What we are seeing today are the combined effects resulting from the last gasp of an antiquated worldview. Those who cling to the theory that men, especially rich white men are uniquely suited to rule over the rest of us are feeling that the end of an era is nigh. Death is never easy to deal with, especially for those left behind, but when we clean out some of the hidden crap amassed through generations of living under the falsehood, we may be surprised by what we find. As with any one person, the trinkets and security blankets that the old guard held onto will strike some as useless and others as the height of frivolity. we may never know what was so enamoring about the idiosyncratic collections, the hoarding instincts of those who have remained in charge for centuries have led to some pretty strange collections. Perhaps what will be required is a giant estate sale, but the question then becomes who will buy all this shit?
A report came out last week that reading scores amongst students in the United States are at a forty year low. Students, on average have not been this illiterate since the seventies! Looking back, one can directly attribute this decline to Reagan and his cronies who claimed to believe that if we just got government out of the way of the wealthiest classes that their table scraps would fall down like manna from heaven to enrich the impoverished. Hidden beneath this overtly stated belief was the underlying principles of Calvinism. I know that i speak about this topic far too often, but that is because it drives so much of our politics and culture today. Even the poor themselves believe that they are at fault for their own poverty. Calvin believed that the poor and disenfranchised deserved their station in life because of their own depravity and the fact that they had turned their back on God. Isn't is convenient to blame the victim? The Republicans in the United States of America, have continued to use this belief as their fall back response whenever they have been asked about their "compassionate conservatism" which, in fact, is neither. They have implied it when they wreak a war on drugs, or poverty against minorities while the biggest criminals as well as the morally bankrupt are given a free hand to exploit others and ingratiate themselves at the expense of others. To keep a population ignorant was the first step in Reagan's plan to keep the rich white men in charge in spite of the demographic changes that have been changing the make-up of our population.
By getting more and more people to have to endure greater and greater financial stress, the wealthiest among us are able to have a free hand in their quest to soak up any and all capital, leaving the vast majority with less than they have ever had before. Take my own situation as an example. I currently "own" two homes (in fact I own the debt that looms over my head for another twenty-five years) both are worth about half of what I owe. The "value" crashed with the economy, but my interest is high and by the time I'm through, I will have spent over half a million dollars for the privilege of ownership. Additionally, there are taxes to pay and insurance that is designed to cover the bank's ass if there should be an "act of god" or an accident that damages my property. It should not be assumed that anyone knew the risk of home ownership ten years ago. Everyone who had lived through the last depression has pretty much passed away, or they are old enough as to no longer be taken seriously by the rest of us. This is also the result of our de-evolution. Intact cultures that have the wherewithal to sustain themselves over time revere their elders, honor them and realize that their experiences stretch out over enough time to create a bridge across generations. They are important enough to humanity that they are supposed to be treated as a valued resource. instead, our youth oriented culture would rather infatuate itself with anorexic women and teen idols. The old guard are adept at shape shifting and utilizing smoke and mirrors to distract us, cover their tracks and lead us down a primrose path to our own destruction.
The dramatic rise in a variety of diseases point to a less and less habitable world. Science agrees that is the case, but trying to pin down the poisoners is more difficult than trying to get the rich to pay their fair share for the right to exploit us. My own experience back in the sixties, being told by a doctor that I had "Green Bay Throat" convinced me that intelligent, wealthy men were scared to death of the powers that be. I asked the doctor to write that down. He refused, knowing that I might make a public case over the diagnosis. The toxic cocktail that I breathed each and every day had me in the hospital several to half a dozen times each year. I was one of the costs of our rampant industrialization and lack of meaningful regulation on polluters. The city, in their infinite wisdom did everything in their power to reward said companies to expand and gave them tax free use of our shared resources allowing them to contaminate them and me to dangerous levels. The state was no help either. They too supported the "rights" of corporations to poison the citizens of the state, contaminate the water that I would eventually drink and play in. They even counted the economic activity as a public good in spite of the fact that millions pay the health care costs of the poisoning. The same thing is continuing to happen today. I have moved more than a mile further from the source of much of the contamination and one of the industries has been shuttered, although they left millions of tons of contaminated soil in place that will be hazardous forever. Now, I'm a mile closer to two other industries that routinely spew different toxic compounds into the local air. The biggest difference in real terms is that the prevailing winds usually carry the toxic plume from the closest industries away from our house, but the source that we are a mile further from still floats past, it is just a bit more dilute.
In addition to point sources and fugitive emissions from manufacturing, there are also massive coal piles just over a mile away from my house. When we lived directly across the river from them, there was nearly always a coating of black dust on everything, most likely on our lung tissue as well. Now that we have moved the extra mile further away, we don't see the black dust as much, but this summer, after sweeping the back patio, we got a huge wind event during which coal and coal dust came this far in giant clouds. when I went back outside, after the wind subsided, I found a chunk of coal, just sitting where I had swept earlier in the day. When my trash ends up in the wrong place, it is called littering and I am liable to be fined. When industry lets their shit blow away, it is called economic activity and is entered on the positive side of our ledger books.
