Populist dog

I’m not sure that I can be described as a populist, liberal although I may be according to what I think is an honest definition of that word. I’ve often expressed the opinion that the great strides our species has made have been the work of a miniscule fraction of individuals and those strides have more often than not been made against the kind of resistance that comes from the ignorance, superstition, gullibility and stupidity of a very sizeable fraction. The religious insanity, the witch hunts, inquisitions, persecutions and reigns of terror that fill history books don’t paint the passions of the people in flattering poses nor do the opinions of that public do anything to make me nod my head in aggreement.

Lou Dobbs is taking a lot of heat of late from people I would have thought would support his position that the American middle class; the group we like to think of as being the typical, the majority, the very heart of our society is losing ground. While I take exception to his “war on the middle class” rhetoric, it’s only because I’ve had a lifetime of wars on this and that and the war metaphor tends to allow us to abandon our principles too easily. I have no doubt however that what we call the middle class is increasingly excluded from prosperity and opportunity by the efforts of a government of, by and for the monetary elite.

The economy that we are told is sound and growing benefits fewer people than it did at the end of the last century. As Dobbs writes on CNN:

“And the truth is, our political, business and media elites have abandoned the cornerstone of this great nation: equality of rights, equality of economic opportunity and equality of educational opportunity. “

But it may not be only the lack of opportunity or the decreasing affluence of that “middle of the economic bell curve” group that is the indicator of illness, but the bewildered, confused, misinformed, enraged and ignorant condition so many have fallen into as a result of the official disinformation and corporate propaganda that permeates modern life. I have despaired of our ability to make choices that do not reflect the desires of global corporations and imperial ambitions.

Is Dobbs a xenophobe or a nativist or any of the things he’s being called by conservatives or crypto-conservatives? I think not. If he thinks that we need to increase legal immigration and decrease illegal immigration; if he thinks we need to control our balance of trade and if he thinks these things will improve the lot of most Americans without dragging us into isolationism, I agree.