HARDLY A POLITICAL PARTY
SOULESS REPUBLICANS A FRONT GROUP FOR TOTALITARIAN RICH
HATERS OF AMERICAN FREEDOM
By Gordon Duff STAFF WRITER
If you find this statement extreme, you grew up in America totally blind. Since Nixon’s class warfare, millions of Americans have become an embarassment to our country thru their willingness to elect officials who talk freedom but work to steal our rights, weaken our country and serve money alone, an international master with no religion, no morality and no soul.
This is the basis of the real Republican Party.
I grew up in Detroit, born in the late 40s. My father was an auto worker. The parties, Democrat and Republican were, as now, clearly defined to America’s industrial workers, many of whom were well organized, highly skilled and politically aware. They remembered Republican governments sending National Guard, special police squads and paid criminal gangs like Ford’s "Service Department" to have workers beaten or killed for organizing for a decent wage and safe working conditions.
Supervisors in plants moved in gangs with billy clubs. Plant floors were covered with oil, the air filled with smoke. It snowed brown in Detroit and worrying about cigarette smoke was a joke there. Temperatures in auto plants stayed around 130 most of the year and workers seldom lived to retirement with most dying in their 50s. One plant in Detroit, the "Rouge" employed 100,000 workers.
A "Republican World" was one of slave labor with children in factories, unsafe machines tearing people apart, poor public schools with unqualified teachers, no health insurance, no public hospitals, few paved roads, high untility bills, stores with fixed prices and no competition, unsafe food and water (chalk in milk was common) and police free to enter any home, day or night, pull anyone from a car, arrest, imprison, trials with no lawyers and judges working for the plant owners. This was the real "Republican World" which real Americans changed. It is now changing back.
Republicans ran a "cowboy world" where factory owners were gods. Workers were brought in from Hungary and worked to death. Decades before it had been Ireland and in the South, of course, it was black slaves from Africa. A factory was like a prison camp. Workers came in at dark and left at dark. In between they stood in one place doing the same thing over and over, having to raise their hands for a "bathroom break" and risking a beating if they were gone long enough to smoke a cigarette.
Chimneys belched yellow and brown smoke into the air covering everything while foul ooze was dumped onto the ground, poisons of every kind into fields and rivers. It was not uncommon for the Rouge River in Detroit or the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland to catch fire. Social Security was a few dollars a month with constant attempts in Congress by Republicans to close it down. The idea that employers contribute was called Communist. The idea that workers pension plans be held safe for them was called Communist. The idea that toxins not be dumped into the air and water was considered Communist. The 8 hour day was considered Communist. Ending child labor was considered Communist. Forcing food companies to stop using axle grease as shortening was considered Communist (Nabisco).
Making government have open meetings was considered Communist. Ending the practice of assigning congressmen from districts with almost no population was considered Communist ("one man/one vote"). Supervising workplace safety was considered Communist. The minimum wage was considered Communist. Workers owning their own homes was considered Communist. Educating workers children was considered Communist. College for veterans was considered Communist.
Mandating car emissions was considered Communist. Removing lead from gasoline and paint was considered Communist. Federal aid to education and student loans was considered Communist. Farm price subsidies were considered Communist. Rural electrification was considered Communist. Spending money on levys and flood control was considered Communist. Mandating mine safety was considered Communist. Ending mine worker slavery and the "company store" was considered Communist. (My grandfather was a coal miner in Kentucky.)
The most vicious Communist of all was anyone who said cigarettes cause cancer. Tobacco money owned politics in America like drug and insurance companies do now.
Giving Negros the vote was communist. Building schools for Negros was Communist. In much of America, the idea of a black or brown person being seen in your neighborhood, even a disabled veteran in a wheel chair or that arch-betrayer Colin Powell is still Communism. Ideas of human equality and human rights are certainly now as they have always been, Communist.
Keeping American jobs in America was and is Communist. Restricting foreign slave labor imports restricts "free trade" and is Communist. Having rich people actually "pay" taxes at all, any amount, is Communist. Forcing banks to follow rules, protect deposits, keep books, is Communist. Forcing companies to report earnings and losses and pay dividends on investments is Communist. Restricting brokers from insider trading is Communist. Ending the sale of worthless fraudulent stocks and bonds is Communist.
