Kids, the country isn't all right
Graduates hold onto their hats as winds blow during Oregon State University's commencement ceremony in Corvallis, Ore., June 17, 2012. / AP Photo
(TomDispatch) [Author note: No one invited me to give this graduation speech. It was concocted freely in the campus of my mind and it's meant for the rest of us in the class of 2012.]
Class of 2012, greetings! It's a deceptively glorious day, even under this tent in the broiling heat of an August-style afternoon in mid-June on this northeastern campus. Another local temperature record is being set: 98 degrees. And yes, let's admit it, the heat, the sun, the clearness of the azure blue sky stretching without a cloud to the horizon, the sense of summer descending with a passion, it's not quite as reassuring as it might once have been, is it? I suspect that few of you, readying yourselves to leave this campus, many mortgaged to your eyeballs (some for life no matter what you do), and heading into a country on edge, imagine personal clear skies to the horizon.
And while we're admitting things, let's admit something else about the heat today, as you bake under your graduation gowns: whether or not you have the figures at your fingertips, whether or not you know the details, who doesn't sense that this planet is on edge, too? I mean, here you are, the class of 2012, and like the classes of 2011, 2010, and so on, you are surely going to spend your first months out of college enduring one of history's top ten heat years.
As so many Americans have noticed, this was a spring for the record books just about everywhere in the continental United States. And keep in mind that at the moment we also seem to be making a beeline for a potentially record-setting summer, the months of your job hunt for a future, and maybe the hottest year in American history as well.
And records or no, this year is no anomaly. Look at a temperature map of the United States, 1970-2011, and every state -- every single state -- is, on average, hotter now than it was four decades ago. Imagine that.
And now, imagine this. If climate change is the main culprit and the burning of fossil fuels is threatening to turn Hell, which you were once supposed to visit after death for your sins, into a pit stop on planet Earth, and if you want to do something about it, brace yourself. What you're up against is the power of the richest, most profitable corporations in history at a time when the sky's the limit, not just for carbon dioxide, but for the infusion of private and corporate money into what we once called democratic (with a small "d") politics.
In other words, the giant energy corporations that rake in tens of billions of dollars every quarter and whose lifeblood is the burning of fossil fuels are essentially capable of buying more or less anything they want in Washington. That includes continuing massive subsidies -- via "your" Congress (via your tax dollars) -- of their unbelievably profitable operations.
And what exactly can you buy? How many lawyers, lobbyists, and politicians can fit in your less than spacious pockets? Okay, you don't want your world, and that of your children, hotter than hades? That's understandable, but tell it to ExxonMobil. It has money to burn and specializes in mobilizing some of those billions in profits to employ ranks of lawyers, hordes of well-organized lobbyists, klatches of politicians, and even its own armed mercenary warriors. If the planet burns as well, so be it.
What Goes Up Must Come Down
Believe me, I don't say this to discourage you in your passage into adult life. But who said it was going to be easy?
In large part, what I want to tell you has to do with the grade-school principle that what goes up must come down. Consider for a moment just what's gone up and what's come down in our American world in these last years.
For more than four decades, in the United States -- and possibly a good part of the rest of the world -- money, income, wealth, moolah, it's all been heading upwards, like migrating salmon, toward the top of society, toward the crew that only last year we started calling "the 1%" (Thank you, Occupy Wall Street!), although maybe the .01% or the .001% would be more appropriate terms.
That top 1% now controls at least 40% of American wealth. Meanwhile, with your student loans (something like 60% of you have them), many of you -- in what used to be called the American middle class -- are already essentially broke, and getting you this far, many of your parents are undoubtedly strapped as well.
It's not a far-fetched guess that in the audience today are proud parents who lost way too much in the financial meltdown of 2007-2008 and the subsequent bad years that show no signs of ending. Some are undoubtedly living in houses that are "underwater," while their cumulative wealth (largely in housing) -- to judge by the most recent figures we have -- might have been cut by 40%. (If you are Hispanic or African-American, those numbers could look horrifically worse.) And as I'm hardly the first to say, there's no one around with any intention of bailing you out.
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Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project and author of "The United States of Fear" as well as "The End of Victory Culture," runs the Nation Institute's TomDispatch.com. His latest book, co-authored with Nick Turse, is "Terminator Planet: The First History of Drone Warfare, 2001-2050." To listen to Timothy MacBain's latest Tomcast audio interview in which Engelhardt discusses drone warfare and the Obama administration, click here or download it to your iPod here. This piece originally appeared on TomDispatch. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.
