A chicken in diapers

MIAMI – If a multimillionaire at a restaurant orders a chicken with a disposable diaper, I’m sure that it will be served to him without many questions, so long as he pays for the chicken and the diaper.

Possibly, a member of the “Tea Party” will stop at his table and make a speech hailing that extravagance as “an expenditure that generates employment for the maker of diapers and the chicken farmer simultaneously.”

That ridiculous speech would prove nothing in social terms but would be an excuse for everyone to praise the desire for luxury and all kinds of vanity, turning people’s attention away from real issues.

Being rich is no sin and being poor is no virtue, but unquestionably if a rich man behaves badly he can cause more damage than a poor man, because of his resources. When I think of the direction this country is taking, pushed by its richest citizens, so mindless of those republican virtues that made this federation great, I see first their endless greed and total absence of compassion as the causes of major ills.

The people who are in love with the “Tea Party” and opposed to Obama’s policies in Florida often portray his government as socialist because of issues such as public health care or a foreign policy that’s too diplomatic for the militaristic taste of the ultraright.

Those groups, almost always enemies of the general welfare, appeal to the need for a small government, low taxes and an economic liberalism that is favorable to their own ability to do business or to live from other people’s business, as happens with some politicians who serve – practically on their knees – the capital that promotes them.

Not long ago, two Miami-Dade representatives, Congress members Mario Diaz-Balart and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, voted to deny food aid to the many hungry residents of South Florida who also live in their respective districts.

At first sight, this antipopular and reactionary posture might be surprising, bearing in mind that those who are negatively affected will not vote for that type of representative. But if we meditate carefully, we’ll see that this conduct is an evident sign of the inefficient democracy that we suffer here.

These politicians, who are not at all representative of the working class facing unemployment, maintain a double profile that uses the topic of Cuba and U.S. domestic policy together to attack the Democratic Party and President Obama.

On one hand, they seduce the old Cuban-American voters, who are still obsessed by their hatred for the Cuban nation, and on the other they serve the rich Americans.

Capital concentrated in a few hands has no electoral strength, but it has sufficient weight in elections where the private press meekly serves whoever pays – not the ordinary citizens.

The intense propaganda of these politicians, so detached from the people, relies on an antisocialist rhetoric that tries to legitimize private profit to the max, telling us that the rich man generates jobs because he hires a cook, a gardener and a chauffeur, and his mere existence spreads money everywhere.

They forget to say that that money is first taken away from a larger body of workers who don’t have good representatives, and that the crumbs they throw at their employees hardly boost the general economy.