On the ( Empire’s ) Waterfront

Op Ed Commentary

[dropcap]R[/dropcap]emember the famous taxicab  scene from the great film On the Waterfront ? Ex boxer Terry Malloy ( Marlon Brando ) telling his older brother Charlie ( Rod Steiger ), who is second in command to a crooked union boss, that he didn't look out for him enough. Borrowing from that scene , and from that film, this writer has taken  ' poetic license ' a bit:

" You are my government Uncle Sam, you shoulda looked out for me a bit... You don't understand. I coulda had class. I coulda been a contender. I coulda been somebody, instead of a bum which is what I am... Let's face it. It was YOU Uncle Sam!"

Only a certifiable fool  would miss the fact that the majority of we Amerikans are either knee deep  in ****, financially, health wise and even spiritually, or very close to it. The smell of war , phony war, and the smell of greed has fogged up the thinking of most of us. Where do I begin? Come on, how many times  that Uncle Sam 'Bangs the drums for war ' before the truth will sink in? One needs not go back further than the dawn of this new century to see and smell the ****. September 11th 2001 was the shock the puppet masters wanted, and so far it still works. With all the diligent and comprehensive research done by so many scientists and investigators ( some mainstream and some not) the stain of that lie will always paint over the truth. Connecting 9/11 to what followed is easy: The excuse to not only destroy and occupy oil rich Iraq, and mineral rich, key pipeline area Afghanistan,  was part of the PNAC ( Project for a New American Century) plan. The real ' Deep State' has continually hoped  to dominate the Middle East before the Chinese and Russians get too deeply involved there. As the late General Smedley Butler put it in his 1935 essay War is a Racket , the money people ( banks ) and contractors make a fortune on ANY war we get into... anywhere and at anytime! Just ' Follow da money!'

On the subject of money, we probably always were, as a nation, obsessed with those of great personal  wealth. Working stiffs should have been angered by such a notion; instead too many of us became enthralled by it. The ' Roaring 20s' were replete with media celebration of the super rich. Perhaps because of the Great Depression many who at one time accepted the power of those having excess wealth now began to get pissed off. As things loosened up economically so did mindsets. Onetime labor strikers and ' Eat the rich ' working stiffs began to settle in as good Democrats under the tent of a strong labor movement. Then, during the 70s and into the 80s the ' owners of capital' slowly regained control of our culture with the emphasis on consumerism  and Greed is Good. Look where we are now: The workforce has union representation in the TEENS! Labor unions themselves are run  in many instances by leaders who'  suck up' to management with too many concessions. [Well, this is actually not so recent; it has characterised most of the American landscape for generations, ever since once combative unions fell under the spell of "business unionism", the phony notion —fascist, actually—that there is no real different economic interest between the employer and employee classes, and that all classes should work together in harmony for the good of the nation, a notion, incidentally celebrated in the film classic Metropolis).

All facets of society are filled with mega millionaire professional sports owners, players and of course their media partners. The movies and television shows we watch ( even the news shows ) are filled with mega millionaires on airwaves that ' We the people' rightly own. All major television "journalists" and the stars of the print media are multimillionaires. They are part of the sellout "10%" doing the bidding for the "1%" (in reality the 0.00001%). A sample of salaries suggests where their allegiances and social consciousness lie (these data are now a bit obsolete, as these people often shift roles and Lauer himself was retired due to sex abuse accusations, but the salary level is what counts):

Under the rules of capitalism, where everything is "commoditised" (turned into something to be bought and sold as merchandise), these people are heavily promoted and self-promoting "brands".  (Note the table above shows significant disparities in compensation. This can be explained because the facts about the actual salary of a particular celebrity in America are usually carefully hidden, and some compensation packages may not be included, by both the employer and the celebrity, and this goes double for "journalists". Anderson Cooper, too, an heir to the Vanderbilt fortune, is reputed to be worth over $200 MM.) ⁽¹⁾

Yet,  through our ' bought and paid for' elected officials we allow the billionaires to control what comes out of the boob tube. Did you ever notice how all our television programming has more and longer commercials? Watching a New York Giants football game on a Sunday afternoon in 1960, a ' time out ' was literally one minute and then right back to the field. Now you can literally make a sandwich and begin eating it during one commercial break! How about our infamous Wall Street?  The investment class is now and always has been filled with the super rich. Remember, when Henry Paulson became Treasury Sec. under Junior Bush,?  Before being appointed Paulson retired from the predatory ' Palace on Wall Street' Goldman Sachs... at a single year compensation package worth.. ready for this... $ 500 million! And he stood there in front of the cameras and looked like Sad Sack as he told all the suckers out there that we had to ' Bail Out ' the banks. True conservatives and true progressives were shouting ' NO, place those toxic firms in Receivership , buying their lousy assets at 10 or 20 cents on the dollar'! Yet still, with all the unnecessary suffering by so many of us, after the ' smoke cleared ' many of my fellow citizens still admire those super rich ' makers and shakers ' of fortune.

Folks, as long as the suckers out there pay homage to the war makers, the super rich celebrity class and of course the phony ' Free market' Wall Street con job.... and Uncle Sam represents THEM and not us.... we will continue to be a nation of Terry Malloys.

PA Farruggio