Liberal pundit Bill Moyers decided to “celebrate” the holiday season by posting a negative opinion piece from the Far Left that stated “the super rich” and the “vast inequality” between segments of the population “are creating a death sentence for government of the people.”
“This is the fight of our lives,” the managing editor of the BillMoyers.com website asserted, and how “the bipartisan disgusting spectacle” ends “is up to us.”
Moyers began his article by stating:
In the fall of 2001, in the aftermath of 9/11, as families grieved and the nation mourned, Washington swarmed with locusts of the human kind: wartime opportunists, lobbyists, lawyers, ex-members of Congress, bagmen for big donors: all of them determined to grab what they could for their corporate clients and rich donors while no one was looking.
“Across the land, the faces of Americans of every stripe were stained with tears,” he noted, but “the predator class was hard at work pursuing private plunder at public expense, gold-diggers in the ashes of tragedy exploiting our fear, sorrow and loss.”
“What did they want?” the former Public Broadcasting System anchor asked before replying. “The usual: tax cuts for the wealthy and big breaks for corporations.”
“They sought a special tax break for mighty General Electric, although you would never have heard about it if you were watching GE’s news divisions -- NBC News, CNBC or MSNBC -- all made sure to look the other way,” he asserted.
The pundit called the push for tax cuts for “the super rich” and corporations “a disgusting bipartisan spectacle” that led him to recall Harry Truman's description of the GOP as “Guardians Of Privilege.”
“As for post-9/11 Democrats,” he stated that “their national committee used the crisis to call for widening the soft-money loophole in our election laws.”
Moyers continued:
America had just endured a sneak attack that killed thousands of our citizens, was about to go to war against terror and would soon send an invading army to the Middle East. If ever there was a moment for shared sacrifice, for putting patriotism over profits, this was it.
But that fall, operating deep within the shadows of Washington’s Beltway, American business and political mercenaries wrapped themselves in red, white and blue and went about ripping off a country in crisis.
“H. L. Mencken got it right,” the pundit stated: “Whenever you hear a man speak of his love for his country, it is a sign that he expects to be paid for it.”
“The $1.15 trillion spending bill passed by Congress ... and quickly signed by President Obama is just the latest triumph in the plutocratic management of politics that has accelerated since 9/11,” Moyers noted before calling the bill “a bonanza for the donor class.”
“Within minutes of its passage,“ he noted, “congressional leaders of both parties and the president rushed to the television cameras to praise each other for a bipartisan bill that they claimed signaled the end of dysfunction; proof that Washington can work.”
In addition, members of the mainstream media acted as amplifiers for the official spin -- “repeating the mantra-of-the-hour that while this is 'not a perfect bill,' it does a lot of good things,” Moyers stated.
“The horrors mount,” he continued before asserting that in the last days before the bill’s passage, “lobbyists swooped in” to save, at least for now, “a loophole worth more than $1 billion to Wall Street investors and the hotel, restaurant and gambling industries.”
“So it goes,” Moyers stated. “The selling off of the Republic, piece by piece. What was it Mark Twain said? 'There is no distinctive native American criminal class except Congress.'”
“Can we at least face the truth? The plutocrats and oligarchs are winning,” the columnist declared. “Candidates ask citizens for their votes, then go to Washington to do the bidding of their donors.”
“Where does it end?” the liberal columnist asked before abruptly referring to the holidays:
As we are reminded by this season, there is more to life than politics. There are families, friends, music, worship, sports, the arts, reading, conversation, laughter, celebrations of love and fellowship, and partridges in pear trees.
But without healthy democratic politics serving a moral order, all these are imperiled by the ferocious appetites of private power and greed.
“So enjoy the holidays, including Star Wars,” he continued. “Then come back after New Year’s and find a place for yourself, at whatever level, wherever you are, in the struggle for democracy. This is the fight of our lives, and how it ends is up to us.”
The pundit's lengthy post certainly gives Ebenezer Scrooge a run for his money. It was surprising that the words “Bah! Humbug!” didn't appear in the article. Apparently, the holiday season can at times soften the heart of even a liberal Grinch like Bill Moyers.
