CEO’s of most companies are smart, well-educated people with experience running things. The head of the NRA is probably a smart man, also. A corporation—the lobby--probably need such people to run their companies. If I were a share-holder, I would not want to think that the man or woman who is heading up my company was stupid or somewhat unbalanced.
The people given responsibility for companies and in the case of the NRA, pro-gun lobby, are most likely very Wealthy. And, there is nothing wrong with that. According to most economists, the CEOs and the NRA head are part of an “elite” in America. They are the people who shape our nation through the Political Action Committees (PAC) they support and the politicians they anoint with their magical, bloated wallets.
This “elite” have very simple orders for the politicians of their making: support and put forth policies that brought said wealth and preserve and when possible increase said wealth.
A market, like any game, has rules and the politicians supported by the elite, wealthy interests ensure that the rules of this game always favor the CEO’s, the heads of lobbies, etc. The Supreme Court’s recent decision permitting companies not to take responsibility for ridiculous and often scandalous advertisements against any politician who is not willing to guarantee that all laws and regulations favor the wealthy elite will only further strengthen the wealthy elite. It will make the moat surrounding their fortress, protecting them from working Americans, ever wider.
To further understand the power of these elite, we must consider the fact that their corporations and lobbies are now being granted rights and privileges that used to belong only to citizens—one man one vote, one corporation one politician. And, when these corporate citizens commit crimes—sometimes leading to the death of hundreds or damage to other Americans in the billions of dollars—they are strangely usually let off with innocuous slaps on the corporate wrist.
A company with quarterly profits in the billions of dollars knowingly produces products that hurt consumers and gets fined a few million dollars; then they hire a great PR team, invest ten times the amount of their fine and somehow turn the tables so that the fault lies not in their decision as a board but in “too much government regulation;” or, the “socialist plans for the country that so-and-so president/politician has.” Had a regular Joe done what the corporation had, he would be on death row in most states.
The Myth
As the elite grows and gains power, it invests ever more money in creating a myth that some liberal, better-than-though, well-educated people—quite often from the north—seek to create an “elite ruling class” bent on making America socialist if not communist. These liberal people seek to obtain power so that they can offset the unfair advantages the “wealthy elite” have gained thanks to—in our case--thirty years of Republican obstructionist governing. Now, obstructionism in this case is not the same as it is today when the Republican minority refuses to govern while President Obama struggles to reset the scales.
The Republican obstructionism of the past thirty years has tried to completely alter all of the rules of the playing field so that they always favor the wealthy elite. So that the working American doesn’t pay too much attention to the fact that fifty-eight cents of every dollar of real income growth since 1976 has gone to the top 1% of the nation, the wealthy elite through their very own political party—the GOP—create emotional scandals and regularly find bogeymen in the dark: communism everywhere, Whitewater investigation (while we should have concerned ourselves with Al Qaeda), WMD, gay marriage, Swift Boat controversy, no global warming, Obama is a socialist Muslim, death-squads just to name a few.
Obstructed from being able to progress forward as a nation, from solving our current problems; from protecting our people from natural disasters and poor decision-making like the illegal invasion of Iraq, the wealthy elite thanks to their mouthpiece and protector guarantee that while the interest of the nation is held distracted by the endless scandals the GOP fabricates, they will plod forward, passing laws that further ensure the indentured-servitude of tens of millions of working-poor thanks to predatory lending policies; they will pass legislation that steals more and more of our Constitutional Rights while vociferously shouting from the rooftops that they are actually “preserving our Constitutional Rights;” they will find more nations of no consequence to play our fools only to then be invaded by us when the elite feel the next round of military technology is ready for use—to be bought by this same federal government they so claim to hate but whose pockets are always as deep as they need be when shifting the nation’s wealth from the working Americans to the elite ruling class.
The United States is the world’s largest economy. It is arguably the most complex and important society in the world today. The president and the people helping him oversee the massive machine that is the federal government should be well-educated, experienced, balanced and not given to emotional outbursts or just plain old deceit.
Smart People--so what
If the Americans, who happen to be smart, well-educated liberals running our country today happen to be considered an “elite” then I say so be it. Their elite status, for the most part, comes from the fact that they have always been the top of their class; they have always excelled academically and professionally and they probably went to colleges that are very selective. Today, they are President Obama and his advisors. I see nothing wrong with that. Actually, I love that fact. I love knowing that the President of the United States of America is smarter than me.
That couldn’t be said when referring to W; it certainly can’t be said about the current leader of the GOP, Sarah Palin. What can be said about them, though, is that they will do their “darndest” to make the wealthy elite proud of them—and vice versa.
Fox-News Flash: Obama is really a woman!
