Being Angry, About Capitalism, Duly

BERNIE SANDERS has for decades been among my favorite American political leaders, indeed, my favorite. He achieved that status in 1991 when he steadfastly opposed the American led war against Saddam Hussein in Iraq, a fabricated war,deliberately contrived by the Bush administration, predicated on the false pretense that Saddam's invasion of Kuwait was entirely of Saddam's making. In fact,the United States engineered the entire episode,having previously given Saddam a green light for his invasion, then rescinding it when Saddam cashed the blank check. (See: April Gladspie)...Since then, I have placed Sanders above Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt in my personal hierarchy of greatness. (Arguably, both Lincoln and Roosevelt fabricated their own wars; FDR by luring the Japanese into attacking Pearl harbor, Lincoln by having the audacity to get elected president.) My admiration of Senator Sanders is based largely upon economics, but politics as well. (He taught me to refer to myself as a "Democratc socialist"). In his seminal new work, "Its Ok To Be Angry About Capitalism",he takes on the billionaire class,just as he has done for decades, first in the U.S. House of Representatives, and now in the United States Senate. He asks why we the American people have allowed the billionaire class to take complete control of our political and economic systems. (Gore Vidal used to call them "our corporate masters"). How can it be that three billionaires have more wealth than the combined wealth of the bottom half of the American people? The current economic system, in which less than one percent owns and controls more than forty percent of the American economy, Sanders disparages as "Uber capitalism". Like most economists and historians, Sanders traces the sharp rise in wealth disparity to the neo-liberal policies put in place in the late seventies and early eighties, in which tax rates for the wealthy were lowered, and the middle class began to shrink under the burden of shrinking wages and wildly inflated corporte profits. Gone were the halcyon days of the immmediate post Worle War Two era in which a single wage earner could support a family of four, and relative economic equality characterized the American economy. He saves his sharpest attacks for the fossil fuel industry. Like nearly all other sectors of the American economy, the fossil fuel industry is basically a monopoly, with monopolistic power. Thus has it perpetuated the myth that climate change is a myth, and that, even if it weren't, its cause has nothing to do with the burning of carbon based energy sources. From the beginning, it knew better. Corporate executives and managers are paid outrageous salaries while the working class struggles to survive; why are they not held accountable for their actions, actions which distort and twhart economic growth and prosperity for the many, and threaten the very existence of all life on Earth? Only because they own the politicians, who take their money and do their bidding,effectively preventing meaningful, fundamental political change and action to mitigate climate change. What is needed,asserts Sanders, is nothing short of a political revolution, globally, and in America. We the people have the power to make this happen. But, as Jefferson said: "If the people become innatentive to the affairs of government, the legislators and magistrates shall divide society into two classes; wolves, and sheep." We the people have long lain dormant, have long become innatentive, and thus, arguably deserving of our status, as sheep.