Here in America, "the greatest, best country God has ever given man on the face of the earth"(1), we are told a story that if we work hard, play by the rules, and save our money, we can be or do anything we want. This story is both true and false at the same time. Our country has more opportunity than many countries, but that isn't saying much.(2) There are examples of people "movin' on up to that deluxe apartment in the sky", but these are isolated rags to riches stories that only help perpetuate the American Dream lie. It is kind of like how lottery payouts hide the fact that the lottery is a tax on the poor and those who do not understand statistics.
The American Dream story is useful. This misguided aspiration keeps the middle class voting against their own interests and supporting the same rich assholes who are screwing them over. This American Dream is also a convenient carrot to dangle in front of the cubicle donkeys. Work harder donkeys!
We can't expect life to be fair; it isn't going to be fair, and it has never been fair.(3) So can we at least stop ignoring the fact that we have an aristocracy? Can we admit that we have a class system? Can we acknowlede that we have a caste system that for some people is as rigid as the one in India?
On Labor Day this year, President Obama said, "if you work hard and play by the rules, you will get a fair shake and get a fair shot." That is bullshit. President Obama is one of those rare cases of rags to riches. The exception does not change the rule. He did work hard, but he was also lucky, and now he is completely corrupt (just like Bush/Clinton/Bush/Reagan/Carter/Ford/Nixon/Johnson/Kennedy).
Let's examine this steaming pile of bullshit: work hard and play by the rules: the existence of "rules" suggests the existence of a game. Fairness exists only in controlled environments, like professional and college sports. Here there are experienced, highly trained referees with the authority to penalize rule breakers. There are clearly marked boundaries, time limits, and strict rules of conduct. Everything happens out in the open. The seats are filled with thousands of witnesses; nobody gets away with anything. Every move on the field is recorded in high definition. Slow motion replay exposes any transgression, and if something isn't fair, the crowd howls with righteous indignation. Sporting events are the arenas where fairness is demanded, all for the sake of the pointless movement of spheroids back and forth across ridiculously well manicured lawns.
And even in these strict environments, there are controversial calls, non-calls, and a few players who cheat a little. Even in these conditions, fans of one team or another might leave the stadium feeling cheated.
The same is true for board games: checkers and chess leave very few opportunities to cheat. The same cannot be said for Monopoly. In Monopoly, there's always a banker, and bankers are known to cheat. Praise be the Parker Brothers, Peace be Upon Them.
Those in power are there not because of a level playing field. No. Their starting block was moved up a few feet before the start of the race. They get to fight with iron plates sewn into their boxing gloves. Their uncle is the umpire; they get the strikes called in their favor.
Who gets to grow up with the best connections? Who is going to go to the very best school? Who is born into "old money"? Who gets to buy frozen concentrated orange-juice futures contracts, having inside information on orange crop forecasts? Not you and I.
Who is born into a housing project or Appalachian sadness town, and who spends their childhood in the Hamptons, learning to sail on a private lake, enrolled in prep schools and vacationing in Europe and the Caribbean?
It all depends on what loins you spring from. Are you born into the aristocracy, or are you just some plebeian?
Some of this inequality is just a fact of life, and people put up with it. But when it gets out of hand, when the rich and powerful get even more greedy (as unbelievable as it seems, sometimes one yacht is just not enough), the peasants get riled up.
Have I painted an unfair picture of our beloved Corporate Overlords? Is my rant an unfair depiction of the upper class? Probably.(4) There's that unfairness again. Whenever anyone speaks up against the rich, it is class warfare. How unfair. Maybe it is unfair, but unfairness works both ways. If the rich get to screw everybody else over, why can't the unwashed masses rise up occasionally and hang a few of them up by their guts?(5) These rich bastards are stealing from the middle class, aided by their crooked friends in the government, and they are getting away with it. We will throw a guy in jail for shoplifting, but guys in silk ties who conspire to steal millions, or billions from the plebeians don't get thrown into jail, they get high-paying government jobs regulating banks or they get to run the Federal Reserve.
But the frothy mix of business and government that is the byproduct of fascism is an inscestuous revolving door orgy of bribery, backroom deals, bribery, banks bailouts, election fraud, bribery, credit default swaps, high frequency trading, bribery, CDOs, illegal wars, bibery, bribery, bribery, money laundering, gerrymandering, war profiteering, prison for profit schemes, cronyism, nepotism, cats and dogs living together and most outrageous of all: bribery. GovernCorp is a cheater's paradise.
