A Call To Arms? (not just yet)

I have tired of posting political items and opinions on Facebook. Social media probably serves best as a purely sociable platform. I have determined to use my web page as my outlet for my political, sociological and philosophical thoughts. This I suppose could be taken as a cautionary statement. I intend to publish my views on those sorts of subjects. I do not believe my views are more noteworthy than those of someone else. I just feel like expressing them. Frankly I doubt that too many p
eople will be interested in them. Nevertheless here goes;

We live in what is called a "capitalist" country. There is some controversy about how strictly capitalist the country actually is. I am not here buying into what I consider to be right wing or conservative propaganda asserting that the country has been drifting into socialism. Those assertions are so blatantly counterfactual that disputing them only enhances them.

When I wrap "capitalist" in quotation marks I do so because I agree with those learned people who say that our system is one of socialism for the rich and capitalism for the poor and middle class. America's so called capitalistic system treats giant corporations and financial institutions as precious resources which must be preserved no matter the cost. Meanwhile ordinary people are viewed as an inexhaustible resource which is infinitely replaceable. Ordinary individuals have no intrinsic value in this system. (They can occasionally be placed on display as a sort of living visual aid to some political diatribe.)

In this system the health of the economy is viewed as the state of the stock market. If the value of the stock market is increasing the economy is seen as healthy. Right now the market is rising. Therefore nearly all the so called experts say that the economy is going well, the outlook is rosy. This is of course absurd. Why? Because any objective accounting of peoples lives, our infrastructure, and the impending environmental collapse would show that ours is a culture in decline. The decline has been going on since at least the Reagan administration and is increasing at an exponential rate.

While the stock market and CEO salaries soar ever higher, the real wages of average Americans plummet. The lives of the ultra rich are extravagant while the lives of ordinary people are dire and truncated. The life expectancy of ordinary people is decreasing. The suicide rate is climbing for the working class. The people are becoming hopeless and the media tells them it is their own fault.

All across the country water supplies are contaminated with lead or other toxins. Bridges are in imminent danger of collapsing. Schools are falling apart. Libraries and public hospitals are underfunded, under used and closing. We are building stadiums at public expense for the private gains of billionaire sports team owners. We are building more and more prisons many of which amount to privately run slave plantations.

Meanwhile private corporations are actively destroying the planetary ecosystem. This will of course wind up costing all of us dearly. We will have to pay for it somehow but the corporations creating this disaster are not spending any money to prevent it or undo the damage they have done. Whatever fines they do incur are meaningless, negligible and totally ineffective. On the other hand the damage they are doing will cost you, your children and their children their livelihoods and maybe their lives.

The most insulting thing about all this is that the proponents of capitalism do not believe in it themselves. They choose socialism for themselves. They sell us capitalism with the utter contempt and disdain that all con-artists have for their marks. It is called "Supply Side Economics." The idea is that the ultra rich are "job creators," and by favoring them the economy will grow and we will all be better off!

How can any of us be so foolish as to fall for such an obvious fallacy? Favoring the rich over the rest of us does benefit certain sectors of the economy, Ferrari sales are booming! So are the sales of ultra luxurious real estate (a lot of which sits vacant nearly all the time!). Most Americans do not work for the Ferrari motor car company. Americans working in the industries that benefit regular people are losing their jobs. The rich drive up costs because they like owning expensive items. They make home ownership harder for working people.

Benefiting the rich only benefits the rich. They are not on our side. They really don't hate us because they do not give regular people that much consideration. Nevertheless they have been waging a class war against the workers and now against the middle class. A war which the rich are winning. They will continue to win the class war until the rest of us decide to fight back.