The Reagan Mindset has been a Plague on the Consciousness of the American Public.

Although President Obama mocked Mitt Romney for saying that Russia was the greatest threat to United States national security leading up to the 2012 Presidential elections, Obama would secretly authorize a coup against the Russian friendly Government of Ukraine in 2014. At the time I thought little of this, I was a sophomore in high school, a product of a liberal family, the Democratic party in my eyes could do no wrong, but as I’ve learned more about history and the corruption of both dominant political parties, its easy to see that the Democratic party has shifted to the right in recent history, they too are looking to protect corporate interests and start a New Cold War. 

Barack Obama got elected to the Presidency twice on a message of hope and change, he said he’d be willing to meet with our adversaries without preconditions in order to negotiate  peace, he said enough with Bush era foreign policy, he said we would protect whistleblowers, and he said he’d give healthcare to every man, woman, and child in America. What he gave us in reality was much different. When in office, rather than advocating for the actual left-leaning policy which would have been single payer healthcare, Obama advocated for the Affordable Care Act, which was a right-wing proposal first implemented by Mitt Romney when he was the Governor of Massachusetts. Not to mention, after ridiculing the stupidity of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq on the campaign trail, the Obama White House was full of holdovers from the Bush Administration that constructed the Iraq war, the foreign policy that continued throughout the Obama years was a testament to that fact. 

Not only did the Obama Administration continue Bush’s illegal wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, he expanded the U.S. Military Empire into Africa, sending active duty troops into nations such as Somalia, Sudan, Chad, and most notably Libya, who’s government was toppled by a U.S. backed uprising in 2013 and replaced by a jihadist power struggle with open slave trading in the streets. Along with paramilitary operations in Syria, where the U.S. is still supporting terrorists with taxpayer funds in a failed regime change attempt to this day.

Thats not all though, the Obama Administration has also continued the United Staes long and brutal history of meddling in the affairs of sovereign Latin American nations. Obama oversaw the 2009 coup in Honduras against their president Manuel Zalaya, who was an ally to Socialist Government in Venezuelan led by Hugo Chavez. Although the Administration attempted to cover for their actions by later decrying the coup as illegal, Hillary Clinton who was Secretary of Sate at the time continued her work to keep Zalaya out of office, while supporting new elections to legitimize the post-coup Government. This would set a terrible precedent for later U.S. interventions in Bolivia in October of 2019. 

In the final years of the Obama Administration, when it seemed like he was attempting to broker peace with Iran and Cuba, longtime U.S. adversaries, he undermined these attempts by deciding to declare the Socialist Government of Venezuela led by Nicholas Maduro a threat to national security and placed crippling sanctions on their economy which lead to massive suffering among the civilian population. Obama’s continuation of illegal Bush era foreign policy after his campaign of “hope and change” set the stage perfectly for the Trump Administration to come in and continue these policies of sanctions and regime change, that take the lives of innocent people in these nations.  

In all of these instances, the United States was claiming to act in the name of “protecting democracy and human rights”, but that has long been the excuse for the U.S. when seeking to intervene in foreign nations to expand markets for corporations that own their Government. 

Those in power that push this idea are either knowingly participating in a corrupt system in order to maintain a career, or they have been brainwashed into thinking that U.S. is great because of the 'free market' and if we could only expand this 'free market' system across the entire globe then world peace would be possible. This view is terribly flawed.

First of all, there is no such thing as a 'free market', especially under the economic system of Capitalism which incentivizes consolidation and profitability over competition and concern for the public good. Second, this 'policy of enlargement' that advocates of the 'free market' believe in has led to disastrous trade deals like NAFTA that have shipped hundreds of thousands of good paying American jobs overseas to exploit foreign workers for pennies a day.  

A free market cannot exist without Government regulation to keep the game fair.  Unfortunately for the average American, over the past 40 years, starting with Ronald Reagan, a propaganda campaign was initiated by corporations and the ruling class within the United States with the intent of turning pubic opinion against the Government. The rallying cry of the time was, “Government is not the solution to the problem; Government is the problem”. 