Oh, the governmentcorporationrevolvingdoorfascistcheddermelt isn't all bad. They give us shiny gadgets. The transform us from "citizens" to "consumers". They give us brand identification. They turn our states into sales regions. They fill us with corn mash and cheap beer. They fill our cars with overpriced gas so we can run around getting and spending, buying their stuff with personalized credit cards and then paying them off with part time paper-hat-name-tag jobs. What would we do without this ceaceless activity? McRibs and Swiffers. They fatten us up with genetically modified food and pump us up with antidepressants and penis pills. They give us drugs for imaginary diseases. They show us movies in three dimensions. They fill our heads with jingles and chatchy tunes. They give us fancy phones and then they listen in, making sure we don't get into trouble. They are our belevolent masters. How can we not love them, and their mascots? Oh Logos! Bring us more shiny toys! Give us bigger trucks and wider screens! Give us games and light beer! Host spectacles of sport. Give us singing and dancing competitions! Huzzah! Huzzah!
Of course there is going to be cronyism and corruption, but can we at least pretend there is some rule of law? Can't we at least throw some of these well-heeled crooks in jail and pretend somebody is watching out for the little guy? Capitalism without regulation is like a football game without referees: anarchy. Too much regulation is like a game where they throw a flag every play: no fun. There has to be a middle ground where the rich assholes get to be assholes, bend the rules a little, and get filthy rich, but if they step over a certain line, they get fined, or thrown in jail, or at least called out as the fucking pricks that they are.
So I support the Occupy Wall Street movement,(6) pointless and hopeless as it is. I support them even though some of them are dirty hippies. Some of them AREN'T dirty hippies, but the normal(?) people don't get on camera, because the media are a bunch of propaganda-spewing prostitutes for their corporate masters, so guess what? The networks show the protesters in the most negative light, and since all of the small-minded, xenophobic network-television watching plebes hate dirty, bongo-playing hippies, guess who they show on the TV? They put the most spaced-out pothead they can find in front of the camera and he spouts a bunch of pointless stoner bullshit, and they say, "See? They're just a bunch of dirty hippies." Back in the television studio, the vapid plastic spokesholes laugh and dismiss the entire movement. Meanwhile, the articulate protesters who might have a clear message are pepper-sprayed by some thug with a badge for standing on the sidewalk.
What is the alternative to protesting? Apathy? Cast votes into the void of rigged Diebold voting machines?(7) Even if the elections weren't completely fixed, we only get to choose from two worthless, totally corrupt parties that serve the same herd of soulless corporate pigs. And the only candidates we get to choose from are the ones that are hand-picked by our Corporate Overlords, because you can't get the advertisement and funding needed to get elected without Corporate Cash, because our system is completely, utterly, hopelessly broken. FUBAR.
So what is the point? Will these protests do any good? Of course not. Look at the American and French revolutions. They rebelled against asshole upper-class tyrants who were abusing their power. What do we have now? A bunch of asshole upper-class tyrants who are abusing their power. So work hard plebeians, play by the rules, and save your money.
Protest this: This country is being run by a ruthless band of criminals, and there's nothing we can do about it.
In conclusion, we're fucked.
Have a nice weekend.
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1. Sean Hannity, Hannity's America (6 June 2008)
2. Being one of the lesser-fucked-up countries on this planet is nothing to brag about. That's like saying the winner of the 100 yard dash at the Special Olympics is really fast. It just isn't as impressive as it sounds.
3. It isn't particularly unfair either, it is what it is. It has more to do with chance than anything else, but that's a whole nuther essay altogether.
4. Am I asking myself questions,and then answering them? Yes. Is this annoying? Yes. Donald Rumsfeld does this, and he's a horrible douchebag.
5. Hanging rich people by their guts is a figure of speech. They should get a fair trial, be found guilty, and THEN hanged by their guts, in accordance with the law, whatever.
6. Actually, other than typing this rant, I guess I DON'T support them, because that would involve actually DOING something. I'm just a dipshit with a keyboard claiming I support them. Kind of like people who have a "support the troops" sticker on their vehicle, but they don't do anything else. But it SOUNDS good to say I support the protesters, so I'm gonna leave that in and hope nobody reads this footnote.
7. Google it. Really.
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