Open Letter To Working America

The problem is not "the uber-rich." The problem is YOU!  The rich are merely doing what they have always done -- ripping the poor off.    But, unfortunately, because you have essentially zero savings/wealth, you have zero power over (e.g. to starve the profit making capacity of) the rich.

Because, when the rich become even vaguely concerned (e.g. 2008 election of Barack Obama) that their hegemony is being challenged, they cut jobs 10-20% (more if necessary) across the board.

Then, YOU panic (because unlike me) you cannot survive without a job, because frankly, far too many (millions) of you are “God fearing” breeders with hungry mouths to feed and $12.00 in your checking accounts.

Then, as always, "trickle down rules" are immediately ensconced by your government (i.e. "restructuring" Social Security), bailouts are legislated (e.g. TARP), etc. etc. etc.  (read Naomi Klein).  This is easily done because the richest Americans (and foreigners)  effectively "own" the U.S. government through unregulated political contributions (i.e. Citizens United) under any-but-public funded elections.

And so, we must accept that there is frankly nothing that you or I can do about any of this!  We, the working poor, are resigned to accept whatever "trickle down" detritus redounds from the anuses and urethrae of the rich.  And that is that.  (Though arguably my suffering – mostly intellectual suffering -- is physically more comfortable than yours.  At least so far.)

This (rich:poor) reality is less so in Europe, where government services and wealth redistribution typically consumes forty percent of GDP -- especially in France -- where workers immediately proceed to shut the country down, through powerful public unions and feisty vocal demonstrations if ever the rich so much as attempt this (distinctly American, maybe Chinese) level of inhumane and egregious theft from working people.

(I know what you're thinking now...)  But, unfortunately I cannot afford to move to France, New Zealand, Canada, etc. -- as the U.S. real estate collapse has trapped me here, and the U.S. dollar has depreciated so much (i.e. against New Zealand’s dollar) as to render emigration impossible practically.  Moreover, I am too old and too "well off" (applying typical “financial planner” calculus) in the U.S. to pragmatically "start over" in another country (Montana, my home, is “the poor man's Canada,” and Canada has much to offer: wheat, cattle, energy and clean water).

Thus I am as totally screwed as you, despite my having finally understood how America (government and capitalism) works – pitting one worker against another, until only the most brutal “will to power” types emerge atop the social/economic pyramid.   Though in some cases (David H. Koch) brutality (with vast wealth) is obviously an inherited trait (I do not support inheritance of any form).

So please take a moment to try and see this from my perspective – verifiably top ten percent in everything over the course of my life.  I am not stupid.  And my eyes are wide open.  I know (now) that in two hundred plus years there has never been anything in this country one could remotely construe as “good” capitalism or “good” government.  They just don’t exist.  There’s only survival and achievement or death and failure.  Just good choices or bad outcomes.  And while I’m very sorry about it a lot of the time, on some level, it really is Manichean, binary, transactional analysis that works best.  That’s why, in the final analysis, I worship just two things: good business and achievement (maybe that’s only one) – certainly over the sick, sad cult of (fake) self esteem brain cancer deluding hundreds of millions of Americans, even as our country degenerates to the point of failure and collapse.

Maybe this view makes me a fascist.  Maybe a nihilist.  But please don't misunderstand or question why I am so angry, mean-spirited and brutally honest (including with myself hopefully) about reality.

At least now, perhaps you know why.