To the editor:
I admit it, I have been listening to a lot of progressive talk radio lately.
When I first started, it was comforting to hear political analysis that confirms my own suspicions, but I now feel more discouraged than ever. The net effect of their messaging is this: The wealthy determine the fate of the world, they are not good people, and there is really nothing the rest of us can do about it. A ruthless corporate elite controls our media, our government, our regulatory agencies, our financial system, our energy policy, and our domestic agenda. The Republican Party has become a lockstep fascist instrument of that corporate elite, and its leaders are liars and greed heads.
The Democratic Party pays lip service to “doing the people’s business,” but is also in bed with big-money interests, and is too spineless to implement the reforms necessary for this country to correct course. We, the people, are irrelevant factors in this corporate game, but we are encouraged to pester our elected representatives and donate to progressive causes, nonetheless, just to make ourselves feel better.
Have you ever noticed that the state of the world always seems to be getting worse on talk radio, no matter how much “progress” humanity seems to be making?
Could this be a law of the universe, a kind of simultaneous compounding of positive and negative forces, probably pre-destined to explode and implode at the same time in another BIG BANG of the future? At that time, the universe will cleanse itself of the human race and start over again on some new, and hopefully, more successful experiment.
Sometimes I think the game is rigged, no matter what I or any of the rest of us middle class stooges do. Sometimes I think democracy, freedom of the press and even the progressive agenda are illusions fabricated by the upper 2 percent to stave off revolution — to make us THINK we have a little bit of power so we will accept our lot. I’m sure they’ve got demographers and psychologists busily at work determining just how much they can squeeze us before we crack. Revolution would be messy, and they don’t want to push us over the edge.
Meanwhile, the solutions seem so obvious, don’t they?
1. Everyone should stop being greedy, ignorant, stupid, devious and mean, and follow the examples of Christ and Buddha. (It pains me to leave Mohammed out, but he did resort to violence, you know.)
2. Reorder all of our national priorities: Put the well-being of our people and the planet at the top of the list (that means universal healthcare, well-financed public education, small business incentives, sustainable energy, public transit, etc.). Put profits for international corporations and funding for the military-industrial complex at the bottom.
3. Take obscene excess wealth away from the top 2 percent and give it to programs for the poor.
4. Don’t just regulate Wall Street, eliminate it. Surely we can come up with a more respectable economic system than a gambling casino. Put the bank CEOs and all the other financial evildoers in jail.
5. Implement campaign finance reform, kick the corporate shills out and elect moral public servants to office.
6. Stop sending jobs overseas, and create more jobs in America, with emphasis on education, the arts, social services, park maintenance, rebuilding of infrastructure, etc.
7. Stop arming terrorists and supporting corrupt dictators.
8. Stop minding everybody’s business but our own.
9. Stop making consumerism and capitalism our raison d’être and help our poor neighbors more.
10. Wean ourselves from the automobile and petroleum.
11. Reinstitute the Fairness Doctrine, expose political propaganda, write forthright voter’s pamphlets, eliminate voter fraud, require civics education, institute civility and rebuild the Democracy we all thought we had!
And don’t listen to talk radio, right or left. We’ve got a lot of real work to do.
HEIDI HOELTING
Clinton
