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Granny d { November 8 2002 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
excerpted from http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=14506excerpted from http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=14506
How to Break the American Trance
By Doris Haddock, AlterNet
November 8, 2002
The following is a speech given by 92-year-old Doris "Granny D" Haddock,
who walked across the U.S. in 1999-2000 for campaign finance reform. She
made this speech to Citizens for Participation in Political Action in
Boston, on Sept. 27, 2002.
..."Some of you may be old enough to remember the Reagan
Administration. Mr. Reagan and those around him believed in a very new kind
of American hero. This new hero was a business hero -- not the fellow who
built up a family furniture store on Main Street and supported the Little
League and the Scouts; this new hero was not the woman who worked late
hours to create a successful travel agency, nor was this new business hero
anything like any of the hard-working Americans who built-up our middle
class, advanced our standard of living and gave us the resources and
leisure for the proper civic life of a democracy, with its leagues and
Rotaries and Lions and Elks and VFWs and party conventions and all that
glory.
"No, the Reagan business hero was the corporate takeover artist.
"Any regulations that might get in the way of these ruthless new
capitalists were removed -- removed so that reptiles of uncommon greed and
brutality might rule the earth, which they now nearly do.
"What soon happened was that ALL corporations of medium size or larger
had to look over their shoulders. How did a corporation protect itself in
this environment from a hostile takeover? It had to close down any
factories that were not earning obscene profits. Never mind that a factory
had served a town well for a century, or that it provided a healthy and
regular profit for its stockholders. If it seemed to be underperfoming by
the new hypergreed standards, or if it could be closed in favor of opening
a foreign plant that provided a slightly higher rate of return, then, in
this new atmosphere, the company was derelict in its duty to its
stockholders if it did not ruthlessly act.
"Perfectly good and profitable factories were closed. Benefits to
employees everywhere were attacked, and staffs were downsized, outsourced,
computerized, downsized again, outsourced again to temp agencies that paid
no health care or retirement, and on and on until America became a very
different place. The gap between rich and poor is now wider than at any
time in our history.
..."poverty is on the rise, and those with jobs find themselves so
overworked trying to make ends meet that there is little time for family or
for the joy of living. Indeed, there is very little joy left in American
life. Workers are not loyal to their companies, because companies treat
them like expendable slaves, with no dignity or assurance that hard work
will result in advancement or security.
"We are living in the harsh world invented by a handful of corporate
raiders whose values were completely foreign to the fairness and moderation
that had so long served as the proper foundation of American success and
the American dream of plenty for all. They were not a new kind of person,
for there have always been among us a few reptilian hearts of uncommon
greed. What was new was the political permission they received for their
rape and rampage, which continues.
"And so a new world devolved as if from a virus. The new business
hero, a Horatio Alger on crack, did very well...
..."Here is how the takeover of corporations became the corporate
takeover of American democracy: To get along and move up in one of these
right wing business organizations, you have to be like the boss. The people
working under you will then want to be like you to get along themselves. In
Fox News, even reporters in local regions are told how to slant each story
hard to the right. There is no pretense of journalism within the
organization. And many people stuck in those jobs, who got into journalism
with the idea of doing legitimate journalism, are sick to their stomachs
every working day.
..."And the reptilism trickles down further, to the weaker minds
listening to talk radio or silly enough to spend too much time watching
cable television news -- people who buy the lies, who are simply suckered
into forking over their own political best interests to the con artists who
attempt to pick their pockets at the same moment they are pointing out
others who, they say, are the real trouble makers. About 25 percent of our
people are susceptible to this kind of con, and they then give us problems
by standing against any reasonable reforms. They have been spiritually
twisted by the cheap poison of a hundred Rush Limbaughs into the angry,
unthinking agents of the superrich.
"On my long walk across America, a man driving a garbage truck told me
that the biggest problem facing America today was the inheritance tax. I
didn't have to ask him if he had a radio in his truck.
"I remind you of all this because it is important to know that the
reason our reforms are difficult is not because Americans are split into
two camps, conservative and liberal. It is not like that at all. There are
lots of conservatives and liberals in America, but we are not the two sides
of the divide. True conservatives in our country don't have many political
leaders to look to with respect...
..."What we are seeing now from the far right is not conservatism at
all. It is fascism: the imposition of a national and worldwide police state
to enforce a narrow world view that enriches and empowers the few at the
expense of the many, and that gives no respect or honor to other cultures,
ways of living, or opinions. To call that conservatism is a crime against
the memory of America's great and true conservatives, who might think that
government ought to be less involved in life than we old liberals would
concur with, but who nevertheless stood for the core American values that
today's right-wing leaders undermine at every opportunity...
..."If we Americans are split into two meaningful camps, it is not
conservative versus liberal. The two camps are these: the politically awake
and the hypnotized -- hypnotized by television and other mass media, whose
overpaid Svengalis dangle the swinging medallions of packaged candidates
and oft-told lies. It is all done to politically prolong the open season on
us -- open season indeed, as the billionaire takeover artists bag their
catch for the day. And in their bags are our freedoms, our leisure, our
health care futures, our old age security, our family time, our village
life, our family-owned businesses on Main Street, the middle class itself,
and our position of honor and peaceful leadership in the world...
..."True conservatives and liberals unite! Bring your issues and your
opinions to our young people, and create a new expectation that they will
get involved, get informed, and form a view of themselves as
problem-solving citizens of a democracy. Our differences from the left or
right are nothing compared to the differences between the politically awake
and the hypnotized drones of the new colonialism that now stalks and shreds
our civilization...
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