Bill Moyers: “Howard Zinn Taught Us That It's Okay If We Face Mission Impossible.”. Natan Sharansky Said, "You Need Courage To See Evil.". Our Mission Impossible Is To See Evil. To See The Contract Has Been Broken. To Overcome The Corruption Of The Rule Of Law And Restore Moral Clarity And Democracy To Our Government And Our Society.
I have great admiration and respect for these three men. They are compassionate lions of truth. They are leaders in a leaderless society. And most of all, they are great people. They walk the talk.
Howard Zinn understood something that many take for granted today. That is, until people actually have to live through that ‘something’ themselves - the world is an endless fight of good versus evil. Of most people having a life of dignity and self-determination versus tyranny and control. Of endless class warfare waged by history’s elites and waged again today in America. And that the only way the common person ever got that dignity and self-determination was to take it from evil. And I do mean evil.
The United States was made the wealthiest nation on earth with the largest middle class the world had ever seen because people rose up and took what was rightfully theirs from the corrupt power elite who cared little if people had a safe work environment, a living wage, affordable health insurance, a reasonable work week, child labor laws, environmental safety laws, the right to vote, the right to bargain employment conditions with hegemonic monopoly robber barons and on and on and on. To have a life of dignity in return for his or her efforts. Today, that dignity is being stolen at a record rate from the American people. We are living through the greatest theft in the history of this country.
A few excerpts from Bill:
For Howard, democracy was one big public fight and everyone should plunge into it. That's the only way, he said, for everyday folks to get justice - by fighting for it.
Between 2001 and 2008, about 40,000 US manufacturing plants closed. Six million factory jobs have disappeared over the past dozen years, representing one in three manufacturing jobs.
In polite circles, among our political and financial classes, this is known as "the free market at work." No, it's "wage repression," and it's been happening in our country since around 1980. I must invoke some statistics here, knowing that statistics can glaze the eyes; but if indeed it's the mark of a truly educated person to be deeply moved by statistics, as I once read, surely this truly educated audience will be moved by the recent analysis of tax data by the economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez. They found that from 1950 through 1980, the share of all income in America going to everyone but the rich increased from 64 percent to 65 percent. Because the nation's economy was growing handsomely, the average income for 9 out of 10 Americans was growing, too - from $17,719 to $30,941. That's a 75 percent increase in income in constant 2008 dollars.
But then it stopped. Since 1980 the economy has also continued to grow handsomely, but only a fraction at the top have benefited. The line flattens for the bottom 90% of Americans. Average income went from that $30,941 in 1980 to $31,244 in 2008. Think about that: the average income of Americans increased just $303 dollars in 28 years.
Let’s close on this with something you won’t read anywhere else. You won’t read it anywhere else, because most economists and financial minions serve a system without thought. They are so focused on their knobs and dials that they have lost their souls. They don’t understand what it is they are actually doing. That is because most men are likely to serve the devil, without intending it, as God.
Ages ago as an agrarian and trade-based economy, a substantial number of Americans were mildly to almost completely economically-independent or entrepreneurs. They were almost completely reliant on their own abilities, skills and industriousness. But then came the mechanization and the eventual electrification of society. This dynamic led to incredible invention from entrepreneurs. From the brilliant minds of men and women of all colors and all levels of formal education including those who had none. With this invention arose the capitalist class or the owners of production. In order for the capitalist class to be successful, they needed the mass of people to forgo their economic independence. They needed self-sufficiency to be replaced by reliance on the corporation. They needed the factories and offices filled to create the wealth of the capitalist. Capitalists needed people to submit to the will of another individual. Something that is counterintuitive to liberty, to free markets and to democracy.
In return for giving up their liberties and economic freedoms, there was a social contract which was implied under the rule of law of constitutional liberty. It is a social contract that has been broken over and over and over by an often corrupt capitalist class until the people have taken back their end of the contract. Often with their lives. (Robber barons, child labor abuses, unsafe work environments, lies about product safety, mass firings, outsourcing jobs, extorting government bailouts for corruption, poisoning our environment, bribing our government to dismantle that contract, preying on homeowners with the real estate fiasco, terrorist threats to receive taxpayer bailouts, etc. the list is endless.)
That social contract is that we will share the destiny of our sovereignty, liberties and our economic freedom to work for you, but in return, you have a binding obligation to our economic and democratic welfare and to our shared success. Just as our government has in their social contact with society. In fact, it’s the same social contact that is the basis for our democracy. A social contract that elites, both in industry and in government, have decimated for their own evil self-interest. And they called it free markets. These crooks therefore have no legitimacy to lead our great nation either in business or in government. The social contract is broken and with it they decimated the rule of law. This was clearly predictable because it has happened too many times to count throughout history, both in this country and elsewhere. It is the timeless evil of those seeking power and dominion over their fellow man.
Anyone who labels this environment as a recession is a criminal or an idiot. We are simply repeating history on some level, something Howard Zinn, a master historian, understood all too well.
The elites have robbed our country blind in too many ways to count in the greatest acts of treason this country has ever seen. And they called it free markets. Adolph Hitler would be proud.
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