AN OPEN APPEAL TO THE INCOMING AND RETURNING MEMBERS OF BOTH HOUSES OF CONGRESS:
Dearest Esteemed Representatives and Senators,
Get a fucking clue.
Yeah, sure, a lot of folks out there think I’m wasting my time to be trying to tell you this, but I’ll try anyway.
In these times of spiraling unemployment, rapidly exported living wage jobs and increasingly hard times for homeowners and working class families, any amount of economic relief helps greatly.
On the other hand, people in this country who are earning over a quarter of a million dollars annually do not need to worry about where their next meal is coming from, much less maintaining a roof over their heads.
Anyway, I've heard that you need to do something about the federal budget deficit.
Oh, cry me a river.
The decision is simple here. Tax hikes for the rich, tax breaks for the poor. The rich are not suffering from the slings and arrows of the past two years. Working families and people living just above the poverty line and lower are.
Back in the colonial days, the Crown was accused of “taxation without representation”. Nowadays, all of you are obviously whores for the corporate and otherwise wealthy interests. You accept the price, and do the act, in the secondary definition of Webster’s, “to corrupt by lewd intercourse”, that is, political intercourse is lewdly corrupted. No one in the working class should expect that to change soon. If only in the interest of fairness, less representation should be accompanied by less taxation.
So, I implore you to do the right thing, and give the tax breaks, for once, to the citizens of this nation who really need it. In other words, drop the partisan rhetoric, grow some pubic hair, and just do it.
The people who are truly keeping our country in working order are watching. Don’t let them down. Perhaps you need to learn a lesson about what happens when the rich minority is mollycoddled too much and the workers of the nation are scorned and taken for granted.
AND NOW, AN OPEN APPEAL TO THE WORKERS OF AMERICA:
I’m ready to organize. I’ll never mourn.
Workers of America, feel free to organize with me anytime. Don’t say you were never invited.
I never thought that I would ever declare the following sentiment, at least with any marked degree of seriousness.
Thank God that I’m a Californian.
As a matter of fact, thank God that I’m in Sacramento, in Midtown, and what the Hell, since I’m in a generous moment of spiritual gratitude, thank God that I’m on the block I live on.
We told not one, but two former CEOs (one who was trying to buy the state governor’s office, and another who was trying to brainwash us that she was somehow going to represent anyone resembling real persons and not corporations in the United States Senate),through a majority of the vote, to fuck off. We also came out relatively unscathed (with no real change in our House of Representative members) in a year when Fux News was highly successful in selling high fructose Kool-Aid to the mass electorate of so-called Flyover America, the effect of which has now populated our Congress as well as Senate with a whole shitload of village idiots and snake oil salesmen who somehow bamboozled their local populace into thinking that their out of state big business fueled campaign contributions are going to somehow translate into representation by and for “the people”. While I agree that “the people” have spoken, if translated from Politicalese into plain English, the phrase emanated would be somewhat along the lines of, “Send you to Washington D.C. in exchange for sole ownership of the Brooklyn Bridge? Sure thing partner! Can’t beat that deal with a stick!”
Having already seen similar exercises in ballot box stupidity in previous decades, I don’t feel that sad or pessimistic about the results this time, although, as I’ve mentioned previously, being in the particular (truly golden) state in which I currently reside greatly softens the blow. If anything, my first impulse toward these unfortunates is somewhat a feeling of pity in their effort to try to placate their general frustration toward the powers that be, whether real or perceived, about things like chronic unemployment, shrinking payrolls and opportunities for business growth, a general discouragement of realizing what can be described generally as the American Dream, and the like.
They’re not necessarily unjust or incorrect in their sentiments nowadays. They just need to learn how to think it through when determining who is actually going to represent them, and also who is going to do so by fighting for what’s really going to help them attain a better life for all Americans, and in turn, build a better, stronger and more prosperous and secure nation all around.
But instead, too many of them teamed up with bunches of corporate-fascist whores who, among other stupid reasons, are pissed off because a black guy got elected President. However, there's no crying over spilt milk. The damage has been done and like a strange course of natural disaster we must tolerate the damages and casualties to a certain degree.
