From my childhood to my early adulthood, I was warned of a sinister power bent on nothing less than world domination.  A regime dedicated to undermining and eradicating all the freedoms and rights and way of life Americans hold dear.  "The Red Menace" was a very real threat we all took seriously during the Cold War.

      Today, we face a "New Red Menace"; no less sinister; no less committed to eradicating all the freedoms and rights and way of life Americans hold dear.  The Republican party has been transformed, seemingly overnight, from the conservative wing of a functional bipartied political system into a slavering pack of corporate wolves; hellbent on bringing to ground and dismembering America's middle class with rabid relish.  Why?

      Why would corporations (the REAL menace behind the GOP, emboldened to action by the Citizen's United Supreme Court ruling), suddenly seek to get rid of the most robust consumer class of the 20th or any prior century in history?  Why would they want to kill the Golden Goose?  Part of the answer is that we are now in the 21st century and there are other Golden Geese; other great and soon to be great consumer economies to sell stuff to.

      Another part of the answer is that massive home foreclosures and unemployment created by Wall Street's credit default swaps, at least one massively expensive and unnecessary war in Iraq, and rising fuel prices, again driven by Wall Street speculators, have seriously eroded American middle class purchasing confidence even as our consumer protections, our environmental protections, our workplace protections, and our constitutional protections render us long-term liabilities as far as the corporate balance sheets are concerned.

      If those were the only threats presented by the American middle class to complete corporate dominion, the American middle class might be allowed to slip into a sort of quaint, cultural dotage, while the Corpocracy went off to round up its new Golden Geese.  But America's middle class presents a greater threat; a threat worthy of the systematic, relentless political efforts of the GOP to dismantle it.

      Our "American Way of Life" has been a powerful magnet for the dreams and aspirations of countless millions for nearly two centuries.  While we may validly question some elements of that meme, we cannot question its overall effect as an aspirational goal for many throughout the world.  For those who cannot immigrate to America, the goal often becomes "how do I make where I am more like America?"

      Even that threat, though, is not sufficient reason to warrant the marshalling of an entire political party against it.  To fully understand the GOP's monomaniacal onslaught, we need to know HOW our American middle class came to be.  It didn't happen overnight.  Our middle class was built over decades and often at great personal sacrifice by those in the vanguard of social change.

      President Lyndon Johnson sealed his political fate with his "Great Society" domestic agenda, yet he perservered in the face of withering criticism.  F.D.R. proudly assumed his Uncle Teddy's "class traitor" mantle in his efforts to reverse the economic devastation of the Great Depression brought on by men of his own milieu.  "T.R." before him, was embraced by the common man for his "vigorous" use of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act to "bust the trusts" and for his national parks even as he was pilloried by his "peers" and their pet newspapers.

      Political careers were not the only sacrifices made to build our American Way of Life.  Workplace reforms grew out of the tragic lives lost in the Triangle Shirtwaist fire.  Mother Jones' firebrand speeches, along with UMW organizing of West Virginia miners, cost many lives before laws were written forcing mine operators to pay workers in real money instead of company scrip; compelling them to recognize the rights of workers to bargain collectively for safer working conditions.  Mother Jones also shamed state and federal legislators into passing our nation's first child labor laws.  Steel workers, autoworkers, and teamsters all had to face brutal hired goons until they, too, achieved fair wages and working conditions.

      This is NOT a narrative corporations wish to prevail.  THEIR narrative is that government (at least OUR form of government) is ALWAYS a problem; that it stands in the way of personal prosperity and individual freedom.  The REAL narrative is that we Americans have repeatedly employed our government to help level the playing field when CORPORATIONS act to deny us our shot at prosperity; when CORPORATIONS buy legislators to encroach on our individual rights.  We have established "Social Contracts" at all levels of government to thwart those machinations.  We have REAL power, through our government, to go toe-to-toe with the multi-national, multi-billion dollar corporations.

      Of course, not ALL forms of government are "problematic" from a corporate perspective.  Dictatorial, corruptable governments have proven to be highly useful in maintaining order and fostering a "business friendly environment" without having to deal with such pesky impediments as Constitutionally protected rights.  WalMart and other corporations have found the Red Army run factories and the Central Committee controlled population of China to be goldmines.  This is the form of government the GOP now seek to transform our government into.  Failing that, they intend to do away with it altogether.  Nothing personal, you understand.  Just business.

      So, now that we know WHY the New Red Menace is so aggresively engaged in a "hostile takeover" on behalf of their corporate handlers, what can WE do to stop them? The very first step is to get the message out by any means possible, that we're no longer dealing with a simple difference in political philosophy which reasonable legislators bring to the political bargaining table.  The GOP haven't the slightest interest in sitting at that table.  The GOP intend to smash that table into cordwood.

      The mainstream media will be little to no help in propagating this message.  Wholesale consolidation of media control into the hands of a small group of powerful corporate conglomerates since passage of the Clinton era Communications Act of 1996, ensures few voices other than corporate-approved voices will get anywhere near the mainstream microphones and cameras.  Oh, they'll trot out their pet cranks from the far left and far right to pretend they're covering all political views, but these are always the same cranks; always the same harmless rants.

      The NEW media will be instrumental in exposing The New Red Menace in America just as those media have documented the Arab Spring and the murderous crackdowns on dissent in Iran, Syria, and Myanmar.  You're probably thinking "Hang on, now! You're talking about AMERICA! That doesn't happen HERE!"

      Well... yes, it HAS.  It happened in the coalfields of West Virginia and it will happen again when the Corpocracy feels its propaganda machine has sufficiently softened our brains to field their hired goons.  Did you think Blackwater/Xe was put together just for overseas operations?  Think again.  They're the mercenary wing of the Grand Old Party.  They may ultimately face their own Menshevik "purges", but by then they will have served their corporate function.  Again, nothing personal.  Just business.

      The second most important action We The People can take is to begin NOW to help register voters for the 2012 election cycle.  GOP Governors and legislatures have passed many new laws since our last election, precisely designed to disenfranchise citizens they expect to vote Democratic.  The impact of most can be blunted by assisting the elderly, students, and people rendered homeless by disasters (natural and otherwise), to negotiate the legal mazes set up against them.

      That's it.  Expose the Corpocracy's agenda and help your fellow citizens NOW to register to vote in 2012.  It may not sound like much, but all great rivers begin with small streams coming together in a common purpose.  What more precious purpose than preserving our American Way of Life?  Let's get busy!