October 10, 2011

Dear Sis~
The mainstream media (from what I can see from my admittedly abbreviated view here in a death row cell) is not paying much attention to the protesters "occupying Wall Street" nor bothering to investigate and explicate for the general public the very genuine concerns and issues which have these folks (and most Americans) so frustrated and angry.  People from across America, finally fed up with the status quo, are converging upon Wall Street to do the only thing they can, use their physical presence and voices to vent their rage with America's slow transformation into a stark two-class society, with the ultra rich in control and the rest a nation of burger-flippers.  It's finally dawning on many that our political system (not to mention our economic model) has been totally hijacked by the financial elite (even more so than in normal times, for the rich have always had inordinate political influence).  The average person may not have a degree in economics, may not be particularly financially sophisticated, but they can look around and see what time it is, they grasp the reality - and the adverse trend lines - and what it means to the "American Dream."  The gap between the haves and have nots has never been greater in modern times and is inexorably widening, with no end in sight.  I believed then, and I still believe now, that Obama's biggest mistake - and one which still haunts him today, weighing down on him like an anchor - was bailing out all the banks and Wall Street firms rather than letting them fail (or more accurately taking them over).  Obama was surrounded by and advised by (by his choice) the very scoundrels (i.e. Wall Street alumni) who brought the world-wide economic meltdown to us, and he drank the Kool-Aid they offered him, he spouted their rhetoric about banks being "too big to fail", and accepted their claim that the "only" solution was an unprecedented, astronomically huge transfer of taxpayers' monies from the (future) public coffers into the banks' pockets.  This was the largest heist in world history, done in broad daylight and totally legal.  It would be a joke if the results were not so tragic for the average person, and America in general.  Now, three years later, Joe Citizen, broke and unemployed, scans the landscape and sees the obvious, that the only ones doing well (very, very well) are the very ones who drove us into the ditch, while everyone else is suffering.  The anger, conscious or subconscious, resides in just about everyone's breast, and the one thing they are sure about is that Obama was the conductor of this train when the decisions were made to bail out the rich and ignore the masses.  This is a fact; they can pretty it up and obfuscate it with rhetoric, but they can't change the facts.  Obama had a chance to fundamentally alter the balance of power but he shirked his duty (to the masses) in favor of kowtowing to the elite.  In the end Obama was just like any typical mainstream politician, Democrat or Republican; he went with the big money.  Now he is reaping what he sowed: the deep, visceral residual anger and discontent in the hearts of the average American.  This is part of the anger animating the Tea Party, although many of them have been brain-washed by the right-wing Republicans (and their Wall Street puppet masters) into carrying their water, into believing that teachers, firemen, cops and union workers are the ones bankrupting America, rather than the bankers, the multi-national corporations and the Wall Street movers and shakers who use our national treasury as their own private piggy bank.  If these Tea Party activists ever started thinking for themselves they'd wake up and see how they're being manipulated by the status quo power brokers (who laugh at them behind their backs) and they'd join those protesters on Wall Street.  Now that would be something the media would cover!
Love & Peace,
Bill