I feel that it is just a matter of self-education by trial and error. People will figure out that they fucked up and the next two years should be fun to watch, that is, if you are a big fan of gridlock and partisan bickering as comedy. One interesting byproduct of November 2010 is the fact that many of the so called Blue Dog Democrats, those elected representatives who are donkeys of the moderate to conservative persuasion, lost numbers dearly in their respective re-election attempts. Thus, the new Democratic minority in the House is now lean, mean, shamelessly progressive, labor friendly and hopefully willing to provide some obstructionist payback when need be.
This new attitude remains to be seen, of course, seeing as there are already mumbles in the lame duck Congress about compromise and all that shit. If anything, I envision a House full of proposed bargain deals for the gazillionaires whose contibutions had won a seat for many a 2011 freshman in the House chambers, fulla tax breaks on top of the extended Dubya-era kind, with all kinds of relaxations on those inconvenient environmental and safety regulations and the like. What the Hell, they may well introduce a “Minimum Wage and Eight Hour Day Elimination Blowout” and “Social Security Sundown Extravaganza” to boot.
Hopefully the still Democrat-controlled Senate and White House can know when to say “You are out of your fuckin’ minds!” and fight back when needed, but I suppose that will be a wait-and-see situation, at least for now. Either way, it seems that we will have a lot of hooting and hollering and arguing in Washington D.C. for the next two years, and in my humble prediction, a whole lot of nothing actually being accomplished. What will the people who comprise the American voting public learn after this next Congressional term? If past election trends are any indication, not a whole Hell of a lot. They’ll just scamper along with the next Pied Piper who shows up with an appealing melody.
Where's that bee and where's that honey? Where's my God and where's my money Unreal values, crass distortion Unwed mothers need abortion Kind of brings to mind ol' young King Tut (He did it now) Tried to make it real — compared to what?!
I’ve got to admit it. Considering that today’s job hunt for unemployed Americans currently resembles something akin to playing hockey with a bladeless stick, I have felt very thankful and lucky to be able to hold gainful employment for a living wage through this entire recent period of economic recession. Well, if I had my druthers, I’d call it a depression, but that’s not the current chic term amongst the in-crowd so I’ll roll with it.
Somehow, I don’t feel that fortunate or even accomplished. Like the old saying goes, there but for the grace, yadda, yadda, yadda. There are plenty of qualified individuals out there, many of them way more educated and able than myself, who could do my job as well or better. And as a matter of fact, with all of the layoffs and buyouts and attrition-related elimination of positions at my current place of employment, I would be more than willing to see as many new hires as possible joining alongside me in my department right around now.
Unfortunately, that’s not going to happen and there’s really nothing I can do to change or control that. As a matter of fact, I’m sure that there is a massive amount of thought and energy being utilized right now to make sure that I am sent out the door, under a security guard’s escort and carrying a box of my personal possessions, as soon as they can possibly pull it off.
According to certain general estimates, there are five people vying for each employment position available in America as of today. This estimate, of course, ignores among other things what types of jobs are out there for hire as well as the specific qualifications of the job seekers. It’s just the cold literal statistic, which means that applicants out there are likely to be seeing competition in the form of hundreds, or even thousands, of fellow job seekers knocking at the door of any particular employer who is hiring at the unskilled entry level.
Between the end of 2007 and end of 2009, private industry got rid of 8 and a half million jobs. There is a slow restoration pattern, as jobs are slowly being created once again. Unfortunately, it’s something akin to an inadequate transfusion after a huge loss of blood. It might keep the economy alive, but not anywhere near decent health.
And meanwhile, a certain element of pundits, politicians, and other devoted groupies of capitalism are proclaiming to anyone who will listen that things just, wal, ain’t as bad as they seem. As a matter of fact, if unemployment insurance benefits in this country weren’t extended for so many months to a lot of jobless people, well, they wouldn’t be so inclined to sit back and slack off on that UI assistance windfall! Oh, sure, there’s nothing that makes people less motivated to achieve than suddenly having their income cut by nearly in half or so of their former job’s paycheck! Well, maybe a gun in their backs, perhaps.
