Hot water

Drop a frog into a pot of hot water, and it will quickly leap out, so the parable goes. But if you put him in cold water and gradually heat it up, he will stay until he is cooked.

So it seems with the American people. If you gradually break the power of unions, nobody will notice until we have returned to the stage of robber barons and wage slaves. If you say unemployment is down and business is up enough times, people will forget that, forty years ago, a man with a high school diploma could get a secure job that allowed him to have every Saturday and Sunday off, two weeks paid vacation and five to seven paid holidays per year. He could buy a house, a car, pay his medical bills and life insurance premiums, (unless a family member contracted a catastrophic illness) put food on the table, and support a wife and a few kids without any of them having to work. He would not have to take a second job. His wife could stay home to raise the kids.

Americans have gotten used to huge CEO compensation packages. Our worker forty years ago saw the head of the company earning 24 times what the employees did. Today’s rank and file look at CEO pay 262 times their own. The boss makes as much each workday as the employee makes the entire year. But, hey, a rising tide lifts all boats, doesn’t it? (Speaking of tides, does the water seem a little warmer?)

We used to listen to Walter Cronkite, and Chet Huntley and David Brinkley, and we knew we were getting the truth, at least as they knew it. We trusted the mainstream media to protect us from government excess. Now, the reporters and pundits have become the corporate class and have joined up with the liars in government. They have joined the leisure class, with country manors and city town houses, too. (The water is definitely hotter than it was.)

Now, those that tell the truth are ignored, or, if they speak too loudly, they are told to shut up, and reviled and mocked by the media, and hounded and destroyed by the government.

Now, reporters whine if we complain when they repeat lies. They think that asking them to be truthful is an unreasonable demand.

5/14/08