Back in 1933, an authentic American hero in every possible sense of that word stepped in to rescue the nation from traitors plotting to pull it all down -- Constitution, Bill of Rights, dreams of the Founders, everything, all of us, every last bit of it.
The traitors here were bankers, financiers, moneyed interests. An ocean away, their German peers advanced their own man to the front of the feed trough: Adolph Hitler, by name.
Here, in the interim, Maj. Gen. Smedley Butler, USMC, had been chosen by those who would wreck us all, torch all of it, for mere money, for more power. But, Butler fished them, angled them from the bank, toyed with them, played the line, beached them all, up on his dry banks.
He famously said, from his book, "war is a racket." He sure knew how to treat racketeers.
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Franklin Delano Roosevelt stopped short of crushing the fascist bankers plotting to pull down the place. He chose instead a number of reforms, to try to hold traitors and financiers in check. He knew they'd never give up, never would, so -- even catching one batch of traitorous bankers was only a temporary fix at best. No shortage of greedy traitors -- there were always more.
One of FDR's reforms was the SEC, another the FDIC, and so on. One central reform over all others helped keep the schemers in check: The Banking Act of 1933. You probably know it as Glass-Steagall. The Act kept everyday commercial banking functions walled off from investment activities: no casinos inside, the best you could do there was, well -- bank.
Potentially dull stuff, the Act, like area zoning meetings -- at least, until an all-night casino, strip club, drag strip, drive-through liquor store go in right next door. Then, NIMBY rules!
Glass-Steagall slipped all the leashes and was repealed 66 years later, on November 4, 1999 -- 13 lucky years later, the party's still raging, no sign of a let-up. The banks all take turns at the helm, crashing the economy up on shore, where investment houses ride all of our retirement hopes around on roller coasters, up and down, whee! And so on and so on.
Glass-Steagall was the restraining lid on the vat of sanity we had left. It took the high priests of the heavily-moneyed mob -- bankers, financiers, speculators, capitalists, corporations, the idle rich -- 66 years to pry that lid off... and, meanwhile:
We had a good run, 66 years of high growth, including the formation of a middle class, and, even with wars, the country went booming along anyway, in spite of all that. It was a good run.
It took the weasels and traitors 66 years to get the lid off, and now, here we all are -- everything wrecked, them making and taking money on the ups and the downs. We have even had to bail them all out from their very own monetary system, these high priests supposedly guarding it all, instead, just buggering the books, and each other, and us all, too.
Probably, it would have taken them less than 66 years to blow the lid on those restraints, but, back then, in FDR's time, there were some quaint notions inside of our nation -- that we all owed each other something, such as respect, and even more, that we'd help out each other, take only what we needed, made sure to put back for others, so much more. Imagine that.
Back then, news had to have facts, had to pass a common litmus test for sanity, too.
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Thank goodness legal rulings have said there's no reason that news broadcasts contain truth -- that lies and propaganda are all fine, sure, no problem at all. Thank goodness, today, you can have live broadcasts from any asylum you like, say or do anything, except these famous few words on the list here, all the usual ones -- but we just added some more: No more truth, no more facts, capitalism's just fine. The bankers know what's best for us, just remember, so we should toe the bankers' and financiers' lines.
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Good evening. Here is the news: The moon and all the world's oceans have just been kidnapped and taken hostage -- no, don't go look, no need to do so -- by the socialist, communist, Marxist American government and all the liberal media. Sources say the moon and all the world's oceans will be returned unharmed, just as soon as all the unions are destroyed, all workers agree to an 85 percent cut in pay, and when all members of the middle class have been eliminated, plus, dollar-a-day-pay has been reinstated, and child labor OK'd. Our sources also say, that a select group of financiers must also be allowed immediate and unfettered access to the entire Social Security pot, where they will, in Las Vegas, place it all on Number 33 for one spin, with a 15 percent hedge bet on "red" in this shrewd investment move...
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You want to know who's really flying this battered old cargo plane, riddled with bullet holes from FDR's time? Eyes front, toward the cockpit. See anyone in there plotting destinations anywhere except where the uber-rich and where the corporations want to go? See anyone in there but errand boys of those thugs? See anyone in there making any plans to fly this crazy thing where you and your family and friends want to go?
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"There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes. The other is the Bill of Rights."
- Maj. Gen. Smedley D. Butler, USMC; two-time winner of the Congressional Medal of Honor, personal preventer of a fascist overthrow of the United States of America
