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.
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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