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Oh, and then blame whoever is in charge now. This is how Republicons roll folks. And now you can vote for a new, even worse Republicon plastic parasite: Mitler Robmee.
The housing crisis built on loans to low income earners who would have never gotten loans without government assistance. Now most are underwater or are out and will never have another chance to own a home again. What did our government do for them?
The student loan debacle! Is America going to bail out these college graduates?
What are the costs of the healthcare taxes? What will these new burdens do to unemployment?
I teach at a major university, and it is very sad to see so many bright, well-educated graduates having to go home to live with their parents and take menial jobs with the burden of such huge student loans. It is a travesty!
Neither do most adults.!
Smokescreen after smokescreen is contantly appearing in the media to keep anybody from finding out; by corrupt politicians who practically turn themselves insideout to keep the real plots being uncovered.
There is so much going on behind closed doors; even the political creeps have a hard time keeping up with it.
If a bill has been being debated; hanging around long enough; Congress will pass it just to get rid of the aggravation.
Prime example: OBAMACARE
Not one Congressman or Senator knows what's really in this plan.
Even addlebrained Pelosi said "We have to pass it so we can find out what's in it".
Does this sound like anybody in Washington really cares about their constituents.???
The US is multiple TRILLIONS of dollars in debt; something the government has been unable to hide from the people.
But very few of us know why this is happening.
Not only has it been going on for some time; it IS going to continue and it is going to get MUCH worse if the American people continue to allow bought and paid for politicians to make behind-closed-door deals and **** taxpayers money down the rat-holes of countries which are our enemies.
Congress has no reason to pass legislation that will benefit the US and her people.
Their salaries, their raises, their healthcare plans and their pensions are untouchable.
A large part of Obama's goal is to destroy the Constitution.
Under his "leadership???" we have lost quite a few of our rights guaranteed by the Constitution, and if he is re-elected; we can expect more of the same.
Our government is both CORRUPT and BROKEN, and these crooked politicians will continue to try to bring the US to its knees as long as the people allow them to get away with it.
Apathy and ignorance of the real facts are the primary reasons for the decline of our country.
The entire US is being destroyed by the people who are really running this dog-and-pony show.
George Soros is at the top of this list, the one person who can yank more of Obama's strings than anybody else.
Add to this list big business, Wall Street, crooked banks and crooked politicians who back them up, drug companies, lobbyists, mortgage lenders, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac etc. and the Federal Reserve are the ones really in control.
If we don't start to push back NOW, we might just as well resign ourselves to being trampled on further.!!!!!
Many of our vets are unable to find jobs and are at risk of losing the roofs over their heads thanks to the government.
Not all of these returning vets are grunts.
Many of them were clerks, engineers, statisticians etc. and could be working on re-building the US and saving themselves at the same time.
What did the military do with all the money they are saving because we are no longer sending BILLIONS of dollars to Iraq and BILLIONS more to support the troops who fought and DIED there.???
The VA currently has a backlog of 900,000 claims.
By the time they process these claims, our vets will have either lost everything, have long grey beards or will have died.
This is no accident.
The longer the VA can hold these claims off, the less money they will have to pay out.
The government didn't waste any time deploying hundreds of thousands of troops to Iraq and Afghanistan to be wounded, maimed or killed.
Now that these vets are back, the Pres, the DOD and the military want to pretend they never existed.
This is DESPICABLE.!!!!!
Cut all the "red tape".!!
Simplify the process and give the veterans their due.
The wife of the very first serviceman who was killed in Afghanistan is still; ten years later; fighting the VA to get what we and the government owe her.
AMERICA and AMERICANS FIRST.!!!!!
Now all we have to do is to get this across to a corrupt and uncaring government.!!!!!
Pain, despair and agony on me,
Deep dark depression,
Excessive Misery,
If it weren't for bad luck,
I'd have no luck at all.
Pain, despair and agony on me, AAAWWWRRRGGHH!
Are you yet another unthinking tool (and professionally mid-level corporate, perhaps?) of the oligarchs and corrupt politicians that seek to control the key aspects of our economy and political system, and if not, please tell us how--specifically, rather than glibly--in what ways we aren't now powerless against the corporations and their political sponsors and protectors, and how it is that the rest of us need to "grow up"?
Does the idea of psychological projection mean anything to you?