Reply #70: Ladies and Gentlemen, a Philosophical Note [View All]

It's been hell, this political/economic life. I guess it started with the assassinations: who were all these crazy people, and why didn't somebody lock them up for their own good and ours before they killed JFK RFK MLK MalcomX? Looks like they weren't crazy, they were hired.

Then Nixon, the betrayal of the country, the monetization of the debt, the abandonment of Siagon after bombing the hell out of SE Asia and poisoning people and soil with napalm and Agent Orange.

A breather with Carter, cut short by a stage-managed hostage crisis which brought about the horror of Reagan, being trapped in a B movie that was suddenly real and killing people in little countries and the whole of South and Central America.

Kissinger. Rumsfeld. The slimy bastard I can't even remember his name--there were so many of them, all sporting flags on their lapels and (R) after their names. Cap Weinberger, that's the one, Caspar the Not-So-Friendly Ghost. John Mitchell, Lee Atwater, Karl Rove, their numbers are legion....they die and are reincarnated every 4 years.

It's been going on all my life. Now we learn it was going on all throughout Roosevelt's 10 years: the coup attempt, the budget deficit hawks trying to strangle the US economy back into the Depression, the foot on the worker's neck lifted by unions and Social Security and Glass-Steagal and anti-usury and bankruptcy law, only to be pressed down with greater force now.

There is a point in there somewhere, maybe several points. I guess I just don't know what the point is, anymore. I think that Obama is a Bait-and-Switch deal. I know, it's early, not even 3 full months, but look at the appointees, look at the steps taken: not the photo ops, not the nice speeches, not the new puppy or the cosmetic lifting of illegal signing statements. Guantanamo is closed, he says: has any reporter gone down and verified? Besides Miss America, that is? (What a clanger that one was!)

Look at the things that HAVEN'T been done--really serious, life or death things. Things that are, in Nancy's immortal words "off the table", or as good as.

If I felt I had a future, I'd be angrier. I know I don't and I'm resigned to it. But I want my kids to have one! And yours, and even theirs. I want my country back, with its Constitution intact and strengthened. Give me a government of the People, by the People for the People, a government of Laws, not Men, and the economy will be straightened out, as a direct consequence. As long as the crony crew is in charge, the economy hasn't a chance.

I think that's all I want to say this weekend. Talk amongst yourselves. And sorry about that.