I was listening to a talk show the other night – Real Time, I believe – when some anemic little shit from the Right informed Bernie Sanders that Social Security must be reformed because he doesn’t want to pay Bernie’s bills. No one bothered to ask him if he knew who had paid his grandfather’s bills – that would be Bernie and me. I don’t expect this trash to understand the nature of a social contract, however, this persistent condemning of people my age and older, retiring and retired, as thieves and leaches deserves a rejoinder. I am more than willing to take the Social Security that I earned in one lump sum. However, I demand interest be paid on that sum for the last 42 years at current credit card rates. I insist upon parity with the most proficient thieves and leaches in this country – the banks. Further, like the aristocrats of thieves and leaches the superrich, I don’t expect to pay taxes ever. I am certain many millions of us would be willing to take this deal causing the current deficit to explode astronomically in less time than it takes to say Ronald Reagan. Then these tight fisted, mean spirited, greedy Neanderthals are invited to shove that deficit and the empty shell of Social Security right up their ass to rest next to the sludge that is their brain.
Dr. Martin Luther King’s dream of equality, justice, freedom and humanity is systematically being superseded by the Machiavellian principle that the ends justify the means with all the greed, cruelty and tyranny that implies. It seems to me that the upshot of the current drive toward voter suppression, income inequality, union busting, undermining of education and demonizing of the Working Class and the Working Poor is aimed at producing a society not unlike Machiavelli’s. In place of a government duly elected by the people there would be an absolute leader supported by a layer of aristocracy. Below the aristocracy would exist the common people tied to mere survival by the chains of economic deprivation.
This is not Americanism, nor is it democracy. It is in fact the death of Dr. King’s dream. We must teach our fellow countrymen that to spite all the flag waving, Bible thumbing, patriotism pontificating, fear mongering and false bravado, there is a perverse calculus at work here that will not serve them. If we do not then the ethereal grandeur of Dr. King’s dream will be relegated to a page in a dusty history book. That is to say if he is mentioned at all. There is nothing a Machiavellian hates more than a free thinker with a beautiful mind.
I often think of Mozart. He wrote some of the greatest operas ever heard, even though he was not Puccini. My father said that he was really Italian and writing under a penname – why was never explained. My father also said that one pound of pasta broken in half yields two pounds of pasta – go figure.
One of my favorite operas by Mozart is the “Magic Flute.” He wrote it for the common people. However, tickets to see it performed today would be prohibitively expensive for many of us. Mozart belongs to the rich – like Shakespeare. Never mind the fact that at the time of his death he was a pauper, discarded by his wealthy patrons and left to the not-so-tender mercies of his arch rival, Salieri, who some say killed him. After his death he was tossed into a common grave somewhere in Vienna. Such are the fickle sensibilities of the affluent.
Mozart’s genius was exploited and abused in his time. Today I fear that genius is neglected and even loathed. One wonders how many brilliant and talented people labor their life away for a pay check that barely meets expenses. While they live without the resources to go to school or the time to embrace their destiny. A waste of such a person is a travesty for society.
With the Middle Class shrinking, the income disparity growing and the increasing animosity of the haves toward the have nots, I ask two questions for our modern times. Shall we continue to accept the assignment of value and meaning to our humanity, dignity, passions and gifts based upon criteria that we can’t meet like large stock portfolios and immense aggregate wealth? If not, how will we stop it?
I often think of Mozart these days. Perhaps, I am desperate to keep the memory of genius, of brilliance alive in a world where mediocrity is fast becoming the only thing the common people are allowed.
It will be interesting to see who the Republicans select from their produce section to run against Obama in November. I am certain that no one proffered on the right can beat him. It is one thing to pander to the base in the great city of Ass Wipe somewhere in the Mid-West with talk of overturning child labor laws for poor children or theorizing that some ethnic groups produce criminals with greater regularity than others. However, that crap does not play on the national stage. The moderate Republicans who could have given the president a run for his money have long since been drummed out of the party – myopia thy name is office seeker. With any luck they will drift toward the Democrats. In fact, I have had reason to believe that one did and we elected him in 2008.
There are two ways to view the world, with respect or with avarice. The respectful perceive Mother Earth as an indispensible and nurturing source of all life and their fellow creatures as beloved siblings. The avaricious see our sacred planet as merely useful and their fellow humans and all other species as expendable. The latter destructive and nihilistic thesis has become the formula for success in this country. It is the road to the American Dream and the central defining principle of American Exceptionalism. Like a slow growing, flesh eating bacteria this grotesque paradigm, wrapped in patriotism and spouting holy writ, dismantles and dissolves the best and most beautiful expressions of our freedom and national character. All this while the people of the United States are distracted – by design – with two-hundred and sixteen ways to play with a ball, Kim Kardashian’s ridiculous romance, Lindsey Lohan’s police record, Charlie Sheen’s immense capacity to poison himself, the Duchess of Cambridge’s new dress and millions of idiotic, inane and insipid television programs masquerading as art, theater and entertainment. We must wakeup and grow up before our collective suicide is achieved and we no longer remember who we once were.
There is a distinct difference between the noun and the adjective form of a word in the English language. A noun is a person place or thing. An adjective modifies, describes or clarifies a noun. Take the word Democrat for instance. A Democrat is a person who subscribes to a particular political philosophy. The word Democratic on the other hand is an adjective that ascribes specific properties to a person, place or thing. Thus, we speak of the Democratic Party or the Democratic platform. It is all too common to hear a Cain or a Gingrich refer to the Democrat President or the Democrat Congress. While it has long been the practice in the sewer of American politics to bastardize the language for gain and profit, we have to ask ourselves if we really want some worm who doesn’t know his nouns from his adjectives leading the free world?
The clamor for ever smaller and smaller government gets louder every day. The hullabaloo over a freer and freer free market, without regulations or constraints, storms across the land with all the subtlety of a tornado on the High Plains. The presumption here is that the money-hungry little shits who caused the meltdown in 2008 – or for that matter in 1929 – aren’t degenerate gambles and moral invalids. The assertion here is that the government of these United States is solely responsible for the nightmare we find ourselves living. Accordingly, if we could only eliminate government we would all be so much happier, the sky so much bluer and the world so much easier to negotiate.
One truly fascinating aspect of all of this is the fact that the same people squealing about shrinking government to the point of impotence are indicting the Occupy Movement for having ties to the anarchist community. It does not seem to resonate with these Neanderthals that a society with a government too small and weak to make and enforce its laws IS an anarchy.