Building Veterans Hospitals was Communist. Compensating veterans for disability was Communist (still is). VA loans are Communist. The Soldiers and Sailors relief act is Communist. Protecting the jobs of men in combat is Communist (and no longer done under Bush). Habeas Corpus is Communist (and has been since 1215, 600 years before Karl Marx was born). Legal appeals are Communist. Civilian authority over police is Communist. Posse Comitatus is Communist (restricting the use of the Army against our own people ) In fact, most of the Constitution is Communist.
Restricting illegal immigration is Communist (done for years to break labor unions and keep down wages). Child safety legislation for clothing and toys is Communist. FDA restrictions on unsafe and ineffective drugs are Communist. Allowing medical malpractice lawsuits is Communist. Making manufacturers liable for unsafe products is Communist.
Restricting government seizure of private property for business use is Communist. Medicare is Communist. Social Security, of course, has always been Communist.
In fact, Republicans have called every law that keeps your air and water clean, your food and medicines safe, your children in proper schools, your investments and pensions guaranteed or police from kicking down your door at a whim "Communist."
Of our 10.2 Trillion Dollar debt, soon to be 12.2 Trillion Dollars, 85% was borrowed by Republicans and represents money that will have to be paid for by the middle class, the real middle class, people making less than 85,000 a year. The 12.2 Trillion dollars is money spent by the rich, borrowed from the poor, that will tax us until America is little more than a memory like the Soviet Union or the Ottoman Empire.
Consider getting a mortgage, not for 20 years or 30 years but for a hundred years but someone else gets to live in the house. Republicans did this for you while telling idiots they were protected from "Communist liberals" and "taxes." Wake up, half your income pays taxes. Fixed pricing, corruption, war, all of it is a form of taxation without representation.
Nobody is perfect. But one thing is clear to anyone who lived in America and didn’t read about it in a brochure or hear about it on talk radio, the Republican party, by nature, is internationalist, in league with anti-American forces in defense, oil and banking and in no way answerable to the needs and welfare of the American people or the safety of the American nation. They have proven themselves to be a danger to democracy without question.
War after war we find our Republican friends were supplying the enemy, be it Standard Oil selling to Japan during World War 2 or Ford building Hitlers trucks or Dick Cheney’s Haliburton Corporation helping Iran finance their nuclear weapons program with oil money.
We have so many people turned against each other thru the endless lies and fear mongering that little is left of America. We are a joke. How can we call this a country when even honorable men like John McCain, and he is that, have to take money from those he spent his life hating, now forced into telling lies to win (or fail miserably) and losing his honor in the process. It is humiliating to watch.
It isn’t just John McCain. People have forgotten the simple decency of the real small towns, not the McPalin "lynch mobs" and screaming meth addict dirt bags or frightened trailer park "middle class." Being Republican is an expression of being naive, being easily duped and being willing to lie, cheat and steal at the cost of, not only your neighbors, but your own family.
Millions sink into that abyss. Fear, confusion, greed, envy, it all builds a new man, one willing to "get er’ done" even if that means destroying the ideas that are so much more a part of America than the strip malls and Starbucks.
For 8 years, America sacrificed its decency, turning to government instead of its own people. As we sit, we are undeserving of the name America. Flying a flag upside down or changing our countries name could only be a sign of respect for those who remember why this country is here.
Look around you. Find a decent, kind and sensible person. How do you do that when everyone is afraid and angry? How do you know what decent is when so much of what so many believe is stupid lies? How do you know what kind and decent is when fear and hate are now taught as Christianity and class warfare and racism are seen as patriotic virtures by entire regions of the country.
Is this still a country when some areas are utterly divorced from reality? It is easy to be an American when you live in safety and comfort, safe in your job and safe in your neighborhood. Many Americans don’t live in safety. With joblessness, cities are becoming dangerous. I am watching Detroit fall apart. Maybe I could blame "evil black people" but so many of them are my friends. Perhaps that might be wrong, even racist. Blaming people of color for every ill is part of the "class warfare" game meant to divide and rule.
We give so much lip service to our troops and veterans but when they come home, their jobs disappear or are given away, the VA shuffles them out the door, suicidal, sick and hopeless. Soldiers and veterans are easy to abuse. They are taught to obey, to trust, to believe. They are also taught to sacrifice. They are easily led and anyone that will follow will find a leader. We have them everywhere. They literally come out from under rocks.
