AVARICE IS THE ROOT OF ALL POLITICAL EVIL – PART I

As the years progress, many of us remember carefree days of youth with growing fondness. Broke, but happy. Carefree. Free of cares about buying and selling, owning or possessing. In love with life, with friends, with somebody special. Filled with life. For some, those years were school years. For others, later. People mattered more than what we wore, drove or did for our sub-standard livings. We were content for that moment with what we had.

Then we got spoiled. We wanted more.

Bling-bling blinded.

Our time and energy became devoted to pursuing whatever we could grasp within our hands. Things mattered more than people. We became consumed with thoughts of price and value, exchange and profit, debts and debtors, pride and possessions. Always upgrading. Saving for that rainy day. Taking. Buying. Consuming. Consuming more.

Creating nothing. Content to be fed and entertained. Not interested in politics unless there was potential profit in it for us and ours.

Of course, we’re not greedy in the morbid sense of our Lords and Ladies of industry. Their excesses make Marie Antoinette look like Mother Teresa, led astray as they are by tremendous wealth and power. They have used our armed forces to slaughter hundreds of thousands of civilians and to take over entire nations. They are above the law.

The rest of us hope for a nice apartment, house with a yard, better car – or one that runs without being in the shop every other week. A better job. Or just a job. Even part-time. For me. My family. Maybe my BFF. Everyone else is on their own.

Over two hundred years ago, Benjamin Franklin said, “If we don’t hang together, we’ll hang separately.” 

Those words could not be truer today. Throughout the nation we are sacrificing our teachers and public employees to provide funding for private contractors to continue Operation Iraqi Hostile Takeover for the next several decades. Most of have been too caught up in our own things to notice. A news story may catch our eye when we realize our world may be impacted by external events – but we are OK with allowing “somebody else” deal with “those problems.”

Then our jobs get packaged up and shipped overseas.

We ask no questions at first. A new microwave which used to cost $500 when made in the USA can be bought for $100 (or $88 at Wal-Mart) when made in China or Indonesia. Of course all those people who worked in now-defunct microwave oven factories here – and now have no work – cannot afford even a $100 microwave now. And certainly none of the sweatshop slaves can buy anything on their $1/day "wages".

But we are happy for the moment with our “great deals”.

One by one, American manufacturing and office jobs fly to countries halfway around the world – and we say nothing until our own profession is affected. We grumble and blame the wealthy and privileged for taking over the Democratic and Republican Parties and engineering this fiasco, but we did nothing to oppose them. The “haves and have mores” run the show and we are now their vassals. The new bureaucracy serves their interests, not ours. The Rule of Law which guides these chumps is the Law of the Jungle. And we are the prey.

Some folks talk of another Revolution, but that’s a bad blind alley to get trapped in unless it is at the ballot box.

No, the real solution is much more complicated. We must no longer be blinded by our own greed for the little trinkets that matter so much to us right now. Nor can we be distracted by the Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.

The 2010 elections are set – the “haves and have mores” have provided us with their approved candidates in all major political parties to choose from – candidates which will dangle on the ends of their puppet strings. Here and there an honest Third Party candidate will be elected to a minor seat, but mostly the Iron Heel will continue to trample on common Americans after the new shills are sworn into office.

It is time to plan for 2012.