I LEARNED A LOT

I LEARNED A LOT
By PraetorOne

I learned a lot this morning.Under normal circumstances any morning on which I don’t have to listen to Megyn Kelli spew her usual right wing drivel while she goes unchallenged by her typically Reich wing guests is usually a bod morning, but today I learned a lot about our glowing economy and how we have nothing to worry about. And Megyn Kelly wasn’t even on had to moderate the panel of guests with hr usual blend of half truths, distortions, and outright prevarications. No, this morning the economy took front and center as the far right tried to both, blame the victims on one hand and deny there was a problem on the other. Of course the fact that they were claiming there wasn’t a problem while they blamed victims for their own situations was a study in self contradiction, but when you have an audience that is as dense, and obtuse, and as glaringly delusional as the Fox News audience, little things like consistency just don’t seem to matter.

This morning the message couldn’t have been more imbecilic. We shouldn’t do anything to help anyone who is suffering as a results of the deflating housing bubble. Instead we should sit back and let more people suffer, let more people lose their homes while the federal government twiddles its thumbs and watches on. In other words, they have adopted a Socially Darwinistic point of view which says that drowning victims should be allowed to sink. Worse yet. the Unfair and Unbalanced people at Fox News have come to the moronic conclusion that the people who are currently drowning in a sea of inflated prices and rising mortgage rates are to blame for their own dilemmas. Translated into modern English this means that the American people are to be penalized for wanting what has been sold to them as a positive for generation after generation: a piece of the American dream. According to the right wing, upper class cronies at Fox News we should blame the American people for wanting a nice home; for using equity in their homes to purchase nice things. Nope, we wouldn’t want to help the suffering American people after they’ve dared to move up in the world.

Instead, we are told that 95 percent of Americans still have jobs and that we’re not in a recession. Technically, this is true, but when you deal with Fox you have to remember that the Fools, Oddballs, and Xenophobes at this Republican propaganda network deal in half truths. Yes, 95 percent of the American people still have jobs, but they seldom mention the fact that so many of the jobs created during the Bush Regime were service sector jobs, low income jobs which pay so poorly that many Americans need two or three jobs just to keep their heads above water. Many of these people will never live the American dream because they can’t pool enough money at one time to purchase that dream. And if they pursue credit the Bush Administration and his buddies at Fox News promptly brand them as irresponsible or ignorant. In a similar vein we are not in a recession, which requires three consecutive months of negative growth to merit that term. But what Fox fails to mention is the term “stagflation.” We have a stagnant economy replete with tired, overworked employees coupled with rising prices for oil, gas, milk, eggs, bread, meat, ad infinitum. Now toss in the shrinking value of the once mighty dollar, American jobs going overseas and…you get the picture.

Of course the primary architect of disaster has gone unchallenged. Do the words “Ownership Society” mean anything to anyone? They do to me. This was the phrase that George W. Bush used in the early years of his Administration to encourage people to–you guessed it–purchase houses. But in so many ways the phrase “Ownership Society” is a perfect description of what the Bush Administration has been encouraging since it took office: excessive debt. After 911 George W. Bush encouraged us to go shopping. The Fed strives to keep interest rates low so that we can borrow more money to buy more junk that we can live without. Banks openly encouraged variable rate mortgage loans. How bad has it become? It has reached the point where we no longer think of our houses as homes, as places to put down roots, raise a family, and become a part of a community. Instead we view our houses and investments, as mere possessions to be worked on, improved upon, and then sold for a profit. But has anyone given any thought as to what this is doing to our society? How much stability can we expect when we’re pulling up the roots that we have established in a community and moving to another community every five to seven years? Aren’t we disrupting our personal lives and our children’s education for mere profit?

I don’t claim to have all the answers but I can tell you this. I came from a lower class background. Not only did my (now late) mother move around on a regular basis, we also went homeless on two separate occasions. Maybe it’s my upbringing, but everything about the Bush Administration’s financial and economic policies seem to fly in the face of common sense. A house should be a home. A place to put down roots, to raise children and to establish long term relationships in a community. Not a bargaining chip with which to get junk we don’t need or a dwelling we can’t afford because the mortgage rates went up. My friends and family say that I’m cheap because my dad and I renovated our house on our own, because we got a fixed rate loan, because we want to live in our local community for decades to come, not five or seven years. I love my friends and relatives dearly but they need to understand that while I may act conservatively in matters of personal finance, it hurts like sin to watch an administration protect unnecessary tax cuts for the best off in this society while the weak and vulnerable are ignored and further victimized.

But then again, it may be my background talking.