What we saw this week that was called a debate was anything but. Debate requires stating positions and giving rationale and arguments that support those positions. Neither candidate seemed to elucidate any hard and fast position. The sickening lack of factual data to support the positions that they hinted at was the most striking thing that stuck in my mind. The speakers were heavy on platitudes, catch phrases and personal attacks, but the issues were mostly window dressing designed to pull at our heart strings rather than inform us about the motivations and direction that these two men were planning on taking our country. The Green candidate for President, Jill Stein, was arrested just trying to enter the campus on which the debate was to be held. She was treated like a criminal even though she is running to serve our country, doing her patriotic duty, representing the vast majority of our interests in clean air and water. The Brownshirts who arrested her were doing the bidding of the ultra-wealthy. Just as our "military interests" serve the wealthiest amongst us through the disproportionate bloodshed of the children who hail from families on the lowest rungs of the "economic ladder".
Not a word was spoken at the "debates" about ecological integrity, climate change or health effects that we all pay for that are caused by the industrialists who our tax policies subsidize. Luckily, many of us are beginning to realize the hollow shell of capitalism is breaking down. The utter emptiness of positions taken by the ultra-wealthy are becoming clear to more and more people each and every day. It is natural and normal to fear the end of an era, but in our time we are poised on the verge of creating something better with which to replace the patriarchal, abusive and greed inspired bigotry, hatred and fear that we have allowed to fester for generations. The time has come for us to look for ways to bring our deeds in line with our words. We say that each of us is of value, yet we poison our neighbors by flicking the switches in our homes or tromping on the gas pedal. We say that anyone can become President, but they really have to have a cock. We say that through education we can achieve our highest calling, yet we refuse to listen to scientists who have devoted their lives to searching for the truth. Instead of debate, we are fed the corporate line, encouraged to bicker amongst ourselves about meaningless "issues" and to top it off we are expected to be happy with a steadily declining quality of life that requires more and more dollars in a contracting economy. We need more people to wake up to the fact that the most powerful classes have been lying to us about everything for generations. Asking them to change will not work. Voting for one millionaire instead of another has not helped. What we need is more ways to free ourselves from the grasp of the greedy, a bit of relief from the long arm of the corporations that reach intro our pockets seemingly with every purchase and some time to rest and recuperate from their relentless assault. Our families need time to heal, our bodies need clean air and fresh water to recuperate and our neighborhoods need the people to come back instead of running away from one another to try to make ends meet.
Don't expect the wealthy to give up their stranglehold on us easily. If we want anything better, we will have to fight for it. Those who have lied to us to pad their own wallets actually believe that we deserve nothing and are happy to make sure that is what we get. We need to stand up with one voice and say no to corporate domination, corporate welfare and inequality under the law that leads to the enrichment of the powerful at the expense of the majority of our population.
A report came out last week that reading scores amongst students in the United States are at a forty year low. Students, on average have not been this illiterate since the seventies! Looking back, one can directly attribute this decline to Reagan and his cronies who claimed to believe that if we just got government out of the way of the wealthiest classes that their table scraps would fall down like manna from heaven to enrich the impoverished. Hidden beneath this overtly stated belief was the underlying principles of Calvinism. I know that i speak about this topic far too often, but that is because it drives so much of our politics and culture today. Even the poor themselves believe that they are at fault for their own poverty. Calvin believed that the poor and disenfranchised deserved their station in life because of their own depravity and the fact that they had turned their back on God. Isn't is convenient to blame the victim? The Republicans in the United States of America, have continued to use this belief as their fall back response whenever they have been asked about their "compassionate conservatism" which, in fact, is neither. They have implied it when they wreak a war on drugs, or poverty against minorities while the biggest criminals as well as the morally bankrupt are given a free hand to exploit others and ingratiate themselves at the expense of others. To keep a population ignorant was the first step in Reagan's plan to keep the rich white men in charge in spite of the demographic changes that have been changing the make-up of our population.