We need to face reality. It’s the 21st century global economy and in this world, people can’t just choose between being a butcher, a baker or a candlestick maker in order to put a roof on their heads and food on their tables. For the majority of us working stiffs, we are currently at the mercy of megalomaniac business interests. To argue over how, why or whether the machine has been allowed to spin so wildly out of control is too close to mulling over moot points for consideration.
If the plague of “Middle America” voter sympathy to the current crop of right-wing extremist propaganda is any indication, the politicians are going to increasingly pander to the corporate and otherwise moneyed interests by expanding tax breaks and loosening environmental and labor regulations and the like. People, it would seem, are simply out of constructive ideas. At the very least, those who do have anything resembling practical strategies are either ignored or simply lack an effective means of publicity.
And don’t expect the corporate conglomerates to be feeling any sympathy to the domestic workforce very soon. Look at it this way: any current American job that does not require putting your hands on something (except manufacturing), or having direct in-person contact with other people is ripe for sending overseas. Companies like India’s Infosys are living large off of the backs of the past, present and future members of America’s unemployment lines.
There are any number of optional tactics to consider in regard to remedies that struggling working people, whether employed or not, can take in this day and age. I can’t say that I have any miracle cure to suggest, but what the hell, I can at least try to examine some possibilities here.
One option could be for as many of the presently corporate employed workers as possible to quit their respective companies and venture into their own independent occupation. But as I had suggested earlier, this plan would have little if any basis in today’s reality. This would take a marked degree of risk and sacrifice, and few would likely take either at this point in time. (I would begrudgingly include myself in that refusal.)
Another option would be to organize and take steps en masse to address grievances and concerns, standing in unity against those who are in control of most of the labor and commerce. Again, this involves risk and sacrifice as well, but approaches much closer to a possibility of some degree of success. It all depends upon the willingness of the people in our labor force to cooperate and support each other. Those days of organized mass dissent and protest, in the eyes of many, are long gone.
And then again, those of us who aren’t wealthy or won’t be getting rich soon can simply cease to spend money as quickly, and, better yet, also cease to spend ourselves into debt.
While it is most unrealistic for many of today’s American consumers to completely boycott goods that are manufactured overseas, it is entirely possible to slow down the profits from the sale of said goods. Those shoes, chairs, computers and such can probably last in good condition for a lot longer time than many folks would like to freely admit. Plus, there are fashion styles that transcend eras. A steady level of economic compromise, taken by a fairly large number of citizens in this country, can go a long way to hit and hurt the profit line of large corporations. Of course, anything that can be substituted with domestic and especially locally produced goods and services can be the most viable option of all.
It’s already in place at a noted level nowadays. People are spending less, and with a little luck, this trend will continue for quite some time. It simply could not happen to a nicer free market economy…heh.
In case anybody's wondering about why Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin et al were so goshdarned worked up about "restoring America's honor" at the rally held on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 2010 (and sadly, on the anniversary of MLK's "I Have A Dream" speech), a simple Google search ought to give you some answers.
Yessiree, if there were only one thing left that I would ever love about the U.S. of A., it would certainly be the document created to be the supreme law of the land.
The United States Constitution may have a somewhat chequered past with various parties in its interpretation and implementation, but it’s that very fluctuation and ongoing evolving dialogue about its meaning and significance which makes it so enduring and useful over the decades of our country’s history.
Even during the term of one President or another who I have absolutely despised sitting behind the desk in the Oval Office, my faith in the wisdom and basic principles of justice which the Constitution puts forth has helped me to cope with the disagreeable times and also has ensured my sense of hope in the future of our nation.
In a very similar way that two people develop a loving and trusting relationship toward each other, I feel that in order for me to love the Constitution, I need to accept the whole of the document. I also need to be able to work out and rationalize the controversies, real or perceived faults, and such.
