Sometimes I wonder what the point is.
Not that I expect any dramatic shift of the Universe or anything, but I look around and I see so many people that not only do not seem to care about what's going on around them, they do not want to know apparently.
Sadly, I am quite aware that when the s@%t hits the proverbial fan that they are going to be the ones that complain the loudest and are likely to have some reactionary response that will likely be just as bad as what happened and often worse then what originally happened. Look at the "Tea Baggers" and how this collection of supposedly predominantly middle-class Americans has been convinced that the goals and plans of the mega-rich and trans-national corporations are their own.
I understand the idea of cutting government spending, and I actually support it in many cases, but the solution is not in decimating the lower-classes and what remains of the middle-class but in the current case is a lot about developing income for the government to use.
I saw a chart the other day that laid out the planned cuts demanded by the Tea Baggers and the more extreme aspects of the Republican party and the item that made my jaw hit the floor was that all the cuts would save about $44.6 Billion and if the Bush tax cuts for the top 4% had not been extended, 99% of those cuts would not be necessary from a purely financial view.
We see people supporting the decimation of public schools, attempts at privatization of many, if not all, public services. What makes ANYONE think that a private company is going to run things more efficiently? I have yet to have a single person show me an example of private companies doing the services for the same cost or less.
In several states we see the attempts at destroying the ability of public employees to use collective bargaining to attempt getting decent wages. Name me ONE public school teacher that ever got rich teaching, if you know one, ask how they did it, it wasn't the classroom.
I hear the term "redistribution of wealth" bandied around as a justification for turning this country into the equivalent of the surfs of the past where the egalitarian elite control everything and the rest are basically slaves to their wishes with no power to create change. The truth is that the "redistribution of wealth" is not from the top down, or as Ronald Reagan called it, "Trickle Down Economics" but from the bottom up. The top 400 families in this country control HALF the wealth of the nation and they have no interest in sharing it.
We have corporations in this country that actually, in many cases, have more rights and privileges than the actual humans, with few if any of the responsibilities and obligations.
I wonder just how far things will go and what it will turn into. I do not want to be as pessimistic as George Orwell's "1984", Ray Bradbury's "Fahrenheit 451" or Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World" but I sometimes wonder if they were paranoid or prophets. The part that surprises me the most is that the majority in America are not only unconcerned, but present themselves as if they want it. I hope they still want that reality if and when it shows up. Somehow I doubt it.
Not that I expect any dramatic shift of the Universe or anything, but I look around and I see so many people that not only do not seem to care about what's going on around them, they do not want to know apparently.
Sadly, I am quite aware that when the s@%t hits the proverbial fan that they are going to be the ones that complain the loudest and are likely to have some reactionary response that will likely be just as bad as what happened and often worse then what originally happened. Look at the "Tea Baggers" and how this collection of supposedly predominantly middle-class Americans has been convinced that the goals and plans of the mega-rich and trans-national corporations are their own.
I understand the idea of cutting government spending, and I actually support it in many cases, but the solution is not in decimating the lower-classes and what remains of the middle-class but in the current case is a lot about developing income for the government to use.
I saw a chart the other day that laid out the planned cuts demanded by the Tea Baggers and the more extreme aspects of the Republican party and the item that made my jaw hit the floor was that all the cuts would save about $44.6 Billion and if the Bush tax cuts for the top 4% had not been extended, 99% of those cuts would not be necessary from a purely financial view.
We see people supporting the decimation of public schools, attempts at privatization of many, if not all, public services. What makes ANYONE think that a private company is going to run things more efficiently? I have yet to have a single person show me an example of private companies doing the services for the same cost or less.
In several states we see the attempts at destroying the ability of public employees to use collective bargaining to attempt getting decent wages. Name me ONE public school teacher that ever got rich teaching, if you know one, ask how they did it, it wasn't the classroom.
I hear the term "redistribution of wealth" bandied around as a justification for turning this country into the equivalent of the surfs of the past where the egalitarian elite control everything and the rest are basically slaves to their wishes with no power to create change. The truth is that the "redistribution of wealth" is not from the top down, or as Ronald Reagan called it, "Trickle Down Economics" but from the bottom up. The top 400 families in this country control HALF the wealth of the nation and they have no interest in sharing it.
We have corporations in this country that actually, in many cases, have more rights and privileges than the actual humans, with few if any of the responsibilities and obligations.
I wonder just how far things will go and what it will turn into. I do not want to be as pessimistic as George Orwell's "1984", Ray Bradbury's "Fahrenheit 451" or Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World" but I sometimes wonder if they were paranoid or prophets. The part that surprises me the most is that the majority in America are not only unconcerned, but present themselves as if they want it. I hope they still want that reality if and when it shows up. Somehow I doubt it.
