Two
Thumbs Down For Our Broken System
by Rev. Paul
J. Bern
(excerpt
from chapter 6 of, "Occupying
America: We Shall Overcome")
Is it any
wonder that people are exploding in frustration? A record-high 81% of
Americans are dissatisfied with the way the country is being
governed, adding to negativity that has been building over the past
10 years. The seven findings are from Gallup's annual Governance
survey, updated Sept. 8-11, 2011. The same poll shows record or
near-record criticism of Congress, elected officials, government
handling of domestic problems, the scope of government power, and
government waste of tax dollars.
[1] 82% of
Americans disapprove of the way Congress is handling its job.
[2] 69% say
they have little or no confidence in the legislative branch of
government, an all-time high and up from 63% in 2010.
[3] 57% have
little or no confidence in the federal government to solve domestic
problems, exceeding the previous high of 53% recorded in 2010 and
well exceeding the 43% who have little or no confidence in the
government to solve international problems.
[4] 53% have
little or no confidence in the men and women who seek or hold elected
office.
[5]
Americans believe, on average, that the federal government wastes 51
cents of every tax dollar, similar to a year ago, but up
significantly from 46 cents a decade ago and from an average 43 cents
three decades ago.
[6] 49% of
Americans believe the federal government has become so large and
powerful that it poses an immediate threat to the rights and freedoms
of ordinary citizens. In 2003, less than a third (30%) believed this.
[7] At 43%,
fewer Americans today than at any time in the past four decades say
they have a great deal or fair amount of trust in the federal
government to handle domestic problems. That is significantly lower
than the 58% average level of confidence Gallup has found on this
since 1972, including a 77% reading shortly after the 9/11 attacks.
Along with Americans' record-low confidence in the federal government
on domestic policy, Gallup finds record skepticism about government
waste. As previously reported, Americans, on average, think the
federal government in Washington wastes 51 cents of every tax dollar,
the highest estimated proportion of waste Gallup has found on this
measure in trends dating to 1979.
Americans'
sense that the federal government poses an immediate threat to
individuals' rights and freedoms is also at a new high, 49%, since
Gallup began asking the question using this wording in 2003. This
view is much more pronounced among Republicans (61%) and independents
(57%) than among Democrats (28%). But there are more fundamental
reasons – reasons that hit way too close to home – why many
Americans today feel threatened by their government, by the possible
loss of jobs or homes, and most of all they fear getting sick or
injured, which for many people would mean personal bankruptcy. But
the most visceral fear that people have in these very tough times is
the loss of their ability to sustain themselves, and especially their
kids. I have first-hand experience in this regard, as do millions of
others.
Psychological
oppression – manifested by widespread apathy and resignation in the
face of major corporate and government attacks on working Americans –
is at an all time high in the US. Historically, it's often a strong
and sustained youth rebellion that enables a society to throw off
severe psychological oppression. The following is a breakdown of the
forces I see favoring and countering the formation of an uprising in
the US that will be led by its youth:
[1] 35% of the US
population is under 25.
[2] Total
unemployment among age 16-25: 24-25%, with many facing permanent
unemployment.
[3] Percent of non-white
unemployed youth: 46%
[4]
Unemployment among African Americans under 25: 40.7%
[5]
Unemployment among Hispanic Americans under 25: 35%
[6] Highest
rate of imprisonment (which disproportionately targets youth and
minorities) in the industrialized world.
[7]
Widespread availability of illicit drugs to dampen youth resentment
and anger, especially in minority communities. Ever since the opium
wars in China, addictive drugs have been a favorite weapon of the
British and American elite to suppress resistance movements. The late
Gary Webb and others who have studied CIA involvement in narcotics
trafficking have documented disproportionate targeting of minority
neighborhoods with both heroin and crack cocaine. This is no
accident.
Clinical
psychologist and social commentator Dr Bruce Levine recently
published an article on the Web about American societal institutions
that tend to crush young people's natural spirit of resistance. The
institutions Levine highlights as inducing compliance, as opposed to
rebellion, include student-loan debt, the uniquely American tendency
to medicate non-compliant and rebellious children and teens, American
schools that educate for compliance rather than democracy,
normalization and fear of surveillance, the "three screens"
(TV, computers and cellphones), and so-called "fundamentalist"
consumerism (the completely ridiculous belief that all human needs
can be met by buying something).
No
one disputes that teen homelessness is both the strongest and most
alarming symptom of the disintegration of US society. Homeless
children and teenagers under 18 represent one-third of the US
homeless population. 2.8 million American children have at least one
episode of homelessness every year, while 1.35 million American
children are permanently homeless. Approximately ten percent of
homeless teens had access to state and city-run shelters prior to the
2008 economic collapse. However, owing to extreme state and city
budgetary difficulties, most have been forced to close. In third
world countries, homeless children are called "street kids."
The US government prefers to call them "unaccompanied minors."
Giving it a fancy name doesn't hide the fact that the rate of
homeless American children per capita is worse than in some third
world countries. Today's homeless kids will grow up to be America's
infuriated adults. Infuriated adults invariably strike back at that
which enrages them. It happens 200% of the time.
