Thursday, August 13, 2020

Kurt Anderson: “Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America" | PBS

Kurt Anderson cites the 1971 Powell memo as the beginning of the takeover of American government by corporate business interests. I usually start with Reagan's election in 1980 which came shortly after his neoliberal counterpart Margaret Thatcher was elected prime minister of the U.K.

The Republican president Richard Nixon created the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970. This exacerbated big business's concern that they had ceded too much power to the people (the government). Justice Powell wrote his memo in 1971 as a call to arms for corporate interests to assert their power to capture the government. Almost 50 years later we see just how successful they were in removing power from the people and placing it in the hands of special interests.

The fact that the Republican president Richard Nixon created the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970 - then Reagan and Neil Gorsuch's mom, along with every other Republican administration afterward, worked so hard to dismantle it, should in itself tell you how far from the center the Republican party has slid. Going from protecting the environment to an active campaign to discredit science to deny human caused climate change...is quite a leap.

The Republican party of today cannot be trusted with power. 

The Republican party no longer believes in majority rule and has shown time and time again that they will undermine our representative democracy in order to retain power. 

The Republican party's denial of science makes that party a danger to our country's health as the current pandemic makes clear. 

The Republican party is willing to betray our country by accepting election assistance from Putin's Russian. 

The Republican party has participated in the destabilization of the Western alliance formed post WWII by encouraging right-wing ultra-nationalist illiberal movements and leaders. 

The Republican party is willing to allow the Federal Reserve to print money to prop up the financial industry - as a result we see soaring stock markets juxtaposed with a country filled with suffering people and failing small businesses. A country filled with jobless, homeless, sick and dying people takes little comfort in rising Dow Jones. S&P or NASDAQ averages. The financialization of American business has made the productive economy of small business separate from, and subservient to, the unproductive financialized economy of mergers, takeovers, buyouts and other financial paper magic. CEO's, hedge fund managers and leveraged buyout experts roll in the dough while citizens sleep in the streets. 

and if all that wasn't enough...

The Republican party threatens the continued survival of our country and the world by denying climate science.

If that isn't sufficient to make the current Republican party a party of the past in November then we will have the government we deserve - which seems just.

It seems unjust that future generations will inherit a dying burning planet...because we were too selfish and ignorant to get our act together.

Vote em out...march em out. Do it for your kids, their kids and for every succeeding generation.