That’s why I can’t seem to help but be both perplexed and amused with the number of folks who had seemingly fallen asleep during the part of their junior high school civics class when their respective teachers started to go over the points regarding the three branches of government as designed by the United States Constitution. This relative ignorance seems to be particularly showing in these people when they find a decision at the Federal judicial level to be disagreeable to their personal opinion or moral principles.
Oh sure, there’s some decisions which have made it all the way up to the Supreme Court (and these matters of contention usually do) which I have found, throughout history, to be what I would personally condemn as reprehensible. A few examples that I can come up with are:
-Scott v. Sandford , 60 U.S. 393 (1857). Now that, I don’t think that was a highlight in American civil rights history, but rather a lowlight, ya know whut I’m sayin?
-Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896). IMHO, this was a particularly suckass move by the SCOTUS.
-Then there’s Lochner v. New York, 198 U.S. 45 (1905), which wasn’t exactly a cause for celebration on the part of the nation’s working class.
Then again, I feel like there were brighter spots for me to contemplate, like:
-Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954). For some reason, 1954 seemed to be a year when the Supremes started to get it right in general.
-Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479 (1965). Married couples are entitled to a right to privacy in how they conduct their boudoir activities. Fancy that.
-And on a sorta related note, there’s Loving v.Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967). “Racial Integrity”, eh, Virginia? Nice try. But no, not really, not even close. “Racial Intolerance Act of 1924”, retrospectively, is probably a more accurate term for what I feel this particular Supreme Court decision had flushed down the toilet of history.
The point I’m trying to make: regardless of the acts of our various branches of government, there has never been any need for me to throw the baby out with the bathwater and dismiss the role of an entire branch of the Fed just because I disagree with its decision. So next time I hear someone start rambling on about “activist judges” and how he or she moans about how the vote of the people has been dismissed by a court decision, or some stupid shit like that, I’ll just be hopeful that someday, people who talk like that will someday stumble across a copy of the U.S. Constitution, read it a bit more carefully (or, Hell, for many of them it would seem, actually bother to read it for once), and finally get a clue.
Long ago, in a punk scene far, far away, I was up on stages singing a song about the citizens of a land known as Reagan Country. It had a chorus stating the following:
New Patriotism What the fuck is that? People with their flags in one hand, wallets in the other.
New Patriotism. It’s baaaack.
Greedy ass selfish fuckers who don’t seem to understand the meaning of the words “We the people” are sucking up most of the air in their immediate area lately, producing massive amounts of rhetorical pollution disguised as love of country.
As for the Neo-New Patriots’ current mouthpieces du jour, I don’t question their patriotism. The least patriotic thing for somebody to do is to question the patriotism of a fellow citizen, although the Neo-New Patriots tend to do that on quite a regular basis. I do, however, question the personal definition behind their constant buzzwords of “freedom” and “liberty”.
The definition of “freedom” espoused by these folks has nothing to do with anyone else’s freedom, and all about solely their own. Instead of “Don’t Tread On Me”, perhaps the slogan of their rally flags should simply read “Me, Myself and I”. Their vision of “freedom” and “liberty” are defined by principles such as the “freedom” to keep women from making choices with their own bodies, and the “liberty” to avoid paying taxes once they become rich enough, while everyone else in the lower income brackets cough up the loot to pay the nation’s bills.
In other words, to be free to run the rest of our lives and tell us what we can and cannot do. It’s not really about freedom and liberty. It’s a sick combination of lust for power coupled with a dismissal of personal responsibility for those who attain that power.
As far as I’m concerned, we are only as free as we all agree to be. People in this country have a reasonable right to live free, pursue opportunity, and strive to make this land a better and better place to live in everyday. This involves cooperation, understanding and tolerance, and not just getting together as (somewhat remotely) like-minded individuals to bitch about what triggers our prejudices and insecurities.
While certain folks out there are wasting their time whining about the state of the nation, I’ll be truly appreciating my freedom and liberty as an American by communicating positively to my fellow citizens, and treating them with equality and respect. That’s what it’s all about, and perhaps someday, these empty rhetoric junkies, or at least their descendants, may finally get a clue.
