I was recently taken to task for a previous blog posting, Opinion Bombs. The precise section that was objectionable to the commenter was:
“I feel like there is some unknown force driving wedges between the various factions of our country and of the world. I’m not a big believer in conspiracy theories, but it feels like the “powers that be” want to keep the little folk bickering among themselves. It is the magician’s sleight of the hand. Distract the masses with these wedges and the powers can go on with whatever it is they want to do.”
Specifically, the commenter found my use of “conspiracy theory” problematic. Perhaps I used the word incorrectly. Conspiracy is defined as – “a secret plan by a group to do something unlawful or harmful.” A conspiracy theory is defined as – “a belief that some covert but influential organization is responsible for a circumstance or event.” The operative difference is “belief”.
What I was referring to as conspiracy theories is no longer very covert, and I still believe there are big parts of it that we cannot see. What am I referring to? The push which started in the Reagan years that has swung this country far to the right. Why is this being done? Many folks believe it has to do with social and religious conservatism. This is the sleight of hand, the smoke screen that has been used by our “conspirators” to push their agenda forward. What is their agenda? Pure, unadulterated greed. They are after fewer regulations for business, lower taxes, less government services and so on and on. When they cannot push that agenda, they push to make the government dysfunctional which has the same effect. This certainly means the criterion of harmful.
And they have been successful. What are the symptoms of their success? The increasing wealth gap and the disappearing of the middle class is the most obvious one. Here is an article by Pew Research that speaks to this: U.S. income inequality, on rise for decades, is now highest since 1928. That addresses income, according to Fortune magazine the wealth gap is even more of an issue:
“Wealth inequality, it turns out, has followed a spectacular U-shape evolution over the past 100 years. From the Great Depression in the 1930s through the late 1970s there was a substantial democratization of wealth. The trend then inverted, with the share of total household wealth owned by the top 0.1 percent increasing to 22 percent in 2012 from 7 percent in the late 1970s. The top 0.1 percent includes 160,000 families with total net assets of more than $20 million in 2012.” 1
Note about above quote — that is $20,000,000 minimum wealth for each of the 160,000 families.
If you are a visual person, and you want a graphic representation of what is happening to the middle class check out this article at Huffington Post: Middle Class America: 5 Sad Charts About The Country’s Favorite Demographic .
Add to the above our crumbling infrastructure. It takes money to maintain infrastructure. Where does government obtain its money? Yes, that is right, taxes. Without taxes we cannot maintain our roads, bridges, airports, harbors, water and sewer systems, etc. The American Society of Civil Engineers in its 2013 report on our national infrastructure gave it a grade of D+, citing a figure of $3.6 trillion needed by 2020.2,3 Yet the Right continues to push for tax breaks for corporations and the wealthy. Do we need to get to the point where all our roads are toll roads before they improve?
Another symptom is the slide of our educational system in the world rankings and the increasing disparity in educational achievement between wealthy and poor.
‘”The real scourge of the U.S. education system—and its greatest competitive weakness—is the deep and growing achievement gap between socioeconomic groups that begins early and lasts through a student’s academic career,” writes Rebecca Strauss, associate director for CFR’s Renewing America publications. Wealthy students are achieving more, and the influence of parental wealth is stronger in the United States than anywhere else in the developed world.4
The US ranks high in per capita spending on students, but as cited above the rich get richer. Another trend in US education that is the result of the move to the right is charter schools. This is basically the privatization of the educational system. Rather than investing in and improving education for all our citizens we are pushing to make our schools profit centers for corporations. There are many things in society that should not be about profit, schools, prisons, health care are just few that come to mind that private industry has a firm grasp on or is trying to get more control of.
The poverty rate in this country is around 17%. That ranks us 4th worst in the list of OECD countries.6 That is nearly a fifth of our population that we are allowing to wallow in poverty.
The above are some of my hot button topics. I could go on and on with the symptoms, but I want to get back to the conspiracy portion of this posting.
First bit of evidence is that propaganda machine known as Fox News. Rupert Murdoch, not even a US citizen, has pushed his Right Wing agenda via Fox News. Why do I call it propaganda? The fact checking site Politifact found Fox News only tells the truth 18 percent of the time.7 Yet there are segments of our population that truly believe it is “fair and balanced”. Fox News continues to out rank other cable news sources. I cannot even wrap my head around as to why. I’m not entirely sure what Murdoch’s motives are other than greed, and wanting to be able to do whatever he wants business-wise. Perhaps he sees himself as the Napoleon of News and Empire is his game. Without a doubt Fox News has brought the level of political discourse in this country into the gutter. He is one of the primary forces that for their own personal gain are driving wedges between Americans.
Secondly let’s take the Koch brothers. In the 2012 election cycle the Koch brothers spent nearly $413,000,000 on political contributions. Approximately $409,000,000 of that is considered “dark money” as it went through undisclosed campaign groups.8 If that amount of money moving through our political system without disclosure is not conspiracy I am not sure what the word means. Again, the motivation of these brothers is greed and power. They want their corporations to be able to operate with a minimum of government regulation or taxation. I will not cite any, but there are a plethora of instances of corporations behaving badly. When you sole motivator is profit any number of moral issues go begging. With the Citizens United ruling, entities with dollars have increased their already outsized influence on our political system. If you would like to know more about the Koch brothers Rolling Stone has an excellent article: Inside the Koch Brothers’ Toxic Empire
And the Kochs are not the only ones playing this game. An article in The Nation details some of the other players and their shear hubris: How the Koch Brothers and Other Family Capitalists Are Ruining America
If you need reading material just put “lobbyist conspiracy” into a Google search. It came back with nearly a half million results. Yes lobbying is legal, but I bet it spends much more time in the grey area than most of us realize. It is all too common a story for a politician to end up in jail over a conspiracy charge of some sort.
This is not a new phenomenon. History is littered with examples of businesses colluding to subvert the public good for their own profit. It also contains multiple examples of political organizations working behind the scenes, away from public scrutiny, pushing agendas that benefited a few.
Lastly, all you have to do is look at a picture of Dick Cheney. If he has not conspired multiple times, secretly, in multiple ways to subvert the political process for his own agendas benefiting his and his friend’s pocketbooks… well then I am Mary Poppins.
- Wealth inequality in America: It’s worse than you think
- ASCE 2013 Report Card for America’s Infrastructure
- America’s Crumbling Infrastructure
- S. Education Slipping in Ranks Worldwide, Earns Poor Grades on CFR Scorecard
- Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) Results 2012 for USA
- OECD USA Poverty Rate
- Fact-Checking Site Finds Fox News Only Tells the Truth 18 Percent of the Time
Interesting enough, after I finished writing this post I flipped over to Alternet.org and found the following article: You’re Likely to Be a Lot Poorer Than You Were a Few Years Ago—And It’s All By Design