Dispatches From Hellpeckersville-Let’s Talk About That Country You Want Back

I’ve been seeing it for a couple of years now, my conservative friends. You want your country back. You know what? So do I. But let’s think about this for a moment, what country are we talking about, exactly? You see, I’m not that much different than you. It’s hard out there, living paycheck to paycheck, seeing jobs leave the country, looking around and thinking, damn, this game seems rigged, and not in my favor. This is not the country I grew up in, the dream is dead, what the hell happened? We need to do something!

I see a lot of the same things you see. The things you would like to blame for the downfall of the country. Yes, I have seen somebody in the grocery store pay for a luxury item with an EBT card. Yes, I knew a girl who got pregnant just to bump herself up to a better subsidized apartment. But you know what? For every single one of those people there are 100 that desperately need those benefits, that pass the “do they deserve it” test. And as far as food stamps are concerned, I really don’t want to hear you bitch about them. Because 1% of people are cheaters you would see a child go hungry? Really? And for every dollar that goes into food stamps $1.73 goes back into the economy, I would call that an effective and economically stimulating program. And have you ever stopped to wonder why so many people need them? Working people. A lot of them working full time or two jobs, and they still can’t feed their kids. In the country you want back, was that the case?

It seems to me that a lot of you think if we just deport “the illegals” and do away with welfare, we’ll all be doing just fine. I’m sorry to have to break this to you, but that’s simply untrue. The average person making 50,000 dollars a year pays just 36 dollars of their taxes towards food stamps. Yet, you are outraged by this. Why? Oh, and the so-called flood of illegal immigrants has actually slowed to a trickle, but you won’t hear that on the corporate sponsored news, and by the way, would you like to pick crops for 10,000 dollars a year? I’ll bet they’re living it up pretty high on that money. Do you have some friends or family that are itching to take their place? I hope you know that these are the same folks who did this same job in the country you want back.

Now I’m going to tell you something you don’t want to hear, something you don’t want to believe, and possibly never will, but I’m going to tell you this just the same. It’s about the country you really do want back, and how you’ve been fed a line of bullshit for the past 30 or 40 years about where it went, and why we don’t have it anymore.

The country you want back has nothing to do with welfare or scary “illegals” or anything of the kind. The country you want back is the one with an economy that worked for all of us. The one with good jobs, good blue collar jobs, where the guy who worked in a factory could bring home a paycheck, feed his family, maybe buy a house, go on vacation, feel secure, stuff like that. Things weren’t perfect, we had periods of inflation, ups and downs, social issues, but that’s normal. All societies have that. What we didn’t have is the hideous income inequality that we have now. The enormous wealth gap. The deep and overwhelming financial insecurity that colors our whole existence, feeds fear and resentment, makes people look around for somebody–anybody to blame. And we didn’t have a corporate media feeding on that and pointing to anything but the actual culprit.

The country you want back had a little thing called job security. It had corporations who were actually responsible to more than their shareholders, strange, but true. We used to have a thing called good corporate citizenship in the country we all want back. And what that means is this: it’s not just about the bottom line, it’s about the employees, it’s about paying their dues to the country that made them so successful, it’s about not polluting and destroying the land they operate on, while still preserving profits for their shareholders. We had that–we had it during our most profitable time in this country, from 1947 until 1983, when real median income started to flatten out. Now, why was that? One word–greed. The country you want back was not a country run by and for those who only care about corporate profits. Now, you may want to try to tell me those assholes are job creators, but I’m here to tell you, my friends, they may be creating some jobs, but if they are they aren’t in this country, and if they are, they are low paying and probably not full time.

From 1980 on, regardless of which party has been in power, the powerful corporations have been able to effect changes in regulations that allow them to escape their corporate responsibility, and we all make up the difference. They have been able to lobby for tax breaks and loopholes, so that while on the face of it, they can claim that their rate is the highest in the world, effectively none of them pay that, in fact, most of them pay less than you or I, and some actually get rebates that ought to make them ashamed, but they don’t have any shame. The average 50,000 dollar a year earner pays 6,000 dollars a year of their taxes for subsidies to already profitable beyond your wildest dreams corporations. Is that the country you grew up in? Does that seem fair? And you’re all pissy about food stamps. This is the country that made them, the country they want to continue to operate in, why do we continue to allow this? Neither party is guiltless when it comes to what they’ll do for a corporation, just look at their top contributors. These are the people who have taken our country from us.

Things are really tough out there, and it’s not getting any easier. I believe it’s going to get a whole lot worse. Especially when folks keep allowing themselves to be duped into believing the bullshit we’re being sold. Look, it’s easy to want to blame the stranger, the “other,” the person you think doesn’t deserve help. Too easy. But if you really want your country back, you’re going to need to take it back, and not from the powerless immigrant, or needy person with the EBT card in the grocery store. You’re going to need to fight for it back, from the people who have been stealing us blind for the past 30 years–the corporations and the politicians who have aided and abetted them every step of the way.