2089 Organize!

2089 Organize!

Another in our series, We Didn’t Get the Way We Are by Being the Way We Are.

America once had a thriving middle class.  Now it’s going… going… not quite gone. 

It all started with forming unions that demanded and got living wages in industries like car making, steel making, mining, medical, transportation, teaching, professing and even retailing.  

A funny thing happened after that.  We kind of forgot how we got the way we got.  We began to think of organizations just kind of swooping down from the heavens and appearing.  And the contrarians among us began to think of those organizations as authorities.  Americans don’t think well of authority.

The “other guys” learned to organize and now America is run by a union of banks, financial manipulators who call themselves anything but.  Private equity funds, hedge funds, etc.  They are the modern iteration of the labor union.

They’re just not as well formed as, say, the Teamsters.  But they’re just as tough and just as smart.  These organizations own congress, the supreme court, most state legislatures, most county governments, most village governments.  They own corporations (with your nominal participation if you own stocks, hold bonds or are into mutual funds. Trust me, you have no real clout if you own less than 25% of anything.)

So they do what labor unions did, believing they had to. The corporate/banking/private equitarians are pushing us around and we’re taking it.

A modest suggestion.  Since modern elections are about as corporate as you can get, with all kinds of funny money contributions and lobbying as the source of strength, beat them at their own game.

How?  Favor politicians who don’t bother with you. The ones who campaign mostly at fund raisers and rallies.  Take donors for all they’re worth.  And they’re worth plenty. Then do what the hedge funders and banks do: Abuse them. Then go out to the boonies and advocate sane stuff.

The current crop of politicos, with some major exceptions, are raising funds in nickels and dimes.  That doesn’t work. Trump didn’t win and Hillary didn’t lose because trump had a spark and Clinton is a dead fish stinking in the moonlight (to paraphrase a famous saying.)

She actually did win the popular vote.  But she failed to follow up. She forgot or never learned to show up in the states housing trump’s deplorables.  Yes… there has to be an on the ground campaign. But if you want to win an election, you have to do more than just lie, cheat, steal and make fake promises. You have to kiss the right asses.

Right now, the Financial Union is scared to death of the people touting small donations.  Get ‘em riled by candidates who are capable of raising big bucks and then ignoring those big bucks donors and doing what you know is right by the rest of us.

I’m Wes Richards. My Opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Comments: send to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2019