South Carolina Primary

A couple of blogs ago I was hoping for the end of the Iowa Caucuses.  Now I am desperate for the end of the South Carolina primary.  What a side show yesterday with Rick Perry ‘suspending’ his campaigning  (if a candidate ends it, no more fund raising, so they suspend instead); Rick Santorum actually winning, sort of, in Iowa, but no one really knows because ‘they’ lost ballots from 8 locations (whoever ‘they’ are); Mitt Romney stating that the 99% are trying to divide America, which is wrong because America is one nation under God, ignoring the many quotes in almost any sacred scripture about caring for widows and orphans, and others who cannot care for themselves, such as elderly parents, who are all part of the 99%;  Stephen Colbert sort of but no quite entering the balloting by making a deal with Herman Cain to use Cain’s name because Colbert is too late to get his name on the ballot, and South Carolina doesn’t allow write-ins, so a vote for Cain is really a vote for Colbert; and the final hysterical point last night at the Republican debate was Newt, after telling wife #1 he wanted a divorce while she was in the hospital recovering from cancer surgery, marrying the woman with whom he was having an affair while wife #1 was in the hospital, and we presume before that, then asking wife #2 for an open marriage because he was having an affair with a staffer, but instead she divorced him (smart woman), marrying wife #3 with whom he was having the affair which caused the open marriage conversation with wife #2, and then blaming all of this on the media for daring to ask him questions about it.  I am desperately hoping that Stephen Cain Colbert wins in South Carolina. 

Believe it or not, I intended writing this blog on some history of capitalism, referred to as our ‘free market system’.  Our economic system titled ‘capitalism’ actually was formalized when Adam Smith wrote The Wealth of Nations, published on 3/9/1776.  Business had flourished before that for some 10,000 or more years in various forms from bartering to the exchange of money for goods.  But to hear the radical right, both religious and secular, the free market emerged simultaneously with Christianity, and they are somehow synonymous.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  This linking of capitalism with Christianity actually emerged during the 1930’s in an effort to thwart FDR and his efforts to bring the United States out of the Great Depression.  This linking is beautifully described in an article from the New York Times, 1/18/12, by Kevin M. Kruse, “For God So Loved The 1%”.  The following quote is from the article:

“During the Great Depression, the prestige of big business sank along with stock prices.  Corporate leaders worked frantically to restore their public image and simultaneously roll back the “creeping socialism” of the welfare state.  Notably, the American Liberty League, financed by corporations like DuPont and General Motors, made an aggressive case for capitalism.  Most, however dismissed its efforts as self-interested propaganda.  (A Democratic Party official joked that the organization should have been called “the American Cellophane League” because “first, it’s a DuPont product and, second, you can see right through it.”)

Realizing that they needed to rely on others, these businessmen took a new tack: using generous financing to enlist sympathetic clergymen as their champions.  After all, according to one tycoon, polls showed that, “of all the groups in America, ministers had more to do with molding public opinion” than any other.

The Rev. James W. Fifield, pastor of the elite First Congregational Church of Los Angeles, led the way in championing a new union of faith and free enterprise.  “The blessings of capitalism come from God,” he wrote.  “A system that provides so much for the common good and happiness must flourish under the favor of the Almighty.”

This new united faith was really most comforting.  One need worry no more about those who lived in our areas and were impoverished.  If they really wanted to, they would get a job and work.  Since they had no job, it was obviously their fault.  It was obvious they had a flaw in their make-up that made them lazy.  Thus, poor people of whatever color were portrayed in film and fiction as shiftless and lazy, or shiftless and violent.  Certainly not anyone over which we need spend time worrying about.  Our efforts will be spent making sure we gain salvation and in sending missionaries overseas to convert the savages to Christianity.

This attitude really rang a bell in my consciousness when Newt Gingrich commented about the Occupy Movement that these people needed “to get a job, after they took a bath”.  In truth, I was personally offended in that I had attended an Occupy rally in a town near me, and had taken a shower first.  Painting thousands of people as though they were all one indicates to me a great lack of intelligence.  But then, this bunch of candidates for the Republican nomination have not struck me as having much grey matter between their ears.  Please read the first paragraph again.