As anyone who has known me long enough knows about me, I'm always here to help. In that spirit, I'd like to step in and offer an alternative to the current Arizona law that's causing so much division in our country right now.
Simply place a poster of the photo which I have helpfully linked below on a scale which will cover the border fence with Mexico completely from top to bottom, and post multiple images all the way across, from the TJ border all the way east as far as it stretches. I guarantee to anyone who cares that no one, and I mean nobody will want to trek northward once they get a load of this.
And here are a couple of helpful examples of how we can utilize my idea:
UPDATE (6/20/10, 3:30PM PST): Y'know, after some reflection, it really does seem to appear as if I am making a sexist, "lookist" attack against the Governor of Arizona, and I would never want to be perceived as engaging in such behavior, because it would probably have me branded as, well, a Republican or something or other, and I would never want to go out like that.
SO, in the interest of gender equality, I would like to resubmit my simulated rendering in a revised form (below), using the additional image of a second (male) party in order to even things out. Of course, not only is this gentleman well known throughout the Southwest, he is also up to his testicles in the Arizona controversy as well. Personally, I feel that his additional presence will make the border fence ten times as frightening.
There. I fixed it. Now let's get back to arguing about health care.
Lately, I’ve been experiencing a general feeling of (Dare I say it?) domestic security to some degree. At least it’s the highest level I could possibly hope to achieve nowadays. So what the Hell, I’ll take it.
After about four months, I’ve been settling into my latest Midtown lair quite nicely, thank you. Although the new digs are quite a bit older than where I was living previously, the new carpet, paint, linoleum and ceiling fans in every room seem to make up for it. Plus, I've noticed how some seemingly insignificant things make a huge difference, such as being able to walk through your place in a circular layout, having windows on both sides to circulate the air, or even just having a nice high and shady set of steps to sit on and watch the clouds roll by, with treetops filling out the scenery. Guess I’m easily satisfied. Or something.
Other than that, I’ve also been staying busy with music and shit like that, when I’m not overworking brain cells for a paycheck. I have added the following swell tunes to my online streaming music page:
EMOTIONAL BAGGAGE CHECK (which I have also YouTubed) GET SOME HEIGHT SEVERANCE WALK OF SHAME YESUR1
So head on over to michaelpsycho.com and stream and download to your hearts content. Don’t worry. I’ll make more. And of course, I have updated my lyrics page with each and every one of those swell melodies because I know that you are just itching to sing along.
A WORD ABOUT THE SONG WALK OF SHAME:
Yes, I know. As everybody knows, I’m a notoriously slutty guy, so people are wondering who the song Walk Of Shame is based on.
Well, in the interest of preventing community discord, I will come clean with you dear readers right now.
Walk Of Shame was inspired by… a Folgers Coffee commercial.
No really.
(Ed. note: This video feed was yanked literally hours after I posted it, yet beforehand, has been available for embedding for months. Coincidence? Final straw? Who knows? Anyway, here's the only other video link I found. Peculiar. A corporation being scared to let people see a TV commercial online?)
In the TV ad, a charmingly Aryan father and daughter meet in the kitchen and, as Daddy hands his apparently way-past-teenhood offspring a nice freshly brewed cuppa, he chides her for coming in way late last night. She teasingly replies that it doesn’t matter because she’s “not sixteen anymore” (but apparently adulthood doesn’t stop her from still living with the folks). He reiterates, “Still, it was late.” She replies that he “won’t have to worry about that anymore” and takes her hand out from behind her big’ ol’ honkin’ mug of corporate java to show the pops her newly acquired engagement ring. After a cockle warming embrace, Daddy tells his little girl that “Todd” is a lucky guy and that’s what he told “Todd” when they “talked” last week.
Anyway, here’s how I had imagined the commercial had continued, right after the actual spot came to a close onscreen. My additional script is in italics.
DAD: Todd’s a lucky man.
(DAUGHTER giggles)
DAD: That’s what I told him when we talked last week.
