Our short read-ahead for today is the excerpt of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s First Inaugural Address in March 1933. It is memorable, in part, because it contained the President’s declaration that
“…the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.”
Though President Eisenhower was later to warn us of its dangers, Franklin Roosevelt was the last President of the United States to oppose our Corporate Empire. What enabled him to do so was the Empire’s economic collapse into the Great Depression. Roosevelt’s verbal calls to arms and policy responses to the Depression are matters that the Empire has since sought to wipe from the civic consciousness of Americans.
Before we discuss one example of the Empire’s tactics, let’s examine President Roosevelt’s speech. Did the terror FDR identified concern a foreign enemy of the United States? We were not at war and there was no foreign enemy on the horizon in 1933.The terror that FDR identified was the personal and collective fear of economic insecurity. And it was something built into the American domestic fabric that caused it. As you read or listen to the entire speech, can you say whether the economic situation of Americans in 1933 was jeopardizing their physical security? Is the “grim problem of existence” a matter of life and death? I think so. In seeking the remedies to the Depression, Roosevelt was willing to seek powers comparable to the powers of the President in times of war, when lives are always at stake. Finally, did President Roosevelt identify the perpetrators of the terror American’s were experiencing? Clearly!!! The terrorists who brought on the Depression were the “money changers” and “the rulers of the exchange of mankind’s goods.” The 21st Century successors to Roosevelt’s “money changers” were described in our discussion concerning the dispossessed of Trayvon’s generation, your generation. This is how Paul Farrell described the motivation of todays “the money changers” and the source of their power to terrorize Americans:
“…market capitalists — including 1,426 billionaires, Wall Street bankers, hedgers, lobbyists and every other special interest getting rich off the new market society — will never voluntarily surrender their control over the American political system.”
Our “market capitalists” control our political process in order to control our governmental process. Now, because of recent revelations concerning governmental intelligence gathering, we are learning the extent of governmental control of our lives, our business transactions, how and what we think. It will remain difficult for most Americans to fathom the sophistication and significance of these revelations. But the control the Empire seeks extends even to the seemingly inconsequential areas of communication. Consider Wikipedia, a site (“a free encyclopedia, that anyone can edit”) we believe can be a valuable tool for you in your research. If you are careful First, let’s examine the definition of “terror” in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary. Compare it to the encyclopedia entry of “terror” in Wikipedia. Can we agree that the Merriam-Webster definition is generic, without bias and capable of encompassing Roosevelt’s characterization of “terror?” The Wikipedia entry for “terror” concerns itself with the historical 19th century European origins of the concept of political repression and violence. The entry is rather thin, and no conclusions can definitively be drawn concerning the absence of a reference to the terror inflicted upon a people by its ruling classes. However, the entry clearly steers the reader to the voluminous entry for “Terrorism.” Here, it is obvious the authors of the entry are gatekeepers for our military industrial complex and today’s moneychangers. This is a managed entry. This does not mean that the managers of the site compromise it, but that is monitored and edited by those who want readers to support the Global War on Terror.
To test our view, as a class exercise, let’s try to amend the Wikipedia entry for “Terrorism” by including the language or even a reference to the entry for Roosevelt’s First Inaugural.