The rich aren't scared that we hate them, they are scared that we don't hate each other.

The rich aren’t really scared that we hate them. The wealthy worry that we may stop hating each other. Engels was right on the money when he said that the U.S. would never achieve socialism as long as employers could pit demographic groups---back then, it was different immigrant groups---one against another. Oh those filthy scab Irish, bringing down wages. Should send them back to their home country to starve. With the Germans hating the Irish hating the Blacks, the Rockefellers and Morgans and Vanderbilts had little to fear.

To hear the wealthy talk, this election season it is all about numbers. Unemployment figures. Uninsured numbers. Foreclosure rates. Infant mortality. Life expectancy. Numbers don’t lie, right? Not necessarily true. The banks are largely responsible for the scary figures we read everyday in the paper. They have staged a capital strike so small businesses can not get loans, causing jobs to vanish. They have forced folks into bad mortgages and then used fraud to get them out of their homes with all their savings gone. They begged for a bailout that they are now using as world’s biggest political slush fund.

Bankers are good at numbers. They know how to cause a Wall Street panic and how to make Main Street shiver in fear. They know how to turn that fear into fascism---they did it in Italy and Germany less than a century ago. They know how to pit one group of workers against another in order to drive down wages. White workers are told “If only you could get back ‘white privilege’ you would be sitting pretty again.” Blacks are told “Illegal aliens have stolen your jobs.” The young are told “Grandma is squandering your retirement on Ensure and Depends.”

Wanna know how to spoil the banksters fun? Follow Dr. King’s advise:

“We must live together as brothers or perish together as fools.”
MLK Jr.

How do we live together as brothers? We pursue the dreams of the civil rights movement. Equal pay for women for equal work. Equal opportunity for gays in school, employment and the military. An INS that deports criminals, not hard working immigrant workers. A Justice Department that hires lawyers with civil rights experience that can enforce the Voting Rights Act. A nation in which the disabled are treated as valued workers rather than burdens. An administration that acknowledges the right of indigenous people to their own land.

There is not a snowball's chance in hell that I will sit out the next election, nor will I consider for a moment wasting my vote on a third party splitter. As long as I can remember, the Democratic Party has stood for civil rights, and if we ever want to emerge from this manufactured recession, we need to embrace the dream once again.