Stay In, Tune Out, Get Sluggish, Get Foggy

We spend too much time indoors, sitting or laying down, breathing indoor air, getting little or no exercise.

At Christmas, I could enlist no one to take a walk after dinner.  That is, after engorgement on copious amounts of food, much of it sweet or otherwise not good for us.  Could get no one to take a walk in 30s degree weather with no wind.  I walked the trails and never met another person. My son, 20, said, “Are you crazy, dad? It’s December.”

If we are that appallingly weak, we have no chance to maintain this “system” or this “empire.”  Events—Nature or a stronger culture—will eat us like a lion eating kittens.

Real Life Mr. Potters Are Having a Merry Christmas

My retired uncle and aunt live in a once-thriving upper working class/lower middle class neighborhood, the same one they have for nearly 50 years.  The transformation of the economy from being middle class centric to upper class centric has unfortunately also transformed their neighborhood.  The good jobs the people who lived there once held are largely gone.  Rental houses now dominate.  The neighborhood pool has closed, and the neighborhood association has dissolved.

My uncle did everything right.  He bought used cars not new, paid off his little house early and never “traded up,” invested in the stock market, and although he had a decent pension and Social Security, he saved enough money in addition to live comfortably, raise three daughters, go on vacations, and be able to enjoy his retirement.

Except that picture is marred.  He now sees, where perhaps he didn’t before, that if you take care of yourself only—if you aren’t helping to support, sustain, and fight for a healthy economy and social structure for the rest of people, ultimately it won’t matter because of all the stress around you.

That’s the way it is—unless you’re super rich.  Then you can live—courtesy of the decisions you support that gut the places like my uncle lives—in a gated community, with armed guards, amid a purposely ignorant life of relative seclusion and disconnection at others’ expense.

Potter may not have won in Frank Capra’s fictional holiday classic, but his ideological brethren are well winning in real life. 

Just like the same Roman wealthy did. Until they could no longer escape the results of theirs and their predecessors' myopically selfish decisions.

The Self-Stabbing Pen

This week I was approached at a store by a woman who wanted me to sign a petition.  It was to get tax credits for tuition to private schools. It was being promoted as being “fair.” 

Forget for the moment that tax credits drive up deficits.  This woman, like her companion at the other end of the store, was almost certainly a product of the state-starved (declining revenue) local school system, a system that would be even more starved if this went through. 

I asked her if she was paid to gather signatures.  Yes.  I asked her if she knew who was paying her.  A non-profit company, she said.  Did any of that seem strange, I asked.  No, why would it, she answered.

I didn’t ask her if she made enough to send her children to private school, even with some tax credits. 

I let irony be enough.  Bitter irony she can chew on later.

The Fast Are Furious

There is SO much that can be said about the fast food strikes that were launched across the country recently.  Here’s just two selected points:

1   The workers were invigorated a bit by the fact that their ranks have been bolstered by better educated people who have been marginalized economically in this post Great Recession “recovery.” These people remember what it was like to be something approaching middle class.

2   The corporatized media has, as expected, given short shrift.  But so have most fast food restaurant attendees, even those whose economic status would be similar and whose goals would in theory be nearly congruent.

In an over-individualized culture of disconnection and social in-camaraderie, the isolation strategy of the wealthy class seems to be working splendidly. 

Trolling For Dollars

Would be entrepreneurs and inventors could use and want to use things to rightfully earn the fruits of their labors.  But those legal rights and pathways are bought up by patent trolls, thus stifling the initiative and entrepreneurship that should be, because the harried entrepreneurs and inventors have to sell much of their interests to get the authority for their own idea. 

Another indication how the unholy alliance of legal firms and corporations and the wealthy have locked out the rest of America, and worse, set themselves up as the parasitical class.