this was a political calculation back in the eighties (Rush Limbaugh and others with the so-called “talking points”) which has gotten WAY OUT OF CONTROL.  They have now stirred up a FRINGE element which is getting to the dangerous point.  I believe it’s just a matter of time until something tragic happens – something MAJOR – of course, that’s not to say the killings from the fringe “right” since Obama took office aren’t tragic – it’s just that I believe they are thinking BIGGER than what has happened so far.  These people remind me of the true meaning of the word TERRORIST – and, at some point in time our government is going to have to deal with them HARSHLY.  These republicans have GLEANED trillions from our taxpaying middle class in the past 30+ years, and they have an insatiable appetite for MORE!  Despite the fact our troops are STUCK in Iraq and Afganistan, the real WAR is right here at home – it’s a WAR WITHIN!  That is what John F Kennedy warned us about in the sixties.  If this great nation ever is destroyed, it will come from within.  And, it appears to me that the republican party is trying to destroy America from within.  Those of us who see this happening are depending on the democrats to win this WAR.  The outcome, it appears to me, is still undecided.  The “tea party” people are shouting “We want our country back” while people like me are wanting to shout the same thing.  They can’t handle a person of color in the White House, and people like me can’t handle a timid government that allows it’s leaders to function in a corrupt system that favors the wealthy.  I hope this somehow gets resolved without violence – but, it appears to me that the propogandists on the “right” will stop at nothing in an attempt to undermine Obama and regain their dream of a permanent republican majority!  (for those who think that’s not likely, read the Supreme Court’s “Citizen’s United” decision)

One final afterthought – a depressing one at that (sorry) – If you haven’t heard of Blackwater (now calling themselves Xe services) look them up.  They are FULLY ALIGNED with the right wing fringe which is getting out of control as I’m writing this piece.