Herrington: Nightmare on Main Street

In the world of personal responsibility and following one’s bliss, we can say that we each have our own limits. And it is only human that I might say that what I would do would seem more right to me, and maybe what you would choose to do would be less so. We differ in our choices.

That being said, it is for sure that if we looked openly and realistically, what you might call the pursuit of happiness, I might call criminal, and vice versa. One such arena where this is often true is in the area of making money. I remember looking a 13 year-old girl right in the eye and questioning her understanding of life in that she did not seem to care that the $1000 worth of clothing she was wearing so haughtily in my classroom was in fact a direct result of her boyfriend’s sale of drugs to his friends and local clients, and that those drugs were only going to ruin the lives of those so touched. Her retort was, “If they are dumb enough to buy it then I am smart enough to sell it to them.” I was taken aback by her harshness. I questioned her further and asked if she knew that this might wreck entire families and start others on a life of crime and degradation, and she simply noted that that was not her problem. The man later became her baby daddy and shoved her out for a younger model. Not his problem.

America, in my very empathetic way of thinking, has an addiction to this mentality. As long as we get ours, we cannot be responsible for the outcomes that may become the consequences invading the lives of others. It’s a buyer beware world, watch your back, take care as you go, and don’t take any wooden nickels. If you can take advantage of others within a loophole of the law then it is perfectly legal and there are no real problems if you can sleep at night, right?

I know many people who had seen themselves as bullet proof before 2007, but who since then have had the feeling that the American Dream has turned into the American Nightmare. In many ways, I see the media as going after Obama as if he is an ambulance driver who, having arrived at an accident, finds someone bleeding out in multiple wounds. The parents of the child are aghast that the medic wants to give units of blood to their boy, who is laid out unconscious on the ground, and so they say, “Do you think that money grows on tree?” Noting the cost of each unit of blood. It’s your economy. You took the $600 checks. You made billions when the banks recovered. You fired folks, went offshore, got a tax break, and now you want to cut and gut the support you have been footing for those on welfare and disability and medical and housing. I understand. And if you did not have a vested interest, a conflict of interest, in the growth of war, to stir the hornet’s nest and rattle the sabers in order to necessitate the call to arms in order to be able to sell more weapons which you make, I would say that it’s just another day at the office.

We know that lobbyists have corrupted American politics. And the calls that it is the teachers unions or Acorn or Planned Parenthood or welfare sows who have gutted the American economy is so far from intellectually sensible that it totally defies rationalization. I don’t care if Obama gets re-elected. It does not matter. He was not able to keep his offensive going in the first administration due to the republican stalemate, so what does it really matter? What does matter is what we think will happen, what will have to happen before we realize that there is a logical end to how far we can allow the majority of the population to fall before they lose control of themselves. Obviously the programs they have come up with to support them, the 47%, have not engendered a sense of being able to take care of themselves. But, I doubt that an all-out assault on the integrity of the economic system is the answer either. Here is a rant I went on on Facebook recently:

“Capitalism itself is only an idea…those who work it ruthlessly are the culprits and need to be reined in. This is the fault of modern capitalist structure that they seek to use it for personal gain above reason and see it as a cash cow, and in this way since they will not reign in those who abuse it, those who are merely onlookers themselves become culpable in their crimes. Not willing to end the potential of their own access, they seem more like a man further down the line in a brutal gang rape who will not say that it is wrong until he at first has had his turn. And then he will say, “In times of war, these are not crimes,” or else, “I should not have done that, but I was only following orders.” Or else, “To the victor goes the spoils.” Or else, “It was not my daughter, wife, or mother.” The relentless accusing of the poor for taking advantage of the offerings of the system that has been milked by the very ones who use it as an excuse to excuse themselves must be balanced out with a look into the blatant disregard for human decency carried out by those within the system. To let it go and not chase down those within your own ranks who steal billions and trillions and yet to doggedly pursue those who are common thieves is to give morality a boot in the balls. The disingenuous stance of those who are wealthy or hope to be so but who do not speak out vehemently against these abuses is sickening and lumps them in with the worst sort of criminals. The fact that we have not pursued those who caused this last 72 trillion dollar waste is a testimony to how sick and demented the system is. The few who have taken the fall are such a small number that it calls into question the use of the word justice within the justice system. The abuses are so large that it staggers the mind and simply dwarfs the use of the welfare system as a red herring to distract us from the real criminals. To say that it was not against the law is to throw the meaning of the law itself into the flames of history and invite a full scale revolution.”

We cannot allow the foxes to rule the hen house any more than we can give the eggs to the children to use in a game of egg toss. The welfare system must be reined in, sure, but to allow the hyper-capitalist structure to destroy the foundation of the system by its skimming the cream off the top is like strippng off the leaves from a tree and then not understanding why it dies.

There is no trickle down economy where there are no crumbs to be had. Both Smith and Marx agreed that there must be overflow to reach the masses. Smith warned that this must be attended to. Marx predicted that the owners of business would tighten up until the overflow was cut off and that this would necessitate revolution. The extreme right denies Marx and yet can hardly wait to test the theory at home, in the empty pockets of America. As productivity goes up, we need less workers. Retrain them or guard against them, it is your choice. In any case, as soon as they get hungry on a mass scale, ownership will not matter to them at all.

Happy Halloween, runningturtle87