Reagan’s Shining City on a Hill: Now Filled With the Unemployed, the Homeless, and Foreclosed

By Ed Raymond
Staff Writer
Republicans are now dragging up an old line that Ronald Reagan used to describe the nutty idea that the United States is the lone country in the world with the ability (because of our high morals and a high divine draft choice by God) to bring democracy (hence, civilization) to the rest of the world. Did you all know we are exceptional? That we are superior to all the other countries in the world? All of the potential candidates for the Republican nomination, including those paid by Fox News, are pushing “American Exceptionalism.”

Reagan described America as a “shining city on a hill,” featuring lighthouses shining beacons of liberty and justice around the world. A recent poll by the Public Religion Research Institute found that 58 percent of Americans agreed with this statement: “God has granted America a special role in human history.”  (I need to point out that 40 percent also believe that Jesus Christ is going to descend to earth in rapturous delight by 2050.)  For Bible thumpers who need a reference, the line “city on a hill” comes from Matthew 5:14: “You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden.”

Well, as Sarah Palin might say, “How’s that shinin’ city on a hill doin’?”  It’s seems clear that many of the swirling lights have gone out. The Bible and Ronnie say the city on a hill cannot be hidden. Our cities aren’t. We have 22 million unemployed, 30 million working lousy part-time jobs when they want good full-time ones, 48 million on food stamps, 51 million without health insurance, the possibility of 19 million American homes facing foreclosure in the next five years, and the middle class being decimated by the second. Most of the lights are going out, Sarah.
I Thought Greece “Invented” Democracy, Not Our Famous Old White Men
America is a great place for most people, but in these days of reality shows, isn’t it about time we get real? Sarah Palin, who makes a case for American exceptionalism in her latest book America By Heart, is magnificently ignorant in history and blissfully incurious for a college graduate, but she is exceptionally crafty and cunning in making a celebrity buck.
Politically she is just another ignorant Bush with boobs. She writes that Democrats “don’t believe we have a special message for the world or a special mission to preserve our greatness for the betterment… of all humanity.” And she is waiting for God to tell her to run in 2012.

Republicans such as Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Mike Pence, Mike Huckabee, Rick Santorum, “Toolittle” Tim Pawlenty, and a hundred others running for president, say we are exceptional: “we hold a common bond in standing for certain self-evident truths, like freedom, inalienable natural and human rights, democracy, republicanism, the rule of law, civil liberty, civic virtue, the common good, fair play, private property, and Constitutional government.” Let’s examine how we are doing in all of these areas.
Both Theodore Roosevelt and Herbert Hoover Said “Capitalists Are Damned Greedy”
Republican President Theodore Roosevelt gave this political analysis a hundred years ago: “Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people. To destroy this invisible government to befoul the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of the day.” What has changed?

Congress is now working on solutions to our near-$14 trillion debt and our 52 million unemployed and underemployed. Greedy Wall Street bankers and the National Chamber of Commerce have destroyed (again!) the honesty, integrity, and trust any business has to have for future deals. In just two years JPMorgan Chase lost $51 billion in faulty mortgages,  bad commercial loans, and unpaid credit cards. The bank also screwed their clients by charging excessive overdraft fees. The banks paid Congress well not to interfere with their corrupt practices.  Why would Jamie Dimon, CEO of JP Chase Morgan, make this statement: “I am not embarrassed to be a banker. I am not embarrassed to be in business.”  He should be.  Remember that famous line: “When they say it isn’t about the money…..it’s really about the money?”  The problem is too many bankers were not embarrassed by their own actions.
We Are Not Exceptional in a Lot of Areas
Routine statistics kept by international agencies and the United Nations are often used to rank countries. We are ranked #8 now in per capita Gross Domestic Product. We once led the world. Don’t we often hear that we are the richest country in the world? We are rated 17th in lowest political corruption. For a democracy that ranking is really exceptional.  Even with George Bush as the “Great Decider” just two years ago, we are not even rated #1 in “Freedom of Decision Making.” That honor belongs to Finland.

Florida Senator-elect and Tea Partier Marco Rubio declared frequently during his campaign that “America is the greatest nation of all time.”  “All time” includes the Mongol Empire of the 13th century. Genghis Khan conquered much of the known world at that time and ruled it rather well. He controlled four times the area that Alexander the Great ruled 350 years before Christ. The Greeks and Romans did not do too badly either. Senator Rubio needs a number of history lessons before he assumes a toga for his new role in the Senate of the United States. I have to say that a little hyperbole from a politician is acceptable if you can register it on a blowhard meter. But too often these people begin to believe what they say, and that’s when the trouble starts.

