David DeGraw’s six-part series on the The Economic Elite Vs. The People of the USA can be found here, here, here, here, here, and here.

When you are one of the 180 million Americans now living paycheck-to-paycheck, and you are working 12 – 14 hours a day, six days a week, you have to constantly ask yourself, “Is what I’m doing the most effective way to use my time?”

When it comes to my work here on AmpedStatus, I’m putting more money into it than I’m getting out of it. So, even with the impact and success I’ve been having with recent reports, my mind still questions if I would be better off working on other, more financially rewarding projects. As each month passes, and the bills keep coming, your will and resolve are tested with increased intensity.

When people take time out of their busy schedules to write emails and donate some of their hard-earned money, and when the bad news just keeps piling up with no substantial government actions to combat it, you realize that you must find it within yourself to keep fighting. In the long run, unfortunately, there is really no other option for us. We have been attacked, a war has been launched on us, even though most people are yet to realize this.

My frustration and cynicism is quickly overwhelmed by my survival instinct. As part of this, I must always try to figure out how to be most effective and question my methods. So when someone like Bill Moyers comes along, and quotes your work, you, for a moment, feel a sense of success. Maybe all the hard work is having an affect and paying off, maybe I am getting through to people.

Perhaps it is just my need for some kind of validation, in the face of such a difficult battle, but Bill Moyers has meant a great deal to me over the years. I remember being in middle school, in 1987, and coming across a PBS television show that shocked my young and naïve mind. It was called “The Secret Government: The Constitution In Crisis,” and a man named Bill Moyers gave me my first lesson in how power really works in this country and throughout the world.

I began to get very interested in these deeper political issues that Mr. Moyers revealed and closely followed his work on the Iran-Contra scandal and the Savings & Loan crisis.

At that time, Bill taught me things I could have never learned in my public schooling or through the network news programs that dominated public consciousness. (Keep in mind, the Internet wasn’t even around back then!) So there was much to learn from Mr. Moyers in the late 1980s, just as there is today.

The most important thing he taught me was to always be critical of those with power, to always question and probe below the surface of popular opinion. And I heeded his advice. While my friends and classmates dutifully read their history books and memorized names and dates, I spent my time at the local library looking for books that offered an alternative viewpoint to textbooks that seemed so black-and-white and lacked the depth and critical thoughts that Mr. Moyers made clear were necessary to be an informed citizen, to be a guardian of freedom and democracy.

I took these things very seriously as a kid. Both of my grandfathers fought in World War II, and the person for whom I am named, my grandfather’s brother, died during the war fighting for freedom and democracy. One of my most cherished possessions is the US flag that was folded into a triangle and presented to my family at my Uncle’s memorial service. I was instilled with a deep understanding that freedom was not free and you must stay vigilant if democracy is to be preserved. So I was very thankful that Mr. Moyers taught me how to look deeper into the power-addicted forces within human nature that are often behind the scenes conspiring against free people – always looking to gain power from us for their own greedy purposes.

Though it may sound like a dark view to some, this is the reality of the world, a reality my grandparent’s generation knew based on first-hand experience. A reality that has been obscured by an all-pervasive distraction-based, profit-seeking mainstream media system that has created two generations of dangerously naïve people. We have forgotten the lessons of our elders.

My grandparents were born into the Great Depression, an era of Robber Barons and massive income inequality. They had to fight through poverty and a World War. And when the war was over, the battle-tested American public joined together and created a prosperous middle class which blossomed into the greatest super-power this world has ever known.

But as the generations passed, we became complacent. We stopped paying attention to politics. Our free and open society was then easily corrupted by those same power and greed-addicted forces that we once fought off. We ignored politics, as the richest members of the world began to dominate both political parties and take over our country – economically and militarily.

As President Eisenhower warned, a grave danger to our future would become an unchecked military industrial complex, now represented in a private and covert military that in many ways is more powerful than our own citizen military. Along with this, the Robber Barons have returned, stronger than ever. The income inequality between the richest one percent and the remaining 99 percent of our country is the highest it has ever been. When you ignore the lessons of the past, they have a horrifying way of coming back to haunt you.

As Bill Moyers said in 1987, at the end of his report on the Secret Government:

“Can it happen again? You bet it can.… This is a system easily corrupted as the public grows indifferent again, and the press is seduced or distracted. So one day, sadly, we are likely to discover once again that while freedom does have enemies in the world, it can also be undermined here at home, in the dark, by those posing as its friends.”

Unfortunately, Bill hit the nail on the head. In many ways, we are right back to where our grandparents started.

Fast forward to our current crisis, and Bill Moyers still, as always, remains ever so aware and present in our national consciousness. It was almost exactly one year ago when Bill Moyers invited William Black, a world renowned white-collar criminologist, to speak with him on his TV show about the outright fraud and theft of our money. As Bill so eloquently and boldly summed it up, “For months now, revelations of the wholesale greed and blatant transgressions of Wall Street have reminded us that ‘The Best Way to Rob a Bank Is to Own One.’” Bill gave us a revealing and much needed look into the systemic criminal underpinnings of our economic structure.

On March 1st, Bill gave his first public speech in three years, as the final speaker in the Dowmel Lecture series. In the speech, Bill, who once served as President Lyndon Johnson’s chief-of-staff, press secretary and speechwriter, choose to address what he feels is “the greatest threat” to our country: the staggering inequality of wealth and the death of the middle class.

He spoke, as always, in clear and concise language:

“This is my fear… at the end of my long career in journalism.… The isolation of the poor, the plight of a failing middle class, the crumbling of our infrastructure. The reckless disregard for our fiscal affairs and the hijacking of our political process by big money. All tear at the social compact that forge the American consciousness.…

We have come to a critical moment in the long fashioning of a democratic people…. America’s wealth is becoming ever more concentrated… concentration of wealth goes hand-in-hand with concentration of power. You don’t have to be a conspiracy theorist to see how its great wealth buys off Washington and turns our watchdogs into lapdogs. You just have to be a good journalist and connect the dots.… The freedoms and rights we cherish were not sent from heaven and do not grow on trees. They were born by centuries of struggle by millions who fought, bled and died… to protect ordinary people from being overrun by massive corporations, to win a safety-net against the sometimes cruel workings of the market… Here is the lesson we must never forget… Democracy only works when people claim it as their own….”

Once again, we owe Bill Moyers thanks for his immense contribution to the understanding, betterment and well-being of our nation. To have him cite my work is truly an honor and an inspiration that will help sustain me through the long days and nights spent researching, writing, communicating and fighting for our democracy, freedom and future.

Bill’s speech is an hour long and well worth your time. You can listen to it here.

David DeGraw is the founder and editor of AmpedStatus.com and director of MediaChannel.org. You can reach him at David@AmpedStatus.com.