Forget Generation X or Y, we as Americans are facing a Generation
Extant: a generation left over to survive on the cast-offs of the new
breed of Robber Barons in America's New Gilded Age. The deregulation and
destruction of our American democracy through the continued policies of
Reaganism has found us ruled by a wealthy Oligarchy instead of a
representative republic. Those of us now struggling to get by in this
system that glorifies greed and values profits above the very cost of
human life have become the new underclass, whether we like it or not.
Those who are making it work any way they can, all while knowing your
parents, or your grandparents, or even your brothers and sisters had an
easier crack at it, you are your own generation, extant from the
mind-boggling wealth and power now enjoyed by a morally bankrupt few, a
level we here at the bottom could not even begin to fathom if we tried.
As of this writing, the 400 richest Americans are worth as much as the bottom 50% of the country. 158 families in this country of over 300 million
people have already spent 176 million dollars toward the 2016 campaign.
When you're down here with the rest of us, a number like $176 million
seems cartoonish; even if you try to imagine it, you find you can't even
find uses for all of it. This doesn't even scratch the surface of the
wealth known by Reagan's American Oligarchs, and the rest of us are only
serfs on the plantation.
To the rich that run the system, there
are only two groups, two races, two classes and two generations: us and
everyone else. There is no difference in race, or creed, or gender, or
orientation: to the rich, we are all the same. By that token, if we were
to come together, without race, without creed, but merely as those who
want a more perfect union untouched by greed, we can and we should enact
policies to tax the rich.
When I say we should tax the rich, I'm
not talking about anyone you know, or anyone I know. In Fillmore County
alone, the number of people in the top tax bracket can be counted on
one hand. Fillmore County isn't even a drop in the bucket, wealthwise,
and taxing those at the top would do nothing to hurt the situation for
the thousands of people who call Fillmore County home. As I have argued before, raising taxes on the wealthiest at the state or federal level is
not theft, but merely a return on investment: we invested in the rich
by giving them billions in tax cuts, and they squandered or squatted on
the money we trusted to them. Now, we want our money back: our schools
need improvement, our roads need fixing, but aside from all of that,
it's our money, and we want it back. There are a lot more of us than
there are of the richest Americans, and all of us banding together, one
way or another, can change the course against those who have run off
with our money.
First, we can elect people who will pledge to
bring the money back to the area any way they know how, and to elect
people who will not fear being smeared and attacked by moneyed
interests. If that doesn't work, if we continue to be made extant and things continue to deteriorate,
then there will soon be no good choice left for those of us in the other
half of the country. And it will be only too late for the oligarchs and
the crooked bankers, who won't see it coming until the first brick
comes through their window. I don't want to see that happen, but they have locked us out of Eden, and we have
committed no sin. It is now time to return to a land of plenty and to
cast out the worse angels of our nature from their stranglehold on our
government.
At Your Service,
Doremus Jessup