Those of us with mobility, with foreign business partners and friends who can live in Panama, Switzerland, Costa Rica, France or Dubai, are always willing to "run away" when things in America go bad. It was done in the 20s when Americans rushed to Paris and Madrid. It is going on today in alarming numbers.
The "rich and shameless" have gentrified Montana, Colorado, New Mexico, even parts of Michigan if you can believe it, making private fiefdoms of gated communities, private police and little countries built of economic exclusionism.
Even the suburbs are given up to the poor now. Some of our cities are so empty you could start farming in them again, if the ground wasn’t filled with poison. Land is so cheap in Detroit you can’t give it away, literally.
Sarah Palin thinks, if you want to call it that, of small towns we dream of but seldom find anymore. I have good friends in Germany. I have two small towns I could call home, Bernkastel and Grainau. Germans are proud of their towns, how spotlessly clean they are or how everyone knows everyone else. They may know them but many don’t like each other. Germany is not magic.
Germany, France and Italy, other countries too, are behind the U.S. They live in that time Sarah Palin likes to remind Americans about that is gone. We long for a simpler time when we have neighbors we can depend on, when people turn to each other in good times and bad. We forget that for most of America, those times never were.
For every picturesque New England town or Ohio farming community, we had a "hooverville" of shanties, a coal mining camp or factory town of stench and 16 hour work days. Talking about America won’t build what never existed or restore what has mostly been lost.
Rural America now means joblessness, third rate schools for children and living in the remains of a world where kids can go into the military, the only option left, one created by a failed foreign policy, economic collapse and a world that increasingly hates our guts.
In an America where little of America is left, the real Americans may actually be the illegal immigrants, not the ones we read of in Republican blogs who go on welfare and deal drugs, but the ones who take the hard jobs, raise their kids appreciating what most Americans find disappointment in. Detroit is filled with Chaldeans (Christian), Arabs and Hispanics. Each live apart from each other in a city formerly 95% African American. The numbers may be 600,000 or more. We will never know. Some folks tend to resist counting.
What you see in Hispanic Detroit, for instance, is life in neighborhoods that were dead. In places where a dozen years ago there were only burned out homes, you how have street after street of new businesses, restaurants, stores, shops of every kind. You have new homes, grass in yards, flowers, murals and parks. You can walk streets where only a couple of years ago, two men in a police car was considered a risk. My family lived in this neighborhood in the 1840s. I would rather see it like this than empty fields with burned hulks of homes dotting a landscape reminiscent of Hiroshima.
As we approach this election, our lives are filled with thoughts of "the enemy." We have two camps, one that wants to build a free society and restore America in the world and another of the rich and stupid, people who think their money will buy them a soul where no soul could ever survive.
Most Americans grew up lower class, factory, farm or business, but as workers, not owners and managers. Pleasures were a picnic, a fishing trip, hunting, maybe getting a small boat or having a cabin "up north." Now, anyone without a 40 foot boat, 3 cruises a year and private guided hunting trips on Kodiak island is considered underprivileged.
We talk about what we miss, how food tasted or how we loved the simple things, holidays with our family, those trips to the lake but we chase the dollars, spend ourselves into debt and run aimlessly in directions none of us have given any real thought about.
Our lives are ruled by a class struggle built to keep us filled with hate and fear. What is the purpose. It is simple. There are no real politics in America. Politics ended long ago with morality.
Everything is about money and hiding the fact that it is created out of thin air, air pumped into the bloated coffers of billionaires and trillionaires who are partying their way into hell while America and the world dies.
Vote like a fool and burn down the world.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Gordon Duff is a Senior Staff Writer for VeteransToday.com. He is a U.S. Marine Vietnam Combat Veteran and regular contributor on social and political issues. He holds a United Nations diplomatic post.
Gordon Duff posted articles on VT from 2008 to 2022. He is a Marine combat veteran of the Vietnam War. A disabled veteran, he worked on veterans and POW issues for decades.
Gordon is an accredited diplomat and is generally accepted as one of the top global intelligence specialists. He manages the world’s largest private intelligence organization and regularly consults with governments challenged by security issues.
Duff has traveled extensively, is published around the world, and is a regular guest on TV and radio in more than “several” countries. He is also a trained chef, wine enthusiast, avid motorcyclist, and gunsmith specializing in historical weapons and restoration. Business experience and interests are in energy and defense technology.
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