By getting more and more people to have to endure greater and greater financial stress, the wealthiest among us are able to have a free hand in their quest to soak up any and all capital, leaving the vast majority with less than they have ever had before. Take my own situation as an example. I currently "own" two homes (in fact I own the debt that looms over my head for another twenty-five years) both are worth about half of what I owe. The "value" crashed with the economy, but my interest is high and by the time I'm through, I will have spent over half a million dollars for the privilege of ownership. Additionally, there are taxes to pay and insurance that is designed to cover the bank's ass if there should be an "act of god" or an accident that damages my property. It should not be assumed that anyone knew the risk of home ownership ten years ago. Everyone who had lived through the last depression has pretty much passed away, or they are old enough as to no longer be taken seriously by the rest of us. This is also the result of our de-evolution. Intact cultures that have the wherewithal to sustain themselves over time revere their elders, honor them and realize that their experiences stretch out over enough time to create a bridge across generations. They are important enough to humanity that they are supposed to be treated as a valued resource. instead, our youth oriented culture would rather infatuate itself with anorexic women and teen idols. The old guard are adept at shape shifting and utilizing smoke and mirrors to distract us, cover their tracks and lead us down a primrose path to our own destruction.
The dramatic rise in a variety of diseases point to a less and less habitable world. Science agrees that is the case, but trying to pin down the poisoners is more difficult than trying to get the rich to pay their fair share for the right to exploit us. My own experience back in the sixties, being told by a doctor that I had "Green Bay Throat" convinced me that intelligent, wealthy men were scared to death of the powers that be. I asked the doctor to write that down. He refused, knowing that I might make a public case over the diagnosis. The toxic cocktail that I breathed each and every day had me in the hospital several to half a dozen times each year. I was one of the costs of our rampant industrialization and lack of meaningful regulation on polluters. The city, in their infinite wisdom did everything in their power to reward said companies to expand and gave them tax free use of our shared resources allowing them to contaminate them and me to dangerous levels. The state was no help either. They too supported the "rights" of corporations to poison the citizens of the state, contaminate the water that I would eventually drink and play in. They even counted the economic activity as a public good in spite of the fact that millions pay the health care costs of the poisoning. The same thing is continuing to happen today. I have moved more than a mile further from the source of much of the contamination and one of the industries has been shuttered, although they left millions of tons of contaminated soil in place that will be hazardous forever. Now, I'm a mile closer to two other industries that routinely spew different toxic compounds into the local air. The biggest difference in real terms is that the prevailing winds usually carry the toxic plume from the closest industries away from our house, but the source that we are a mile further from still floats past, it is just a bit more dilute.
What we saw this week that was called a debate was anything but. Debate requires stating positions and giving rationale and arguments that support those positions. Neither candidate seemed to elucidate any hard and fast position. The sickening lack of factual data to support the positions that they hinted at was the most striking thing that stuck in my mind. The speakers were heavy on platitudes, catch phrases and personal attacks, but the issues were mostly window dressing designed to pull at our heart strings rather than inform us about the motivations and direction that these two men were planning on taking our country. The Green candidate for President, Jill Stein, was arrested just trying to enter the campus on which the debate was to be held. She was treated like a criminal even though she is running to serve our country, doing her patriotic duty, representing the vast majority of our interests in clean air and water. The Brownshirts who arrested her were doing the bidding of the ultra-wealthy. Just as our "military interests" serve the wealthiest amongst us through the disproportionate bloodshed of the children who hail from families on the lowest rungs of the "economic ladder".
Not a word was spoken at the "debates" about ecological integrity, climate change or health effects that we all pay for that are caused by the industrialists who our tax policies subsidize. Luckily, many of us are beginning to realize the hollow shell of capitalism is breaking down. The utter emptiness of positions taken by the ultra-wealthy are becoming clear to more and more people each and every day. It is natural and normal to fear the end of an era, but in our time we are poised on the verge of creating something better with which to replace the patriarchal, abusive and greed inspired bigotry, hatred and fear that we have allowed to fester for generations. The time has come for us to look for ways to bring our deeds in line with our words. We say that each of us is of value, yet we poison our neighbors by flicking the switches in our homes or tromping on the gas pedal. We say that anyone can become President, but they really have to have a cock. We say that through education we can achieve our highest calling, yet we refuse to listen to scientists who have devoted their lives to searching for the truth. Instead of debate, we are fed the corporate line, encouraged to bicker amongst ourselves about meaningless "issues" and to top it off we are expected to be happy with a steadily declining quality of life that requires more and more dollars in a contracting economy. We need more people to wake up to the fact that the most powerful classes have been lying to us about everything for generations. Asking them to change will not work. Voting for one millionaire instead of another has not helped. What we need is more ways to free ourselves from the grasp of the greedy, a bit of relief from the long arm of the corporations that reach intro our pockets seemingly with every purchase and some time to rest and recuperate from their relentless assault. Our families need time to heal, our bodies need clean air and fresh water to recuperate and our neighborhoods need the people to come back instead of running away from one another to try to make ends meet.
Don't expect the wealthy to give up their stranglehold on us easily. If we want anything better, we will have to fight for it. Those who have lied to us to pad their own wallets actually believe that we deserve nothing and are happy to make sure that is what we get. We need to stand up with one voice and say no to corporate domination, corporate welfare and inequality under the law that leads to the enrichment of the powerful at the expense of the majority of our population.
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