A Nation of Dumb Liberals

Published in The Catalyst 

The argument can be made easily. The majority of self-identified Liberal Americans think supportively of the Obama administration. They are ignorant to the reality that his administration has a profoundly conservative platform benefiting education, immigration, economic and civil rights policies that largely mirror those of the previous administration. Their blindness to current events and their inability to differentiate rhetoric from practice proves something quite disturbing: we are a nation made up of apolitical liberals run by conservative interests.

The argument, even more disturbingly, can go much, much further. Take the shopping habits of mainstream liberals. They will buy tomato sauce labeled ‘natural’ at their local Whole Foods and pick up an $85 pro-Obama t-shirt at their closest Urban Outfitters. They won’t notice that the label ‘natural’ can be put on nearly anything and that the majority of Whole Foods products are neither local nor organic. They don’t face the reality that both Urban Outfitters and Whole Foods are owned by billionaire Republicans who love nothing more than cornering the market of self-absorbed Democrats. Nor will they read the news story that tells them the latest bigoted statement these CEOs released against Civil Rights. Most recently, the CEO of Whole Foods, John Mackey wrote an editorial for The Wall Street Journal claiming that Health Care should remain a “paid privilege” not a human right. Liberals like to pretend they are more conscious and educated shoppers than conservatives, but they are buying into the same damn system as everyone else. Many liberals will say they don’t like America and aren’t as patriotic as conservatives when part of the reason America doesn’t look the way they want is because they rarely vote or demand progressive reform. The bottom line is, Liberals are not pushing change, and while we can continue to blame conservatives and politicians on the right, it’s time liberals took a look at what their own representatives are doing next time they want to complain about corporate greed and consumer exploitation.

First, lets get things straight. Obama is not a real liberal. If he is, we need to come up with a new word for people who think he is- because, at this point, liberal and conservative are starting to sound as disturbingly similar as republican and democrat. Economically, Obama is just about as conservative as it comes. He appointed Larry Summers to head his Economic Recovery Advisory Board. Summers has spent the better part of his life arguing for privatization and deregulation in many domains, including finance. In fact, Summers chief accomplishment as Bill Clinton’s treasury secretary was the deregulation of financial derivatives that led to catastrophic damage of the housing bubble and laid the foundation for the 2008 economic crisis. Other members of his Economic Advisory board include a lobbyist for Goldman Sachs and a Harvard professor who has advocated for trickle-down economics for decades. There is not a single member of this board advocating for regulation or consumer protections.

The White House as it stands is furthering economic policies that advance the interests of the very wealthy and do little to quell the shrinkage of Middle Class America. As the poor get poorer and the deficit continues to devalue our dollar, Obama and those in power push forward an ever-expansive and overwhelmingly enormous military budget while providing tax cuts for the wealthy and colossal corporate bailouts. Despite a campaign platform to reign in Wall Street and install consumer protections to move us away from the hazardous greed that exploits homeowners and small businesses, Barack Obama has instead moved us further away from financial regulation than anyone could have imagined. Yes, he proposed and helped pass legislation that contained numerous do-good protections and limitations- but they were so weak and miniscule that lobbyists for Wall Street sat back and enjoyed the bill’s passage knowing that the issue of market regulation would not threaten them for years to come. Private banks, which we know have the dangerous ability to exploit consumers, remain free to engage in the business of faulty loans and mortgage scams. So, as our deficit (quadrupled under Obama’s spending spree) eclipses the entire U.S economy, we continue to pump money into prisons, war and a horrendously expensive health care system that remains the only one in the developed world that does not guarantee universal coverage. This system is not sustainable. This is not stimulus. When the government focuses on how great it is that that 100,000 people became employed last month while ignoring the fact that a quarter million gave up looking for work, something is wrong. When our employment numbers refuse to acknowledge the homeless or the imprisoned, something is wrong. And above all, when liberals argue that Obama’s economic policy is a sustainable way to thwart off recession, something is wrong.

 Don’t get me wrong. I’m pro-stimulus. That means I’m pro-jobs like green jobs and I support an economic rescue that limits our wasteful war on drugs, our ridiculous immigration policy and our wild insurance companies. But a massive research grant to design better video games for senior citizens based on their unique “game-play needs” is not stimulus. That my friends, is waste. And that, my friends, was what the so-called stimulus packages have been all about. Need more? How about millions upon millions to give government officials golf carts? How about $30 million for our beloved Colorado Rockies to have a new training center. The unfathomable amount of wasteful spending serves to put tiny band-aids on our economic depression but does not target change where needed. It feels right now like liberals are backing up Obama simply because they don’t want to face the fact that the man they elected is working against their interests.

Look, I love Americans. We live in a beautiful country full of good-hearted and well intentioned brothers and sisters from a diverse array of political and economic backgrounds. But, at the end of the day, too many of us are dumb. You can blame the education system, the media and its partisan oversimplifications, or you can boldly put some of the blame on the people themselves. It’s not too hard to pick up a copy of The New York Times every once in awhile, or just log on to BBC or PBS’s website. They just don’t have anyone pressuring them to do so. Being politically minded and well informed is too often mistaken for being arrogant and idealist. In the words of Ohio congressmen Dennis Kucinich, speaking of Americans support of Israel despite their lack of knowledge on the firebombing of homes and shutting down of resources, “Americans need to wake up. Ignorance can be a very powerful tool”. Even more simply, in the words of Malcolm X, “if you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything.” I just wish Malcolm X had added, “You should stand for something you know something about, or you’ll fall for something you didn’t know was stupid”.