Arthur Camins is a retired educator. This post appeared in The Daily Kos.
Open the link to read the article in full.
He writes:
Liar, Liar. Pants on Fire. The lies from the powerful, especially Republicans, have risen to stunningly Orwellian 2 + 2 = 5 levels. The lies that protect their wealth and power have been quite successful at gaining wide acceptance. They keep at it because they know most of us reject a grossly inequitable society in which only some people enjoy a stable secure life. Inevitably, the truth seeps through the cracks in their wall of deceptions. Most Americans want fairness and access to decisions that affect our lives. The purveyors of self-protecting fabrications are afraid of the truth. Increasingly, they resort to authoritarianism, outlawing truth-telling, spreading misinformation, and blocking democratic processes.
The well-trod lies are designed to sound like common sense but are demonstrably false. They include:
Providing parents with choices through school vouchers and charter schools improves achievement and equity.
No, they support the privileged, starve and undermine public education, and get the rest of us to fight amongst ourselves for scraps.
The competitive free market will reduce costs and provide choices to consumers to improve education, healthcare, and housing.
No, the free market never reduced the cost of any of these or made these necessities affordable to everyone. Instead, the free market continues to make profits for a few, provides higher quality for those with money to spare, and leaves the rest of us with lower quality or nothing at all.
People are poor because they are lazy or stupid, so social support is a waste of money.
No, our economic and social systems ensure that there are haves and have-nots, haves pass on unearned wealth to their children, that taxes on the rich remain unfair, while trying to convince the rest of us that our struggles are our fault.
Taxing wealth reduces the incentive to innovate and slows economic growth.
No, the United States taxed wealth at far higher rates in the past without stopping us from becoming the world’s largest and most innovative economy. Increasing inequity disincentivizes and slows innovation by keeping too many of us struggling to make ends meet.
These are the lies that the powerful repeat again-and-again, wherever and whenever they can. They assume we are gullible, will fall back, and accept our fate. Our lives do not need to be this way if we organize and if we vote.
The 2024 election is a critical test for voters. Will we accept our inequitable, powerless fate or fight back? Report after report tells us that so many people will, in disgust, stay home that the authoritarian, wealth-protecting, anti-democratic liars will win control of Congress and the presidency. Life’s necessities still cost too damn much, so hearing from Democrats that the inflation, employment, and average wages are getting better falls on deaf ears. Voters–especially the young adults and people of color who Democrats need to win– see that in 2023, our country once again finds money for war but too little to help people. The enduring perception is that no one is on their side.
If Democrats want to win elections, they need to tell the unvarnished truth: The biggest, most enduring lie is that inequity is inevitable. Democrats: Don’t tell people to trust you. Tell them to organize! Tell them:
Do you want to know what Democrats should say? Open the link.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Democrats cannot promote a different vision if they too are feeding at the same tough as the Repugnicans are.
trough
Now is the time for a newly revitalized, progressive Democratic Party on the model of the Social Democracy parties of Europe, one supporting strong labor unions, worker representation on boards, tax incentives creating worker ownership of businesses, highly progressive tax rates, a much stronger social safety net system that includes free schooling through college and parental leave and universal health and dental and vision care. You don’t get those without taxing the rich more.
Agreed. People need to reject the lies from the 1% whose main goal is to convince the public they need to accept less so the ultra-wealthy and their interests will prevail. The US already has fragile, inadequate social safety nets. At the very least we need a public option for healthcare, and we should improve existing Medicare. Medical debt in the US is causing some families to lose their homes. The 1% would like to reduce our existing earned benefits so they can trim their taxes. The health and well being of our people is more important than tax cuts for the wealthy.
As you mention, we remain behind most of Western Europe for other social benefits as well. The only way to make change is for our people to organize and demand it from our representatives. Our silence gives policy makers our compliance.
In other news:
To get to the vid, click the WORDS at the bottom of the pic.
This is brilliant. Sadly, the mainstream media believes that both of the people in the video have equally valid and important points to make.
Nothing to be done about gun violence says only country in the world where mass shootings are a daily occurrence.
We can’t count on Democrats or any elected folks to lead. It’s up to us to organize outside of elections to pressure them. The 1% have organized money. We need organized people to counter their $$.
Yes. They are MUCH better organized.
I have read this piece before. It is fascinating to contemplate man in his early development.
One thing I wonder about men is whether they were actually practicing monotheism. It is my understanding that monotheism holds that there is one extant god. I think this is uncommon in human belief. Modern claimants to the mantle of monotheism are actually dualist, believing that there exist and god of good and one of evil.
I think ancient man was roughly the same, and are better thought of as practicing monolatry. In this belief, one believes in the existence of many gods, but worships one as the best. I bet the Neolithic rulers who were thought of as gods better fit into the paradigm of monolatry
Good point. I should probably fix that, Roy. Thanks for the catch, oh brilliant one.
