Down with the King and all of his lords

ANGELA WEISS/AFP via Getty Images

The next Democratic president of the United States will be the person who can reassemble a coalition of Americans that has completely fallen apart and turned to dust.

The next winning Democratic coalition must be built on the foundation of the New Deal coalition that saved capitalism, democracy and the world from slavery.

The next Democratic president will be a person who can look the American people in the eye, and say what FDR said long ago.

A new era has begun in America.

There are questions at hand:

Are the American people going to made be into serfs of a technological oligarchy in which they have no agency, democracy, dignity, prosperity or hope of any kind?

Are the American people to become cogs in an indifferent society in which subsistence living forged from multiple jobs is the norm, while they are regaled with stories of our King and his lords buying $500,000,000 yachts, private space stations and building survival bunkers, while 40 percent of Americans live in near penury and 14 million children go hungry?

The answer to both must be a resounding no.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt saved the world by rescuing America.

Hear his words, delivered on October 31, 1936, at Madison Square Garden:

We have not come this far without a struggle and I assure you we cannot go further without a struggle.

For twelve years this Nation was afflicted with hear-nothing, see-nothing, do-nothing Government.

The Nation looked to Government but the Government looked away.

Nine mocking years with the golden calf and three long years of the scourge!

Nine crazy years at the ticker and three long years in the breadlines!

Nine mad years of mirage and three long years of despair!

Powerful influences strive today to restore that kind of government with its doctrine that that Government is best which is most indifferent.

For nearly four years you have had an Administration which instead of twirling its thumbs has rolled up its sleeves. We will keep our sleeves rolled up.

We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace—business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering.

They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob.

Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me—and I welcome their hatred.

I should like to have it said of my first Administration that in it the forces of selfishness and of lust for power met their match. I should like to have it said of my second Administration that in it these forces met their master.

Someone will be master.

The people will rule, or they will be ruled.

The next Democratic president is going to look the American people in the eye, and tell them the truth, which is that four companies controlling the flow of news and information with algorithms that prey on intellectual sovereignty and freedom like a cancer, must be broken up.

The vast concentrations of power across the American economy that stifle economic growth, innovation and opportunity must be confronted.

Scores of millions of Americans have no access to banking, credit or a decent education. Their democracy has been stripped. The cause of the Democratic Party must be its restoration.

This is America.

Down with the King and all of his many lords.

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