Among
countries who keep a count of homeless children under 18, India has
the highest rate of street children per capita, with 1 homeless child
per 61 residents. Egypt is next with 1 per 110, then Pakistan (1 per
120), Kenya (1 per 133), Russia (1 per 141), and Congo (1 per 148).
The per capita rate of child homelessness in the US is 1 per 245
residents. This is worse than the Philippines (1 per 360), Honduras
(1 per 370), Jamaica (1 per 419), Uruguay (1 per 1,000), and Morocco
(1 per 1066). Germany, in contrast, has 1 homeless child per 4,100
residents.
The
understandable rage that many of these kids are harboring is exactly
what happens when all hope of any economic opportunity is taken away
from any nation's youth. This is precisely what happened in Britain
in the summer of 2011.
Speculations circle as to why the 2011 London riots became so big,
but the answer was quite obvious as the disorder spread to Leeds,
Liverpool, Bristol and Birmingham. Politicians and police officers
who one day were making stony-faced statements about criminality are
now simply begging the young people of Britain's inner cities to go
home. The violence on the streets was being dismissed as "pure
criminality", as the work of a "violent minority", as
"opportunism". This is madly insufficient. It is no way to
talk about viral civil unrest that has been a long time coming. Angry
young people with nothing to do and nothing to lose are turning on
their own communities, and they cannot be stopped, and they know it.
It will happen in America next. It's already started with the
mobilization of the Occupy and 99% Movements.
Violence
is rarely mindless. The politics of a burning building, a smashed-in
shop or a young man shot by police may be obscured even to those who
lit the rags or fired the gun, but the politics are there. Most of
the people who will be writing, speaking and pontificating about US
civil unrest have absolutely no idea what it is like to grow up in a
community where there are no jobs, no space to live or move, and the
police are on the streets stopping-and-searching you as you come home
from school and work. The people who do will be waking up this week
in the sure and certain knowledge that after decades of being ignored
and marginalized and harassed by the police, after years of not
seeing any conceivable hope of a better future buried under a pile of
student loan debt, they are finally on the news. In one NBC report, a
young man in Tottenham was asked if rioting really achieved anything:
"Yes," said the young man. "You wouldn't be talking to
me now if we didn't riot, would you”?
Riots
are about power, and they are about catharsis. They are not about
poor parenting, or youth services being cut, or any of the other snap
explanations that media pundits have been trotting out. Structural
inequalities are not solved by a few pool tables or basketball
courts. People riot because it makes them feel powerful, even if only
for a night. People riot because they have spent their whole lives
being told that they are good for nothing, and they realize that
together they can do anything – literally, anything at all. People
to whom respect has never been shown riot because they feel they have
little reason to show respect themselves, and it spreads like
wildfire after a lightning strike.
Here in the
US, we have so far had the advent of the Occupy Wall St. and the “We
Are The 99%” movements on the American political scene since the
fall of 2011. The primary difference between the protest movement in
the US and those overseas – such as North Africa, Syria, Yemen and
Nigeria as of this writing – is that the American protests have all
been peaceful and nonviolent. However, I have observed a growing
groundswell and a developing cultural backlash here in America
regarding the choices for President that the American voters will
have in 2012. As of now, voters have a choice of Barack Obama,
someone who once promised me “change you can believe in” only to
give me “change that scares the hell out of me”, or Mitt Romney,
which scares me even worse because of their insistence on mixing
religion and politics (which is, speaking as a minister of the
Gospel, unconstitutional and unlawful). This could be seen by
American voters as little more than having to pick the most necessary
evil or nothing at all, and that could enrage the American people
enough for an explosion of civil disobedience that could easily
result in massive rioting. Either that, or a sudden surge in the
price of fuel to, say, $5.00 - $7.00 per gallon for whatever reason,
would likely turn the American people into a raging inferno that
would burn the capitalist, profit-driven and intentionally rigged
economic system to the ground.
Although up
until now the American people have shown admirable restraint during
these difficult times in which we live, this time the public anger
will not be deflected. Confessions, not false, will be extracted from
the guilty parties. Occupy Wall Street has set the snowball rolling.
In so doing it has made America aware of a sinister, usurious process
by which wealth has systematically been funneled into fewer and fewer
hands, and it is a process in which Washington is playing a useful
supporting role.
Over
the next year, I expect the “what” will give way to the “how”
in the broad electorate’s comprehension of the financial situation.
The 99 percent must learn to differentiate the bloodsuckers and
rent-extractors from those in the 1 percent who make the world a
better, more just place to live. Once people realize how Wall Street
made its huge pile of cash, understand how financiers get rich, and
what it is that they actually do, the time will become ripe for
someone to gather the spreading ripples of anger and perplexity into
a focused tsunami of retribution, and to make the Wall Street
criminals pay, properly, for the grief and woe they have caused. The
truth that is written throughout
this book is a part of that same tsunami, focusing the rage and
frustration of the US middle and working classes, and particularly
that of the poor, into an expression of how we feel, what we need
(not our wants, just mainly our needs), what our hopes and dreams
are, and above all recognition of our value as dynamic and sovereign
individuals, all of whom can contribute to the greater good, and to
our belief in the sacredness of life.