Remember when any serious discussion or proposals to eliminate Social Security, or otherwise, to privatize or tinker with America’s 82-year-old retirement system was once considered the “Third Rail” of politics? It was certain political suicide for opponents of the most successful socioeconomic retirement system in history to advocate for its demise. But now, such considerations are receiving far greater mainstream acceptance, not by the bulk of the electorate, but among current Republican Party politicians and Far Right corporate activists. Billionaires and millionaires beholden to the corporate interests which have corrupted our politics, given legal license thanks to the landmark Citizens United Supreme Court case.

Now — fueled by unlimited funds from corporations and mega-wealthy donors — they lobby quietly for the total elimination of an American social safety net fashioned in the 1930s, which gradually turned a newly-industrialized America into the most prosperous nation in the world, ending massive unemployment while lifting millions of our working poor and our elderly out of the socioeconomic deprivations caused by the unbridled greed and unregulated capitalism that led us into the Great Depression. Ever since the presidency of “Saint” Ronald Reagan; so-called “fiscal conservatives” — those who have driven up annual federal deficits and our National Debt through repeated, unfunded tax cuts to the rich; massive corporate welfare; ungodly military spending; and treasury-draining, unfunded foreign wars — have created an anti-government atmosphere wherein ALL social safety net programs are deemed as offensive to their fictitious trickle down “American Dream.”

Given the deficits and debt they created with such massive spending; they are now directing their aim at the eventual elimination of an American system that reversed the dark days of the laissez-faire greed and wild speculation of the Robber Barons which led to the Great Depression of the 1930s and, more recently, the deregulated banking and corporate speculation that was the chief underlying cause of the 2008 Bush Recession.

Americans should never forget; there was a time in America when workers had no health insurance; no eight-hour workday; no guaranteed retirement funds; no unemployment benefits or workers’ compensation — only the mercy of their own families, or the willing wealth of Christian charities to rely upon; providing bread lines, soup kitchens, and horrific state-run orphanages to deal with the rigors of widespread poverty and the repeated, periodic economic “boom or bust” downturns caused by unregulated speculation run amok.

Despite the fact that Social Security itself is not an unfunded “entitlement program” or welfare, as the Far Right would have us all believe, but rather a government-managed insurance program, paid for by contributions from the eventual recipients and their employers — it is that last component that angers the corporate controlled Republican Party the most. The matching payroll tax portion paid by employers into the system as a means of funding basic old age pensions for seniors no longer able to work, seeking economic security and dignity in their retirement “golden years.” It eats into their corporate profits and, as we have seen through their “We Built This” so-called “Job Creator” mantra that says ordinary workers who built this country are merely lazy moochers to be reviled. Somehow it’s even noble or “patriotic” that employers and wealthy investors should want it all!

Moreover, the Far Right’s assault on the social safety net would create a new model of two entirely different healthcare classes in America, with a Trumpcare “don’t care” bill that would create two distinct pools (or classes) of Americans: one wherein younger, healthier people will be able to purchase bare-bones, inadequate health “insurance” policies, and another “high risk pool” of people who have serious medical issues caused by disease, birth defects, or simply by the ravages of old age and a lifetime of hard work. In essence, their so-called “access” to comprehensive health insurance is a cynical illusion. A product that can only be obtained by bankrupting those who can least afford it, or pricing tens of millions entirely out of the market with exorbitant premiums and excessive deductibles paid out to a for-profit healthcare and pharmaceutical industry — unique to America — concerned only with their corporate “bottom line,” not the health and welfare of the American People!

Indeed, the Republican Party has cynically latched on to the angst of millions of frightened White Americans who voted for a populist fraud as president. Gullible Americans who have allowed their nativist and racial prejudices to cloud common sense and bought into the narrative promoted through right wing media like Fox News, Breitbart, Alex Jones and various neo-fascist pundits of the Far Right. Those who have poisoned our political discourse with science-denial, “alternate facts,” and anti-federal hysteria — deluded from 8 years of Obama Derangement Syndrome, conspiratorial nonsense, and Russian-manipulated social media disinformation attacks on Progressives and Liberals as being somehow “Un-American” simply because they wish to retain a meaningful social safety net that has protected our workers and seniors for decades, both while on the job and then, well into their retirement years.

Even erstwhile mainstream media outlets — now controlled by 6 corporate monoliths — are giving voice to harebrained schemes and proposals to eliminate Social Security altogether, and return America to those dark days of “every man and woman for themselves” — while the rest of the modern world has moved far beyond the feudalistic model of a small, privileged wealthy class with masses of working people living in poverty; largely uneducated and beholden to the whims and excesses of a ruling class of a hereditary oligarchy.

Americans did not want Social Security to be another form of welfare or government giveaway. Roosevelt sold the plan as an insurance program, and that’s how people perceived it from the very beginning. ~ Conservative Pollster, Scott Rasmussen

But this is how today’s Republican Party views Social Security (and all other government-managed programs). A political party that denies science; economic math; history and social conscience, and — despite all of their hollow campaign promises to: ‘preserve Social Security for future generations’— considers it a form of welfare and a government giveaway to undeserving workers too lazy to save for their retirement. It is a truly cynical take on humanity and America.

I would respond to the trickle-down lie by saying — with the conviction of historical economic proof — that more failed Republican “trickle-down” unregulated economic policies are not the solution to our problems…they are the cause of our problems!