I walk through this economic battlefield as evening falls on the land I once called my home. How I wonder, did these things come to be? The weapons of economic mass destruction fall around us, missiles of misery, policies of perverse petulant profundity. Abandonment, aggrandizement, alienation of the victims accompanied by slavish hero worship of the perpetrators. Tent cities of the poor, warehouses of the wounded, cathedrals of the children crushed, bled white with leaches, sewn with smoke and fire.
Our cities, our people left in heaps of smoking ruins as
the bombers of free trade return to us day after day. When the all
clear is sounded the leaders like totalitarian monarchs emerge from
their bunkers to cash their checks while excoriating the wounded for
not fighting harder.
There are three realms in this America,
the first imaginary, illusionary, a media fiction of American life. A
make believe dream, a fantasy state of prosperity and rising income,
happy with health care, happy children in good schools. Everyone is
welcome here, admission is free to all. In the second realm the
sliver cats remain as a vestige of the old way. Street survivors,
ghosts of a former economic prosperity, legacies, homeowners, debt
holders, the fruit of the vine, inheritors on the installment plan.
Under attack from all sides, all that is required for admission here
is blindness, faith and a belief in your own personal superiority.
I once lived there, misunderstanding the message of the
messenger. I once had the fine house and health care, with a new car
in the driveway. I thought these things were mine to keep when I was
merely buying into that hazy dream on the installment plan. When I
could no longer make those payments these illusionary things vanished
and I entered into the third realm. It has been reported that seventy
percent of American families are living paycheck to paycheck, living
with the sword of Damocles hanging precariously over head. Many are
poor and just don't know it yet, an accident, illness or stubbing of
the toe away from the sudden and dramatic realization of America
explained.
Your so called freedom is but a euphemism for
license, to pick your pockets, to exploit you for all that you are
worth and then to throw away the husk. I am poor, my teeth need work
but I have no money, I need new glasses but I have no money. You are
poor as well, that is the purpose for the first realm. To hide from
you just how common your poverty really is. To create the illusion
that you are alone in this and that you have failed while everyone
else has succeeded.
When you enter the third realm the
indoctrination is on going, suddenly those who you thought were on
your side are on the other side. You thought that there were laws to
protect you didn't you? Instead, the law is used as a tool to
persecute you. Sheriff's deputies deliver armed and uniformed threats
as government has decided to take an active part in your
dismemberment. From the cop to the Congressman they answer, "I'm
just following orders, I'm just doing my duty." In the halls of
American justice the only justice is in the halls.
Your
leaders have only scorn for you; you weren't competitive enough in
the new economic reality they created. You were over paid anyway and
besides the new jobs will be along shortly. No reason for compassion
or understanding, you millions who have been foreclosed upon brought
it on yourself didn't you? You should have known you'd get sick
someday or that your health insurance wouldn't pay the bills. You
should have known that your jobs would be done away with!
Government by amnesia, forgetting that promise A somehow has
something to do with promise B. That somehow the disappearing jobs
and middle class lifestyle can now be ignored by the political class.
To bomb with banality and strafe with surrealism to wound with words
and maim with manacled machinations of one thousand mean spirited
paper cuts of cruelty. Cuts targeted at the young and the old and
most of all, the poor. You are poor aren't you? Our leaders wrapped
in cross and flag praise our heroes so far away fighting for "?
Just what was it that they were fighting for again? Oil? Pipelines?
Fruit? Sweatshops? Democracy?
Billions for tribute but not a
penny for the defenseless, military madness, military shadow
government. A lifetime CIA officer in charge of the Defense
Department, a Federal Reserve protà ©gà ©e in charge of the treasury. A
Health and Human Services Secretary who as Governor once oversaw $300
million in budget cuts in her native Kansas, earning her stripes and
qualifying her for this Quisling regime. When she ran for Governor
her running mate was the former chairman of the Republican Party in
Kansas, more the witch than Dorothy.
There is a light coming,
a glimmer on the horizon for the cold water of reality washes the
millions clean. Clearing their heads and opening their eyes to the
new reality, I am poor, you are poor, we are poor but we are
millions. Do not fear the future with trepidation, rejoice and
welcome a chance to change ourselves. A chance to right the wrongs
done in our name, a chance to make the bugger's eyes water.
Put
away the paltry partisan wrangling and understand that in the grand
scheme of things they can only derail us as we make steam. White,
Black, gay or straight have no weight in the scales versus jobs and
income. Understand the long forgotten truth that those in your class
are your brothers and sisters and those outside your class are your
oppressors. The Wisconsin state workers are fighting for your future
as well as their own, while the Quisling regime would take the last
dime from your pocket and leave you naked in the street.
We
are fortunate, there are sign posts laid in stone. Immovable,
immutable, words of American thunder. The pure unadulterated
condensed truth in a Dixie cup, the fountain and foundation of
rejuvenation,
"We have joined with like-minded people in
order to defend ourselves in a world that has been gravely threatened
with gangster rule. But I do not think that any of us Americans can
be content with mere survival. Sacrifices that we and our allies are
making impose upon us all a sacred obligation to see to it that out
of this war we and our children will gain something better than mere
survival.
We are united in determination that this war shall
not be followed by another interim which leads to new disaster- that
we shall not repeat the tragic errors of ostrich isolationism--that
we shall not repeat the excesses of the wild twenties when this
Nation went for a joy ride on a roller coaster which ended in a
tragic crash."
Franklin Delano Roosevelt
We are like
minded people who must join together to defend ourselves again from
gangster rule. We are not satisfied with mere survival and we must
take up that sacred obligation if only for our children. We have
repeated the tragic errors of the twenties only this time around
rather than a savior we've found a Satan. The prophet of profits,
the prince of pusillanimity, the messiah of money, come to save
America's millionaires and billionaires souls, but since they have no
souls corporate Jesus will just save their money.
"There are
pests who swarm through the lobbies of the Congress and the cocktail
bars of Washington, representing these special groups as opposed to
the basic interests of the Nation as a whole. They have come to look
upon the war primarily as a chance to make profits for themselves at
the expense of their neighbors- profits in money or in terms of
political or social preferment."
Franklin Delano
Roosevelt
Once their was a time when the government worked for
average Americans, our problems have been created by greedy,
heedless, shortsighted individuals. We must take it back by educating
our friends and neighbors; we will fight battles of education. Our
people aren't stupid only mis-educated.
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