(DAUGHTER gives a bewildered look)
DAD: And then I said, “You’re lucky I don’t put the barrel of this 30 ought six in your mouth right now, and pull the trigger you perverted sumbitch! If you’re gonna be fucking my daughter and dumping her off at 3 in the morning, you best at least buy her a ring! My little girl is NOT taking any more walks of shame into MY home, you hear?”
And anyway, a song was born.
And on a sorta related note, this month of June 2010 marks the 20th anniversary of the release of my only slab of vinyl ever created, Think. Originally I was going to use this particular blog entry to tell the big sorry story about the record’s recording, production, critical reaction and subsequent destruction of most of its original 1000 copy run, but after some reflection, it really doesn’t matter to me. Frankly, I don’t really give a shit about Think anymore, and don’t even own a copy with a cover myself (just a handwritten red label test pressing.) By all means, have fun putting it up on Ebay and/or bidding on it. As for myself, I’m looking at today’s date on the calendar, and not yesterday’s.
As a descendant of one of the alleged participants in the actual Boston Tea Party that happened way on back in 1773, I find that whenever I’m taking in news accounts of the modern day pseudo-brownshirt rallies which are trying to borrow upon the name of the original historic event, I can feel the bile rise up in my guts from the aggravation of being forced to witness the sodomizing of the memory and symbolism of one of our nation’s most fabled acts of direct protest action.
I refuse to go along with referring to these ignorant republidupes and their Nuremburg rallies-cum-Sunday picnics as a “Tea Party Movement”. It was at one time amusing to call them by their original self-styled nickname of “teabaggers” since just about everything that they believe is truly nuts in the head, but that joke got dull after a while. Nowadays, I like to call it the TP movement because “TP” is a popular slang term for toilet paper, and most of the people involved in these rallies are assholes.
I also refuse to give any serious comparison between the historic activities of the original Sons of Liberty and this modern day traveling hate speech festival that was initiated and spurned on by a handful of opportunistically frustrated, miserable, insecure and attention starved Caucasian right wingers who, in an earlier age, would quite probably be opening and emptying sugar containers over the heads of black youths attempting to get served at a segregated lunch counter. Truly, on Breed’s Hill back in 1775, these limp dicks would have been the Redcoats angrily bayoneting my ancestor’s corpse into complete lack of recognition and then tossing him into a pauper’s grave solely for purposes of humiliation.
However, this is a different age, and today these same closet fascists make mind-bogglingly lame attempts to patronize civil rights accomplishments of the past, as well as the notable people responsible for said accomplishments, in order to somehow provide some shred of rationale that said past struggles mirror their own current campaign to force America to give in to their self-centered demands. Said demands seem to be mostly concerning less government and the complete repeal of all regulation, for the sole purpose of encouraging rampant uncontrollable capitalism. This selfish me-first platform is considered within the collective mind of the TP movement’s leadership to be equal in significance to the Freedom Marchers and Gandhi’s hunger strikes. To realistically attempt to describe the TP movement as having any sort of ideological parallel to civil rights activism would be like describing Hitler as having been compassionate.
Ah, but listen to the well-paid mouthpieces for this allegedly leaderless and grassroots movement as they try to present an image as a phenomenon organized by and supported by the working people. Goll-ee, it must be true, since a consulting firm named Russo, Marsh, and Associates made $857,122 in 2009 simply by trying to convince people that the TP movement was a proletarian wet dream!
The true working people of this nation, those of us who represent a diverse populace of many racial, spiritual and cultural demographics, need to be sure to dismiss, discredit and undermine this pathetic TP movement, and most importantly, we must be sure to unceasingly proclaim the fact that this wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing of an evil, questionably funded experiment in corporate mass manipulation does not represent American ideals, the interest of the nation’s working people, or anything which would protect and maintain the life, liberty and pursuit of happiness of those Americans who not only keep the country in motion, but live its finest ideals as well. Those of us who realize that we are all in this nation together will persevere and outlast this band of dimwit schoolyard bullies of the political arena, just as we always have.
