Why in God’s name would anyone be so stupid as to make such a lopsided decision?
Money.
It really is just that simple. The process has become a well publicized joke, as with the recent campaign of Meg Whitman, who spent the unholy sum of one hundred and seventy eight million dollars, of which one hundred and forty four million were from her own savings. To understand why this woman was willing to spend one million dollars of her own money for every thousand she would receive in salary, we have only to look at the congressional lobby, the executive rolls at the biggest banks and board rooms of major corporations around the world. Our government has been completely co-opted by corporations, having become little more than a training program for trainees to the elites. Anyone who doubts this can simply look up the names of past governors, senators and representatives on Wikipedia to follow their illustrious careers.
Many in government enter the fray with the best of intentions, they really do. However, once on the hill, they get “Foggy Bottom Fever” as the lobbyists charm them with expensive meals, off the books trips to Fiji and very probably large cash bribes [witness William Jefferson, who was caught red handed with a huge sum of cash hidden in a freezer]. They say power corrupts, and I believe it to be axiomatic, but with the addition of money and the promise of an easy job on some board of directors, with millions in compensation, most of our elected officials forget all about why they came to Washington and fall in to line with the established program.
I sit here wishing that there was something that I could do to change it all, and find myself without a clue as to how. Sure, we could organize and demand change, but more often than not the many organized groups are overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of money required just to have a senators ear. Some will say that all you have to do is make an appointment at your senators office and eventually he/she will meet with you. Then what? My senator will probably indulge me a short audience, agree that something must be done and return to Washington having completely forgotten or simply ignored me.
I believe we are at the bread-and-circus phase of collapse in America. We have crossed the Rubicon and cannot turn back. This has been by far, the most disastrous presidency since Jimmy Carter, and it keeps getting worse. The corruption has become palpable, but it is completely ignored by the bought and paid for mainstream media. BP wiped out the Gulf of Mexico with millions and millions of gallons of oil and Corexit, but no one has been put in jail. Four trillion dollars of wealth was wiped form Americas balance sheet in the largest transfer of wealth in the history of mankind, and no one has been arrested. In fact, the banks are now far more leveraged with derivatives than they were before the collapse, having used their massive influence to gut the very bill that was meant to stop their insanity.
Our venerable Nobel Peace Prize winner of a president, the one who said he would immediately end the war in Iraq has yet to live up to his promise. Sure, he pulled out a shitload of soldiers, but they were promptly replaced with mercenaries. We are still in Afghanistan, a country that has never been conquered, which will probably bankrupt the U.S., just like Russia. We are also fighting an undeclared war in Libya. This war, ostensibly to remove a tyrant dictator, will likely drag on for years, and end with Ghadafi being replaced with an Islamic government. The military industrial complex will allow nothing more than perpetual war, because without it they cease to exist, and we can’t have that now can we?
I have watched as food prices climb inexorably higher, beyond the reach of Americas poor, and soon, what remains of the middle class. Gasoline is now at four dollars, promising to go even higher in the summer, as the three wars rage on in the Middle East and North Africa. I feel the pain as I hand over eighty dollars for a partial tank of gas in my truck, wondering if I can make it last through the week. Florida Power and Light now costs me exactly fifty percent more than I paid just six years ago which is the same increase I am paying for propane. Without accompanying raises in my salary, I am finding that we are unable to save more than a token amount of money each month. For the 44.2 million people receiving food stamps, the future is looking quite grim.
As our once proud nation is slowly subsumed by the corporations I can’t help but feel as though we could have stopped the process earlier, and returned sanity to our government. If only we had spoken out sooner. If only we had realized what they were doing, maybe we could have stopped them. Unfortunately, the plan was set and we fell for it hook line and sinker. They made us feel richer by going deeper in to debt. The way they explained it at the time made complete sense so many of us simply signed on the dotted line, believing that real estate can only ever go up.
Now we’re paying the piper.
America is in for a paradigm shift of epic proportions, in which our way of life will become the mirror opposite of what we have become accustomed to. I am sad for my daughter, who will have to grow up in a much different world. She will live in a police state where your every movement can be tracked by your cell phone and debit card transactions. She will be subjected to warrantless searches of her person if she has the temerity to try and fly somewhere. She will be considered a criminal terrorist who is to be presumed guilty until a thorough search determines she is in fact just an innocent little girl. My little girl will live in a shell of a country, one who broke her own back so that a very few could live a life that she can only see in movies or read in books. My daughter will be governed from above by a federal government what has set forth 134,723 pages of federal regulations filling 201 volumes. It will be explained to her that ignorance of the law is no excuse. She will pay taxes as set forth in the U.S. tax code, the rules of which are available to all in 71,684 pages of easy to read text. At 2,074 pages long, the health care bill signed in to law by Obama is merely the framework for a myriad of agencies which will write the rules to govern what kind of health care my little girl will receive.
I fear that the only way out is complete collapse. By complete, I mean total collapse of our currency and dismantlement of our government. There will be a protracted period of chaos and pain, out of which will rise a new America. Without a lot of pain and suffering, America will not change.
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