Our presumptive Speaker of the House, John Boehner, has a very bad habit of declaring that the U.S. has “the best health care and medical system in the world.”  He’s a liar because he knows better. There isn’t a survey in the world that ranks us high in any medical area. We even die earlier than most. Oklahoma Republican Senator Tom Coburn said last week that the U.S. had the best and most effective food safety program in the world. No, Senator, we are tied for 4th with Canada. As an old farm boy I learned the longer you are around bullshit the better it smells.

We do lead the world in one department. Divorces.
Ameriquest Mortgage Manager: “We Are All Here to Make as Much F______ Money as Possible”
According to the economists, We are now supposed to be out of the latest recession. I don’t believe anyone has noticed.  According to Alan Greenspan, we were never supposed to be in one because derivatives, credit default swaps, collaterized crap, and securitization were supposed to be good money-making tools for the markets. I guess Alan forgot about Enron and Bush bud Ken Lay, Global Crossing, WorldCom, Tyco, and dozens of other businesses run by crooks and thieves that marked businesses for relentless greed since the 1980’s.  Ronald Reagan and his California Mafia adapted Gordon Gekko’s creed of “Greed is Good” for the entire United States economy. So the banks called up their bond raters like Moody’s and told them to put Triple AAA on subprime mortgages they had mingled in smelly financial packages.  Then they peddled this garbage to unsuspecting investors. They were all trying “to make as much f______ money as possible” as the Ameriquest manager said. What an exceptional goal in life.

When Reagan started his reverse Robin Hood program, the richest one percent made nine percent of the nation’s income. Not bad. One needs a few rich people around to serve as role models for the poor and middle class and to provide sight-seeing routes for tourists. But 35 years later the top one percent have greedily snapped up between 25 to 30 percent of the nation’s total assets. CEOs at the start of the Reagan Revolution seemed to have been satisfied with pay equal to 50 times their average worker’s salary.  Now they average 500 times the average worker’s salary.

We are beginning to turn on each other. Large groups in society are not only not getting ahead, they are falling far behind. I think the college tuition riots in England are just the beginning of a very serious tear in the fabric of society. In one sense the Tea Party movement was the beginning in this country. The problem is they voted the rascals in, not out. The Tea Party movement has been financed by the rich, such as the Koch brothers and the likes of Dick Armey and has been sold a bill of goods. The Republicans have just about succeeded in filling the bathtub where they will be able to drown government. In a couple of years, Tea Partiers will be taking a real exceptional bath, too.
Other “Exceptional” American Ideas
:: In this exceptional country we now have over 50 million who lack access to adequate food. People in 18 million households are forced to skip meals because of lack of food. We have almost 50 million who are below the poverty level.

:: In this exceptional country we have 51 million without health insurance. The Republican administration in Arizona has instituted death panels for Medicaid-covered organ transplants. Anyone with any sense knows health care is rationed all the time because of money and the rich-poor gap. The Republicans are opposed to universal health care and any aspect of Obamacare because it might control the greed of health insurance companies, hospitals, and millionaire doctors. Is it exceptional to pay twice as much for health care than any other country in the world while using a “Let ‘em die” philosophy with 51 million uninsured? I think that’s exceptionally dumb.

:: In this exceptional country, corporations are recording record profits while workers are suffering severe cutbacks in wages, benefits, and every aspect of furthering the “American Dream.”

:: This exceptional country has the largest income gap between the rich and the poor since long before the Great Depression.

:: This exceptional country provides corporate CEOs and executives with what John Boehner calls “the best health care in the world” while providing workers the 33rd best in the world, ranked behind Castro’s Cuba by the World Health Organization. Quotes from the USA Today demonstrate this great disparity:”Hundreds of top corporate managers get medical benefits…far beyond what’s offered rank-and-file employees. Polaris Industries execs get $50,000 a year health policies, including yearly Mayo Clinic exams for CEO Scott Wine, other executives and spouses. Spokeswoman Marlys Knutson says, “Staying healthy is part of our culture.” I wonder if keeping Polaris workers healthy is part of the corporate culture. Kohl’s department stores also provides $50,000 a year supplemental health pay for execs. Cereal marketer Ralcorp gives all execs $10,000 “per illness.” Nell Minow of the Corporate Library writes: “The great hypocrisy is this is going to the people best able to pay for this stuff. Executives should pay for this on their own or be covered by the same plan as everyone else at the company.”

:: This exceptional country has taken no action or shown any accountability for the torture and cruelty used against detainees in our two wars. Great Britain has accepted its responsibility by paying large sums of money to British citizens who were tortured by our CIA or “renditioned” to other countries for torture. In the short span of a decade we have violated the Geneva Convention and other treaties we have signed forbidding torture, thus destroying the human rights standards fostered over four centuries.

:: This exceptional country has gone from economic and moral world leader to third world status to banana republic in a decade.

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