Gross

Between 1979 and 1997, income for families in the middle class rose 9 percent. Income for upper class families in the top one percent of the population rose 140 percent. Why has the response to rising inequality been to reduce taxes on the rich? Because we’ve settled for “panem et circenus”: our bread and circuses, and have unwittingly complied with short-term government palliatives offered in place of a solution for significant, long-term problems. Our baseline necessities and entertainment have become the only entities the broad masses long for and are satisfied with. Meanwhile, George Bush has packed the Labor Board with his cronies serving corporate bigwigs at the expense of workers, after FDR passed the National Labor Relations Act to protect workers. Adolph Hitler said, “The broad masses of a population are more amenable to the appeal of rhetoric than to any other force.” It worked to his advantage once in history, and this same ideal is very likely to follow through at our expense on such a massively catastrophic scale once more if we continue to be inactive, sleeping pawns. Standing idly by, settling with complacency goes against the idea that to be a productive human on this earth means to be a nonconformist. What we need is a healthy media system to counteract the natural tendency to seek power, which reinforces the notion of protecting your interests by paying attention. Why is this imperative? In March 2003, the gallop poll asserted that 51 percent of Americans thought Saddam Hussein was personally responsible for 9/11.
Enough said.