The Liberal Patriot

Learning to Loose

J.G. Schwam - December 1, 2005

Americans are born to win. Our kids are taught kids play football, baseball, basketball and soccer from an early age. They are taught to compete in school and at play. We are taught that winning isn’t everything it’s the only thing. For two hundred years we were good at it. So good at in fact that some Americans began to think that no matter what action they took, we would never loose hold of the brass ring. One of the first things Zig Ziglar, Tony Robbins or any other motivational guru will tell you is never think you can never loose. Never think you are invincible. Vince Lomabardi said; “individual commitment to a group effort - that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work” The coach by which all others are judged knew only teams can win. Successful corporations do know this. So do for good or ill, successful political movements.

It was teamwork that made America great. Since the first battle of the Revolutionary War, the battle of Pont Pleasant in 1774, the United States of American began as a team; committed to freedom and justice for all, forever. America always won, in business, in innovation, in war and ultimately in the pursuit of a moral just society. With the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voter Rights Act of 1965 we came as close as any nation in history to becoming the shining beacon of freedom Thomas Jefferson envisioned but was constrained by his times from truly realizing for himself, and for the infant nation he sought to build.

But just as winning becomes a habit, so does loosing. Until April 29, 1975, when America withdrew completely from Saigon, leaving the noncommunist capital of Vietnam to fall to North Vietnamese tanks, America never lost. Since then The United States of America has no longer been a team. The divide between those that fought that war and those that pulled the strings in the White House and the ivory towers of industry has never healed. But Vietnam was not about corporate imperialism. It was just the dawn of the idea. America’s soul shamed and beaten by a flawed arrogant policy, that it couldn’t loose, had begun to learn to loose.

After this moral and policy failure of the 70’s as the United States struggled internally to realize the dream the civil rights right’s legislation of the 1960’s envisioned and pay down the debt of the all too recent World Wars, the Marshall Plan and Vietnam; America lost it’s way. A still angry and indebted nation struggled regain it sense of self, its economic balance and its moral compass. As Europe, Korea and Japan began to get their post war economies in order the United States global capital markets limped and failed.

As America began to get its soul and winning spirit back in the 1980’s a faction of American society emerged, borne of the same shame and lost direction lost Middle America felt; they vowed never to be beaten again. This time it would be power over all enemies. The power of the United Stated Dollar and capital would ensure victory. Like those who’s policies failed the American people in Vietnam, these men who vowed behind closed doors never to loose again, by any means necessary they would again and in their arrogance drag they American people toward learning to loose. This time we would learn to loose at home. The World Bank, a consortium of global banks global and multinational corporations conspired to never loose by using America’s volunteer military and the credit of the vast capital earned on the backs of its citizens to attempt to exert global military and economic hegemony over the world. They created the horrific myth we live today, that we can dominate the world by force and in the process they began to squander our future. They are the neo-cons. They are not Republicans. By 1992 they had complete the seizure of the once honorable Grand Old Party and promised great wealth and power to all who went along. Gradually behind closed doors, policy institutes like the Project for A New American Century emerged with absurdly imperial policies like their call for global military domination outlined in Rebuilding America’s Defenses (2002).

By February 26, 1993, the day of first World Trade Center bombing the wheels began to come off of the at that time nascent, neo-conservative agenda. With rise of Al-Queda and the first attack international terrorist on the United States the hauteur of the effects of the Americanization of the World Bank and globalization reared up on a nation no longer led by its citizens but by the greed of a few and lust to return to power of a Republican party demoralized by the mistakes of Watergate. From its inception this underpinning policy of the neo-conservative agenda was by any serious measure doomed to fail. Five decades of escalating discretionary military debt has stripped the United States of the ability to control its own fortunes. This last ditch effort to inflict the imperialistic dreams of a few on America is a century too late, morally wrong and financially untenable. Since Vietnam, an American foreign policy dominated by war has neglected investment in the basic fuels of industrial growth, capital and the security of the populace, the labor force that fuels it, infrastructure and education. In their post war economies neither Japan nor South Korea made the mistake of neglecting any of these things, America did.

As a result the wages and educations of Americans fell behind Japan, China, Korea and Europe. While at home inflation, escalating debt and slow wage growth has steadily eroded the buying power of the American people. With trillions of dollars of capital squandered on military extravagance the once vast fortunes of the United States have been replaced with an annual debt service equal to nearly five trillion dollars , to which a trillion has been added since 1997, seventy five percent of that since 2000.

These trillions have not been spent on modernizing and improving our transportation systems, our industries, our educational systems, energy independence or tackling runaway healthcare costs. We have not addressed the shocking fact that in 2005 dollars a person that earns $35,000.00 per year has over 20 percent less buying power that a person earning the same twenty years ago. We cannot measure economic growth by a few annual percentage points in GDP if only two percent of the population benefits from GDP growth. Security is not only defined by freedom from attack by foreign enemies. It is access to health care Americans can afford, a job in which they can be free from want, a home they can afford, food and fuel they can afford and a government they trust to represent their concerns address them and protect the interests of that nation as a whole, not just those that can afford lobbyists to express them.

