What a strange time to be an American. Poverty is spreading like an untreated cancer. More and more commentators publicly question whether it's still worth it to go to college — formerly seen as a primary weapon against poverty — given the attendant debt and shrinking job prospects. The concept of a union for workers is considered some kind of socialist trick to ... I don't know what. A very rich and powerful lobby seems intent on getting every single American to carry a weapon, on the theory that this will somehow make people safer.
We have national commentators who engage in lengthy, detailed analysis of why the economic "recovery" has not brought the increase in jobs and pay that past "recoveries" brought, but never once mention how much work for American corporations is now performed overseas, by people who make almost nothing in wages and are not protected by labor or environmental laws, which keeps unemployment high and wages low. In fact, they routinely talk about the economy as though the it could be considered to be good despite the lack of employment and reasonable wages.
Millions of my fellow Americans are upset enough about high taxes that they are willing to fight endless, bloody political battles to restore freedom, but never seem the least perturbed about the shift of jobs overseas, the growing poverty here, or the fact that our highest court has bestowed the rights of people on corporations, which are mere legal theories and artificial structures.
Millions of my fellow Americans are outraged over the federal attempt to ensure that all Americans can get health care, but can barely bother to shrug when informed that the same federal government now engages in domestic spying and surveillance to a degree rarely, if ever, seen before.
Most of my fellow Americans appear to be unaware and/or unconcerned that corporations have a constitutional right to find out about the medicines your doctor prescribes for you — even if the doctor doesn't want them to — but that ordinary people have absolutely no right to find out if the food for which they pay so dearly at their corporate supermarket contains ingredients that have been genetically modified by some corporate agribusiness.
Reducing taxes to zero will not in any way set you free if you have no income, or if you have an income far too low to support yourself and your family, or if you are sick and have no health care. Reducing the size of government will not benefit you in any way if you are then tyrannized by corporations richer and more powerful than most nations.
I think that millions of my fellow Americans should reacquaint themselves with the dangers of concentrated corporate power. There just might be a reason that these dangers have been observed and remarked upon by Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Rutherford B. Hayes, Grover Cleveland, Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, and far too many others to name.
I fear that the alternative is to simply rewrite the Pledge of Allegiance to "I pledge allegiance to the certificate of incorporation..."
Lee Russ lives in Bennington, Vt. His email address is firstname.lastname@example.org.