
As the 2016 presidential candidates belatedly get worked up about inequality, they’re losing touch with reality.
Hardly a day goes by that another candidate doesn’t announce his or her intention to run for the presidency. One day it’s Carly Fiorina, the next it’s Mike Huckabee, Bernie Sanders, or Hillary Clinton, even.
It’s like the circus – when the little car rolls into the center ring and a clown gets out, then another, then two more, and on and on until the ring is overflowing with 1,000 clowns, or so it seems.
We won’t get up to 1,000 politicians yearning to lead the “free world,” or what’s left of it. But we should reach two dozen presidential aspirants who are asking us voters to take them seriously before we’re done.
It’s still early, but it looks as though the major message of this election is going to be about closing the cavernous gaps between the rich and the poor. Democrats have always suspected that the poor are being victimized by our economic system, but now it seems that the Republicans are singing that song too.
Former First Brother Jeb Bush, whose family has been rich ever since his grandfathers got into oil and weapons 100 years ago, is now excoriating the “elites” who’ve stifled growth and left the middle class to twist slowly in the wind.
Marco Rubio, the Florida senator who wants to raise the sales taxes that weigh most heavily on poor people, now urges us not to forget those same people – the workers who do our society’s grunt work. He’s also quick to remind us that he’s the son of a bartender and a maid.
Ted Cruz, leader of the Senate’s loudmouth caucus, does Rubio one better. His parents, he says, were both drunks. How’s that for humble beginnings?
Still, it’s hard to beat the unintended irony of Hillary Clinton.
Who else complains with a straight face that “the deck is still stacked in favor of those on top” while she’s busy setting up a super PAC that she hopes will raise $100 million for her campaign by July?
Bill Clinton isn’t much help either. Asked whether he’ll continue to make his six-figure speeches to fat cats while his wife runs for president, he said he’d have to.
“Got to pay our bills,” he said. Some bills.
Fiorina, who got a $21 million severance package when she was fired as head of Hewlett-Packard, is determined to protect workers from minimum-wage raises, which she says hurt folks hunting for entry-level jobs.
Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, a pastor’s son, wants to protect workers from unions, in the name of defending the middle class. And Ben Carson, an African-American neurosurgeon, thinks that the Affordable Care Act is the worst thing since slavery.
Do you get the theme here? This campaign is going to be conducted almost entirely in a parallel universe. It will have no relation to reality, and what candidates say will have no relationship to anything that’s actually happening. Black is going to be white and white black.
Not all the goofballs are running for president – or married to someone who is – yet.
Do you know that there’s a sizeable faction in Texas that thinks US Army exercises over there are prep work for the declaration of martial law and the confiscation of all weapons? Governor Greg Abbott actually tried to deploy the Texas Guard to ensure that wouldn’t happen.
What’s happened to this country? It used to be a fairly sensible place.
Maybe it’s time to send in the clowns.
Oh, I forgot. They’re already here.
We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.
As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.
Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.
As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.
At Truthout, we are reaffirming our commitments on this front: We won’t run ads or have a paywall because we believe that everyone should have access to information, and that access should exist without barriers and free of distractions from craven corporate interests. We recognize the implications for democracy when information-seekers click a link only to find the article trapped behind a paywall or buried on a page with dozens of invasive ads. The laws of capitalism dictate an unending increase in monetization, and much of the media simply follows those laws. Truthout and many of our peers are dedicating ourselves to following other paths – a commitment which feels vital in a moment when corporations are evermore overtly embedded in government.
Over 80 percent of Truthout‘s funding comes from small individual donations from our community of readers, and the remaining 20 percent comes from a handful of social justice-oriented foundations. Over a third of our total budget is supported by recurring monthly donors, many of whom give because they want to help us keep Truthout barrier-free for everyone.
You can help by giving today. Whether you can make a small monthly donation or a larger gift, Truthout only works with your support.