Manipulated By Fear

Workers need to understand that fear is a potent weapon in the hands of the powerful elites. In his book, Death of the Liberal Class, Christopher Hedges writes, the fear of communism, like the fear of Islamic terrorism was used to suspend civil liberties, including freedom of speech, habeas corpus. In the name of anti-communism, the capitalist class, terrified, of the numerous labor strikes after WWII, rammed through the Taft-Hartley Act in 1947 along with a Congressional override of President Harry Truman’s veto. It was the most destructive legislative blow to workers until NAFTA. It was fear that in 2001 after the 9/11 attack on the Twin Towers, Bush administration were allowed to push through the Patriot Act, engaged in extraordinary rendition, and establish offshore prisons where we engaged in torture, which was against our code of conduct. Fear has led us to embrace the endless wars in the Middle East. It is the cowardice of the liberal class leaves the group prone to manipulation, which can only be fought against by the working class being educated in the history of liberalism and unions. Once the liberal class and unions are gone, there will be a power vacuum filled by charismatic demagogues, which then opens the door to totalitarian movements. The promises of these movements are fantastic and unrealistic, but when the workers find out the fraud, it might be too late. Labor has lost its voice by spending their energy on the political correctness, which the GOP makes fun of us by calling us “snowflakes.” We need to spend our capital on minimum wage, healthcare fro all, voting rights, prison reform, climate change, jobs, and housing for all. This is all can be done by getting over the made up fear and ending the every lasting wars and spend that money here by hiring our armed forces and unemployed to do work here at home. There is so much work to be done, beginning with our ever crumbling infrastructure.