After two decades of being lied to about the Vietnam war, experiencing the public assassinations of some of the nations most prominent political figures, and political scandals like Watergate, the American public was extremely susceptible to this ideology of small government and personal accountability. This ideology is still poisoning the minds of hundreds of millions of Americans today.  

During this time of demonizing the Government itself, along with any regulations it attempted to initiate, the Republican party and Reagan paved the way for corporations to take the reigns of Government, using it to benefit their business interests, rather than the interests of the American people. It was at this time that wages stopped increasing in line with corporate profits, CEO’s began to receive 400 times the salary of their average worker, and corporate consolidation increased at an unprecedented rate, thereby placing the so called 'free market' in the hands of an increasingly small amount of, what we would call Oligarchs in authoritarian nations. 

This anti-government, pro-self-reliance fervor that has engulfed the nation since the rise of Ronald Reagan and trickle down economics has been so popular among those who vote that it has resulted in the Democratic Party shifting further to the right, effectively abandoning the working class base that made them the dominant party in the New Deal era. 

This is seen clearly in the governing strategy of Bill Clinton, the first Democratic President of this new corporate friendly, trickle down era. Clinton famously signed the 1994 crime bill into law which led to a huge increase in mass incarceration, he also advocated for welfare reform and signed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity act of 1996. This legislation ended welfare as an entitlement program, required recipients to begin working after two years of receiving benefits, placed a lifetime limit of five years on benefits paid by federal funds, discouraged out-of-wedlock births, and required state professional and occupational licenses to be withheld from undocumented immigrants. 

The foreign policy of the Clinton Administration followed suit with much of what came before him. Just one example from toward the end of his Presidency was in 1999, when NATO, led by the United States, launched the two-month air strike campaign against Yugoslavia. The strikes were not limited to military installations and NATO targets included civilian sites such as factories, oil refineries, television stations and various civilian infrastructure. The intervention, which devastated Yugoslavia, was not approved by the UN General Assembly or the UN Security Council, something that has become all too normal in todays world. 

This brainwashing of the American public against the Government, in favor of the 'free market' has only made it easier for the 1% in power to continue exploiting 80% of the population without being held accountable. This brainwashing of the American public has lead to unprecedented levels of income inequality, a skyrocketing prison population, an epidemic of drug addiction and gun violence, the continuation of countless illegal wars and unconstitutional mass surveillance and both political parties are complicit in all of it. 

This was allowed to happened because the American public was brainwashed by 'free market' advocates at a time when the Government seemed like the boogyman. We were told by those in power that “the market will work it out”, but what they worked out in the end was a bad deal for 80% of the public. What they worked out was slipping away with out facing prosecution for the financial crisis that they caused, which resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of human beings. What they worked out was facing no consequences for violations of international law, and crimes against humanity that killed millions of human beings in wars fought in the name of expanding markets. They were able to work out these deals because over the last 40 years, they have come to control almost every single aspect of our Government. The Government that is supposed to be “Of, by, and for the people”, has been hijacked to be one thats, “Of, by, and for corporate interests”.

The only way we can take our Government back, when it has already been entirely hijacked by corporate interests in favor of 'free market' solutions rather than the public good, is to organize non-violent protests against it.

As we realized in the 2016 Democratic primary, even if we come out and vote for our preferred candidate, like the people of Hawaii, Michigan, and West Virginia did, unfortunately, those in power who pull the strings behind the scenes continue to have the final say, and they will not let individuals like Bernie Sanders or Tulsi Gabbard get the Democratic nomination as they are looking to dismantle the status quo that both parties benefit from, at the expense of not only the American public, but also the international community.

We must organize and protest until those in power concede to our demands, we must protest in in the cities, we must protest in the suburbs, we must protest in the countryside. We must protest in the factories, on the farms, and in the schools, we must organize our families, our friends, and our coworkers, we must never surrender our human and economic rights!