American’s have been loosing their jobs in record numbers for too many years now. Their only choice is jobs that pay half as much or less. The interlocking boards of directors of America’s finest companies, once shining examples of its industrial might focus on profits they can pillage for themselves while they ignore glaring signals on the horizon, such as rising oils prices driven by the dwindling of the expansion of reserves. Since the 1970’s serious oil geologists warned industry that they ought to focus on conservation and energy technologies and new technologies not dependent on “hot”, heavily fuel based industries such as steel. Now nearly thirty years later those ignorance’s fueled by greed that blinded their vision of the future General Motors once the envy of the world for its power breadth and prowess, is on the balls of it’s feet, teetering, for no reason other than greed and inattention to changing realities others such as Toyota saw, addressed and grew exponentially, from decades ago,

In the 1970’s and 80’s American brain power fueled by the GI bill and cheap state colleges and a visionary well funded National Science Foundation (NSF) and Defense Advanced Research Projects Adminstration (DARPA) recreated a new American industrial age, Information Technology based on silicon semiconductors. Americans invented and built integrated circuits, computers and changed the world, again just as they had in the first industrial revolution. Hundreds of thousands of Americans went to work in this industry. They were well paid and productive. Then, once again corporate arrogance and a government more interested in war and foolish commie in the closet paranoia focused their attention away from real domestic security, continuing to better education, infrastructure and the growth of this new America dominated industry. Trillions in debt were racked up, wasted on hastening the demise of a Soviet Union that was already melting into oblivion by the day and new military technologies for wars they knew they would one day fight. These were the Reaganites, founders of neo-conservatism. They made deals with devil in the Middle East for short term profits and cheap oil. Making giants of tyrants, the Saudi’s, Saddam Hussein, Suharto of Indonesia and others reviled by the citizens of these nations that now hold their suffering against us for making these deals with the devil. All instead of reading the writing the economists, oil geologists and labor leaders fervently wrote on the walls of our nation’s institutions.

The instead of investing in the future silicon technology created the greed kicked in again, they sold out those that trusted them with final blow. The jobs Americans created by their own pluck, hard work, sweat and innovation were sold off, offshore to run up the GDP all the while so one ½ of one percent of the population could reap huge gains on now nearly entirely tax free stock warrants and differed earnings in the billions of dollars. They did not invest in making education even better they turned their backs on it. They did not invest in modern factories, modern innovative transportation solutions, alternative fuels and modern efficient power generation technologies, new efficient, clean power plants, new efficient steel mills, larger more efficient semiconductor plants. Instead of incentives for these things those the leaders we entrusted to act in our interest incentivized greed and created a tax structure that made it wise to suck billions away from building the nation and into the hands of a few and offshore, away from taxation for their own gain alone, not the collective gain of our nation.

The Americans that have built all and suffered for all the building of all the great gains of the post World War era stand today alone, abandoned by their government, only to see it all stripped away. We have learned to loose. They, our government have taught us that and we have accepted it. We have learned to loose wars, our jobs, our pride, our greatness and our nation. Our only choice is to demand it back. But we will not get it easily from those that have taken it away. They will not give it up willingly too much is at stake, for them. More is at stake for us. Our nation must be wrested back, one House seat, one Senate seat, one governorship, one state legislature at a time. We must become a progressive nation. Progressive means what it says, progress. We must regain our future.

All we really have to do is remember the words of Coach Lombardi who won like America once did by simply refusing to loose. He reminds us today “People who work together will win, whether it be against complex football defenses, or the problems of modern society”.

America has fallen because we have we have let our perceived comfort level and taken our once economic global dominance for granted while other nations who had none, have not. Sadly all of this was enabled by greedy, dishonest men to whose actions we did not pay attention.

We can and must take it back what we have lost or the future is darker than we know. Once again I quote the words of a man who came from nothing and created a dynasty today that lives in our memory, because he was right; “the greatest accomplishment is not in never falling, but in rising again after you fall”, Vince Lombardi.

Rise America. Take what is ours. Take back our jobs from those that send them away for personal greed. Take back our schools from those that squander our tax dollars on outrageous salaries and perks for themselves. Take back our nation from a government that wastes it on corporate welfare so incompetent billionaires running failing companies can stay there. End the enslavement of nations with our tax dollars at the hands of the IMF and the World Bank. Demand that global banks like Citicorp and Bear Stearn’s invest our nation’s capital at home instead of China and India. Demand an end to deficit spending for a foolhardy imperialistic war machine that creates enemies faster than we can kill them. Take back our will to be great again, take back our pride and take what is our due. Take back America, America.

Like the Coach said, “Winning is not a sometime thing; it's an all time thing. You don't win once in a while, you don't do things right once in a while, you do them right all the time. Winning is habit. Unfortunately, so is losing.”

We can win again. Start now.

Back to Liberal Patriot Main Page