While the game is rigged in favor of the Rich they still depend on us to spend enough to support them in the style to which we've allowed them to become accustomed.
When we turn around and make a gift to them of the wages we slave so hard to make by exchanging them for mindless consumer fluff we're saying that it's OK
that we don't need an increase in the minimum wage that we, and our kids, don't need healthcare and education that it's OK for products to kill or to injure us while we can't sue the companies that made them
that we enjoy the eternal chains of debt weighed down by fees that feed finance corporations that we don't need clean water, clean air or pure food and that we could care less about Iraq troop escalation
that we'd trust Social Security in the Wall Street Casino of Greed, that temple of corporate privatization, that it's all right with us if our Congressmen represent those whose campaign contributions bought and paid for them
that it's OK to take the taxes we pay to maintain our transportation infrastructure to subsidize the world's leading dealer of death the United States military industry
that rather then find out the truth and act we'd prefer to just keep shopping
(that's called voting with your money)
that it's too much of a bother to take time out from buying to participate in representative democracy.
We're saying we're willing to take anything they dish out as long as we can have our big-screen plasma TVs, mass-produced "designer" fashions for the Lower Class and fast food that causes heart disease and diabetes,
the alcohol, tobacco and "legal" drugs they sell to us to keep our senses numbed, corporate-owned violent sports and video games, the gossip tabloids to which we've all succumbed,
the big-dick, macho pickup trucks a guy's sure shows he's a real man, the environment-destroying SUVs, flesh from factory farm concentration camps,
engagement diamonds dripping with blood, coltan for cell phones purchased with murder and with rape, and cheap Dollar Store goods made by slaves in East Asia where our jobs went so corporations could escape paying a living wage for the work they need done and skim off more of the profit only Labor can create.
Citizens-turned-consumers won't acknowledge we're the losers in an on-going Class War, a deliberately designed crusade to keep most of the American people poor.
They sell us cheap knock-offs of their designer lives and let us pretend we could really be one of them. Heads up! They wouldn't touch us with a 10-foot pole or piss on us if we caught fire in front of them.
Vi's works appear widely both in print and online. She conducts Poetry Workshops and gives readings in Central New York. Her latest chapbook is "Sine Qua Non Antiques (an Arcanum of History, Geography and Treachery).
The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of this website or its editors.
At least if I had a vote in the matter.
Thank you, Vi, for saying so eloquently what we feel and what everyone should know.
Thank you, Vi, for not just explaining the problem, but also laying out the solution in clear, unmistakable terms.
Thank you, Vi, for sharing with us your gift. What this country needs is more of what Vi Ransel says, more of what Vi Ransel writes, and more people doing what Vi Ransel calls on us to do.
Thank you.
--Mark
by
Mark E. Smith (21 articles, 30 quicklinks, 100 diaries, 1325 comments) on Sunday, Jan 21, 2007 at 2:01:16 AM
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