Knocking

The plutocracy have drawn nearly all the effective resources to themselves.  All media not directly or indirectly controlled by them are usually paupers, forced to ignobly ask for donations from a public which itself has few resources.

Have to keep talking about these things.  The public may have its headphones on and can’t hear, but truth’s insistent and persistent knock will eventually be heard over all the banal noise.

A Lost Generation?

Those who follow the Professor & The Housewife blog know that I had the flu.  I am back.

Today came a report from top world economists that income inequality and lack of real opportunity for the mass of people in much of the “developed” world is a millstone around the world economy recovering sufficiently. There is real concern that we are creating a “lost generation” of the young who should be attaining work skills and experiences to make the economies strong for the future.  A bad trend.

The social breakdown of too many young—especially young men—with too much time, too little real opportunity, and too little guidance, or worse, the wrong guidance, is insidious.  That general pattern has the potential to have the same explosive effects here as elsewhere.

The Selfish Man Who Pokes His Own Eye Condemns Others For Living In the Dark

Fools think that if the world is clamoring for “stuff”—Iphones, cars, CDs, soft drinks, fast food, retail, etc.—that that is a sign of prosperity.  We might have the largest aerospace company (Boeing), the largest biotech (Amgen), largest retail (Walmart), largest petrol (Exxon), largest software (Microsoft), comm equipment (Sisco), and heavy equipment (Caterpillar), but what does that mean, and is it always an advantage for the country?

We do have universally appealing attributes of pluralism, economic opportunity, and cultural openness, but much of that has become brittle or façade-like anymore.  The asymmetric threats we presently face might not be existential ones, but if they sniff our weaknesses, we are more vulnerable than thought.

Because while the medieval, unmodern, unconnected chauvinist power mongers of the terrorist world may be off base, so are we.  They can be wrong, but not all the way wrong.  And we can be overall “right,” but with enough wrong that we give power and motivation to our enemies, and self-weaken what should be our strengths. 

Fix ourselves, and we will go far in dissolving the drive, power, and allure of those terrorist organizations.

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.