Moving Toward Civil War
This brief commentary was inspired by the shocking
number of incidents of police brutality, especially as viciously rendered to
people of color. Law enforcement in
certain cities seems to have forgotten anything about the Civil Rights Act.
Bigotry of all forms is raising its ugly head as the
division in this nation heads toward a civil war to restore our civil rights.
The majority of Americans are not racists but a few rotten apples are making a
nefarious stench. It may be worth
another Civil War, which the majority will win, to throw the stinking apples in
the slammer in solitary confinement for the rest of their lives. I speak of the super rich sociopaths, like
the Koch Bros. in Kansas, Their obscene hoarding of preposterous wealth while a
couple of billion people are starving or at the verge of starvation is moral
and ethical crime of the greatest level imaginable. How does hoarding of wealth that causes
others to die differ from manslaughter????
During WWII Roosevelt and Congress taxed the rich at 95% and they didn't
complain (at least in public). Now the
stakes are even higher as the super rich control 70% of the world’s industrial
output fueled by Fossil Fuels. The resulting Global Warming threatens a mass
extinction of 95% of the biological life, including us, by the end of this
century. The military will not protect
the likes of the Koch Bros and George Bush because they have been the most
abused groups in our society.
As the GOP has gained more and more power they have
also moved at a rapid pace, especially in the last five years, to the
right. The RADICAL right as in the Tea
Party. Texas has been the leader in this
radical right movement. The Rumor mill
has it that almost all members of the State Legislature are Tea Party
members. But put the rumor mill aside
and their behavior confirms this shift.
Texas ranks 51st
in Medicaid dollars spent per capita, and then Gov. Perry turned down
9.5 billion dollars of essentially free money from the Obama administration to
bolster the Medicaid program. A
physician who follows these issues predicted that 2000 Texans a year would die
because of the lack of care if Medicaid program was not properly funded. Perry’s excuse was he wanted to bolster his presidential
candidacy status by showing he could “stand up to Obama”. So, he essentially said to hell with the
welfare of Texans in favor of his personal ambitions. And a humorous and tragic detail: if
nominated Perry would not be running against Obama as Obama was in his second
term and ineligible to run again.
Texas ranks 49th
in dollars per student spent in the public schools
Texas has
attempted a work around for the Roe vs Wade abortion ruling
which has been upheld by the Supreme
Court several times when challenged.
This bogus legislation has the Legislature practicing medicine without a
license, and the bill that denies women of the right to control their own
bodies is still in the appeals process.
The mental
health care system has been defunded to the point where it is ineffective in
treating and caring for the mentally ill.
I know, I worked at the largest of the State mental hospitals and saw
the budget cuts every year from 2002-2010.
The morale at the state’s once exemplary mental health system, is
heartbreaking.
Texas has the
highest incarceration rate in the world.
Prisons have become a big money maker for the State.
Texas has kept
the population of the greater Austin area, 2.5 million people, in the dark
about the danger of the 8 year drought.
Every climatology group in the world predicts with near mathematical
certainty that Central Texas will run dry. The city is set up for a forced
migration crisis just like the one that will take place in Southern California
in seven months or so. But unlike Gov.
Brown in California, who has been honest about the severity of the situation
and acquired an independent company using state of the art techniques which determined
that there was only one years worth of water available (about three months
ago), Governors Perry and now Abbott have made multiple bald faced lies about
the situation. This sets up the
population of Travis County for a sudden and unexpected running out of water
and with no water there will be no power, and plunge the population into total
socioeconomic anarchy overnight. The
death toll will be in the 10’s of thousands, the Capitol will be destroyed and
the State Government will have to be moved to another city. There is no evidence that any level of
government even has a plan to make a plan to deal with this catastrophe.
I could go on but every governmental service that
serves people has been all but eliminated.
Texas is now a State for the rich.
When I show the above statistics to the average Texas, they are
appalled. Totally unaware of what was
being done to them over the past 30 years.
These policies DO NOT REPRESENT THE WISHES OF THE PEOPLE OF TEXAS, but
this is what can happen when the majority doesn’t vote. Rick Perry’s last election was won as he
carried 17% of the state’s registered voters.
A Democratic Republic does not work when the populous is uneducated,
pays no attention to what their elected officials do, and do not vote. So, the cause of this slamming the door on
the unfortunate members of Texas is the people themselves.
The increasingly polarized American public is seeing
the “trickle down effect” (a term Ronald Reagan used to describe how the
economic system works, but its meaning fits here). When sociopaths in power get away with
nefarious deeds, the less gifted sociopaths feel empowered to do the same. Law enforcement attracts sociopaths because
it gives them power over others. As
state sociopath Governors and police chiefs have moved to the right, it isn’t a
case of saying to the police “go out and beat up some niggers”, but when those
who do act on their sociopathic impulses to cause misery to others carry out
their brutality, and ARE NOT PUMISHED OR REPRIMANDED, this is seen as a carte
blanche “OK” from their superiors. This
is the mechanism that has caused the increase in police brutality to accelerate
so fast.
LA must recruit officers with sociopathic tendencies for
these very reasons. Law and order
enforced by brutality is the way ISIS does business, so the people of LA who
vote for Mayors and Police Chiefs with similar tendencies “of being tough on
crime”, are to blame for the long history of racial violence. Jimmy Cochran got
a guilty OJ Simpson a “not guilty” verdict by pointing out the sordid history
of racially driven brutality by the LAPD.
People screamed at the verdict, but playing the “race card” was not only
smart, but it revealed the gross negligence of the officials in LA who had
allowed racial brutality to go unchecked for so long. So from the broader social viewpoint, justice
was served in a not-guilty verdict. But
other than bitch about the “legal system” it does not appear that the people of
LA learned a damn thing from the Simpson trial.
So the nation is faced with the same issue. Are we going to be a nation that allows the
unfortunate sick to go without medical care, that allows our children to grow
up illiterate; or are we going to return to our roots as stated in the
Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and restated by Obama’s hero
Abraham Lincoln who said: “The purpose of government is do for the people what
the people cannot do for themselves.”
The truth is Obama is true moderate Republican than those who have gone
so far to the right that they have fallen off the political boundaries which
have defined this nation from the beginning.
MORRIS CREEDON-MCVEAN,D.O.
A gentleman and a scholar,
Austin, Texas
July 27, 2015
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