Our backlash does not have to involve organized rallies, or even online social networking. We just need to do it the old fashioned way, and open up the dialogue during the course of our everyday lives. Let them gather and scream and rant and wave their ignorantly constructed signs and freshly-store-bought Gadsden flags in their little pointless rallies as much as they want. Americans like us, from all corners and walks of life will work it out in the end, and time and the will of the people will eventually wear out the TP movement of today, just like it has done for insidious greedy self-centered hatemongers time after time again. That’s one of the many beautiful things about this country and living in it: i.e., more often than not, common sense tends to win the battle sooner or later.
Yes, I know that concept can be difficult to grasp sometimes, but to truly love it all will provide a personal advantage if one wants to survive in this world.
Existence in its purest form is a positive and creative force and therefore, a source of inspiration and wonder. In the worst of times, to find what I like to call the “inner ambivalence” inside of oneself can be a true lifesaver. Everybody has this inside them, but few, it seems, know how to find and apply the inner ambivalence properly.
When this conflicting feeling is tapped, allowing the basic uncertainty of direction and emotion to go unhampered, the best of the human mental process will tend to overcome the worst. In other words, when there’s no hope to be found, there’s no longer anything to lose, so you might as well enjoy whatever you can.
To have this kind of attitude does not mean that you have to be satisfied and complimentary of everything you experience. Quite the opposite, actually. If you are honest with yourself re: what disgusts you and more importantly, who is responsible for said causes of disgust, then you can take note of who as well as what to avoid. This will greatly contribute to your potential to lead a stable and productive life.
So whatever you do, don’t let anyone or anything drag you down, drain you, or try to control you. Concurrently, be sure to just love it all conditionally. If this aforementioned premise does not seem clear or sensible at first, just think it out for a while. You'll figure out what I mean. If not, life is sure to teach it to you eventually.
People need all four of the abovementioned, in adequate and available levels, in order to function and thrive in today’s society. The availability of all four can define the overall quality of life for an entire nation. More and more every day, all of these are being increasingly controlled, limited and priced to the inconvenience of anyone below the upper middle class.
Just like that old saying about how nature abhors a vacuum, in similar fashion capitalism hates to see anything free. Name practically any old thing, and if it is part of the world and existing in it, the chances are close to even odds that some enterprising pig has at least tried to put a price tag on it. When it’s not an outright sale of goods, it’s some sort of service or other designed to either provide something that could be free or (allegedly) improves upon the quality of what would be otherwise unnecessary to pay for.
In this atmosphere of corporate access to the campaign coffers of politicians, what is needed now more than ever is a grassroots groundswell of demand for regulation designed to protect the majority of this nation who do all of the actual work which results in the profit of the privileged few. There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth from the corridors of the affected interests, of course. What simply has to happen, when this inevitable tantrum occurs, is for our elected officials to work up their collective spine and reply something upon the lines of “Shut up.” These objectors need to be treated with the same amount of attention given to those who want looser rules on pollution controls, food safety inspections and product safety: in other words, by paying no heed whatsoever to their concerns.
Cost is always a big talking point, or to put it more adequately, a wrench in the gears for the robber barons and their well paid mouthpieces lobbying the pro-corporate anti-regulatory agenda in the nation’s and states’ governments. As anybody who handles their personal finances wisely has learned, however, when one thing is needed, expenses can usually be shifted from one area to another. That said, seeing as Uncle Sam’s discretionary spending on defense is akin to your blue collar dad taking a drunken romp to the casino and whorehouse every weekend, anyone with half a brain functioning can see that the money can be made available in some part of the annual budget somehow and somewhere.
Unfortunately, the decades old complaint, “We can put a man to the moon, but…” still applies to our society today. I would be so bold as to say to those who have any sort of influence or affect on our way of life in this nation the following:
We can put a man on the moon, AND we can make sure that adequate and affordable education, health care, shelter and food is available to all Americans.
I can say that, we can do that, that’s my belief, and I’m sticking to it. Your turn.
The world is my playpen. I always get what I want in the end. I have an uncanny ability to witness moments of karma and schadenfreude simultaneously. Stupid people hate me, and that's good to know.
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