Fixed, Roy, and thanks again.
As I read this post, I was thinking of the movie trailers I’ve been watching for the last few days for one new MGM film. The movie is called The BeeKeeper.
And now I want to be a BeeKeeper, one who goes after the liars that protect the 1%, and those that pay the liars to lie for them.
:o)
Sad to say, I think I’m way too old and slow (at 78.5) to be the BeeKeeper in that film. We can dream, can’t we?
All due respect, these are silly points because they’re at such high levels of generality. Attacking the basic structure of the U.S. economy as a brutal, unfettered “free market” from the left is like attacking market regulation and government intervention as “Marxism” from the right. Neither extreme exists in the U.S. and thank God for that. (Are we proposing government price controls across the entire economy?). Markets are good and necessary, and yes, they reduce costs and provide choices when they function well. Markets should be regulated to ensure they function well. No need for straw men.
It is not a straw man when wages, at the very least, have not kept up with inflation, or at most, have not correlated with the level of worker productivity over the last 40 years. I might humor supply, demand, and competition when the ratio between the earnings of average workers and average CEOs are back to what they were pre-1980. Even then, the fact we have homeless and starving children is an indictment that our economy is quite brutal.
You think “the free market” that doesn’t even exist is the reason wages aren’t higher in the U.S.?
Do you think raising top-bracket marginal income taxes wages is going to increase your wages? How’s that work?
How are wages relative to inflation in Venezuela? Is the free market to blame there?
There are innumerable real policy debates to be had but this is “policy for dummies.” Deeply silly stuff.
Also the idea that “starvation” is a significant problem in the U.S. is not true by any reasonable understanding. Below is a snapshot of global deaths from malnutrition. Note the correlation between highly developed economies, including the U.S., and low rates of malnutrition.
Are there too many households with “food insecurity” in the U.S.? The answer is yes because our standards should be that high. But let’s not overdramatize the problem to suggest this is a nation of a handful of fat cats and starving masses.
This reminds me of the current discourse in which people complain about how terrible the economy is because things aren’t affordable and everybody has to work three jobs. Inflation did ramp for a couple years (after perhaps an unprecedented period of falling and ultimately near-zero inflation). But it’s fallen significantly. And yes, a lot of people have it hard right now. But the data don’t back up the idea that we are currently in bad economic times. To the extent the current discourse argues otherwise, that unfairly hurts Biden.
Again, there are a lot of real policy debates to be had. But “the free market is bad” and “starvation is a very serious problem in the U.S.” are not real policy points.
I have long found the term “free market” to be more than a little absurd. It’s disingenuous to call markets that large numbers of people are shut out of “free.” You know, like housing and dental care and college educations.
The free market works well when there are multiple companies that compete for business. Many of the large companies have bought competitors out so we have fewer companies competing, and the few remaining companies in a sector may collude and price fix rather than compete.
The market falls short in the area of health and human services. Charter schools and the massive waste and fraud are a perfect example. Have charter schools really made public schools better or just underfunded? There have been numerous scandals of profiteering in nursing homes, private prisons and juvenile detention facilities. Privatization of public utilities often results in the public paying more for a worse service. Sometimes a public service meets a public need and operates efficiently for the benefit of all like The USPS. When FedEx and UPS do not delivery to rural areas, it is the USPS that delivers the package. The free market is not the solution to every need when the goal is to extract as much profit as possible for every good or service.
Protection against monopolies under U.S. law is not entirely nonexistent but close to it.
Our healthcare costs, per capita, are DOUBLE the average in the OECD. But we have the highest infant mortality and the lowest longevity and the highest rates of a ton of diseases–arguably the WORST outcomes. Why are our healthcare costs the highest? Because vast percentages of our healthcare dollar are siphoned off into private profits. We have freaking EXISTENCE PROOFS that national, universal systems deliver better care and far lower rates. But a lot of money is spent here to keep the populace ignorant of that fact, and the Democratic Party also, ahem, “services” the U.S. healthcare barons.
The EU is not afraid to step in or fine companies when companies try to exploit or take advantage of consumers. The US may levy a fine which “chump change” for these profiteers, and the consumer gets nothing from this slap on the wrist.
I agree that markets are necessary regulators of economic activity. I also think that more people should have more access to markets for stuff like dental care and higher education. Here, this is also at a high level of generality, but I think I can defend it:
Markets should be regulated to ensure they function well.
That would be a refreshing CHANGE.
I suggest reading “The 9.9 Percent: The New Aristocracy That Is Entrenching Inequality and Warping Our Culture,” by Matthew Stewart, and “Virtue Hoarders: The Case against the Professional Managerial Class,” by Catherine Liu.