The great thing about political speeches by Presidents is that they are recorded for posterity, so that, as good and informed citizens of this nation, we have the opportunity to look at and examine what Presidents have said and determine what these words meant to our nation, back then and today. In 1888, President Grover Cleveland stated, “Communism is a hateful thing and a menace to peace and organized government; but the communism of combined wealth and capital, the outgrowth of overweening cupidity and selfishness, which insidiously undermines the justice and integrity of free institutions, is not less dangerous than the communism of oppressed poverty and toil…” In other words, what President Cleveland was saying is that concentrated wealth is a danger to this nation and is not only inimical to such, but that the very freedoms so granted to us by our Constitution will not long stand when up against concentrated wealth, which undermines opportunity as well as equal and fair justice under the law, by favoring the elite over the people.
Indeed, when a significant portion of the people find that they have little or no security in their employment, and are inundated with debts of all sorts, then they aren’t really free, because their options are quite limited and the upside for them seems rather bleak. So too, when the wealth of this nation is garnered into ever fewer hands, then the laws of this nation and the principles of this nation have taken a backseat to those that care not for anything other than to accumulate even more wealth and thereby more influence and control of this government, by making sure that the henhouse is guarded by the fox, so that the people essentially have an illusion of a government of, for, and by the people, when in actuality that government has been captured by concentrated capital and the legislators that populate that government answer not to the people, but to that wealth.
The bottom line is that America is a nation that is dividing itself into two separate and distinct groups, of which one is those who have it all, and the other is those who have nothing at all. This stark division is the proximate reason why there is that clarion call for more law and order, for when those who are oppressed and therefore are not getting a fair deal, yet live in the richest nation that the world has ever known, are for a certainty not going to go down quietly, even when they are provided with plenty of bread and circuses, because at the end of the day, it doesn’t sit well within their soul, especially when they realize that as bad as it is for them presently, it isn’t going to get any better for the progeny, and because they see no good future, they will therefore not go down without a fight.
The America of today is not a level playing field and never has been, but the greatest crime being perpetrated against the people is the fact that the present government, has essentially ceded all its power and authority to the elites of America, which means that the trendline is thus heading inexorably in the direction of even more disparity and therein lies the rub -- because the people recognize that not only are things not getting better, but they are never going to get better, because no positive change is on the agenda. So then, there will be a reckoning as to whether this government belongs to the people, in whole, or whether it has degenerated into merely being a façade and thus a betrayal of what our country was founded upon.