Sorry, J.P. Morgan, But People Without Homes WILL Quarrel With Their Leaders
The attribution of the following quote has been debated. There is no debating the sentiment it expresses.
"Capital must protect itself in every way...Debts must be collected and loans and mortgages foreclosed as soon as possible. When through a process of law the common people have lost their homes, they will be more tractable and more easily governed by the strong arm of the law applied by the central power of leading financiers. People without homes will not quarrel with their leaders. This is well known among our principle men now engaged in forming an imperialism of capitalism to govern the world. By dividing the people we can get them to expend their energies in fighting over questions of no importance to us except as teachers of the common herd.
-J.P. Morgan"
For decades, the right wing has dreamed of unraveling the safety net crafted by Democrats like LBJ, Truman and FDR. Their goal? The quote above sums it up. If people have no homes, they have no wealth. They have no economic security. They become fearful. A frightened worker is a desperate, pliable worker, who will accept any wage, any work condition, any hours, any task.
"Capital"----the banks, the investment brokers, the multinationals---must have been disconcerted when People Without Homes decided to quarrel with this leaders this fall. For decades, they were promised a meek, pliable population of suckers who would work their fingers to the bone---and then say nothing when they discovered that their savings had been stolen by the very folks who were supposed to protect it. As late as 2008, People Without Homes appeared to be following the script. President Bush got on national television. He said that the banks were Too Big to Fail. Some Americans grumbled, but most of them nodded their heads. Too big to fail. Bankers basked in the glow that you see on the face of the favorite child, the one who gets all the toys, all the praise---while the siblings get nothing.
Capital assumed that when times got bad, we would savage each other, like a pack of caged dogs fighting over a bone. Capital salivated over the thought of more domestic violence, more violence against children, more crimes against immigrants, more inter-racial tension as one group accused another of stealing its jobs, its homes, its slice of the American Dream----
Want to know Capital's big plan?
"Fascism may be defined as a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion."
(Robert O. Paxton from the book Anatomy of Fascism)
Fascism with a twist. Nationalism is now Multi-nationalism. Corporations are the new Fuhrer and Il Duce. In the 20th Century, corporations were content to be the power behind the throne. Now, they demand to be worshiped directly. Heil Exxon! Heil Chase-Morgan! Heil Microsoft! Heil Pfizer! Heil Archer Daniels Midland! A twist on fascism to make it palatable in the U.S., where goose stepping has never been in style. We refuse to bow down and worship a king, but surely we can be persuaded to bow down and worship huge piles of (blood, sweat and tear stained) cash.
I meet a lot of people in my day job. People who have lost their employment, their homes, their health insurance. Folks for whom hunger is a daily fact of life. Men and women who get to choose between eating and taking the medication that keeps them alive. I never hear them complain that the _____s stole their jobs. Never. They never talk about how much better it was before the ___s regained the right to vote. They never criticize the Occupy Wall Street movement. They never talk about how much better the U.S. was when it was being attacked by terrorists and everyone was waving an American flag. They never speaking admiringly of the profits posted by the big banks. They never tell me they sleep easier at night knowing that the Carlyle Group weathered the recession unscathed. They do not trust their employer to "do the right thing" when they have a personal or family illness. They do not call the elderly "deadbeats" for collecting their Social Security and using their Medicare. They do not close their eyes and stop up their ears and tape shut their mouth and hope that the bad times will go away, magically. They are fighters, and adversity does not pacify them, it energizes them---
Which must be why Capital is so desperate to keep them from the polls. Those most willing to "quarrel with their leaders" can not afford cars. Many of them are too sick to drive. That means they may not have a current driver's license.That means when they go to the polls next fall to express their displeasure with Capital, they will be turned away. Unless the Department of Justice and the ACLU and other concerned groups succeed in overturning the new Poll Tax. Unless we defy those who seek to make registering people to vote some kind of organized criminal activity. Unless we strip corporations of their right to channel unlimited amounts of foreign and domestic money into our election process. Unless we preserve freedom of the speech on the Internet, the last place where People Without Homes can make their voices heard in a nation whose news media is corporate owned. Unless we maintain funding for our schools, which provide education and food to the next generation of People Without Homes, making them strong in body as well as mind so that they can continue to "quarrel with their leaders".....
