AMERICAN ALPTRAUM - PART 3
GOODBYE YELLOW BRICK ROAD
Where the dogs of society howl
You can't crush me under your penthouse
I'm going back to my plough
Contrary to popular belief, the road to hell is not paved with
good intentions. It is a yellow brick road paved with self-centred ambitions
and idiocy that leads to a man behind the curtain. It’s what bothers people
like me most. Especially if ‘the man’ is a rotten politician, police officer,
public servant, or some other dishonest, self-serving hypocrite claiming they
are a Christian. Christianity is seen as some kind of cloak of honesty and
righteousness, a shield of virtue, but too often it’s just a mask to conceal
corruption. Trump himself has attempted to harness this kind of misconception
to gain support. He convulsed in a Church, risking the divine wrath of God
through open mockery, providing further proof that if God exists at all, He
clearly doesn’t care what we do to one another. Probably because He is so
ashamed of our behaviour. It’s easy to understand why He’d ignore us. The
Church and State are supposed to be separate, and for good reason. Consider the
Middle East when vile, sadistic religious laws are State Laws and the
importance of keeping them separate becomes terrifyingly obvious.
The Moslem extremists, however, do have a
point. Their claim of Western hypocrisy is valid. We may not want to hear it,
but it is true. Regardless of your faith in any religion, Christianity forms a
core foundation upon which modern Western society is founded. You can make up
any BS lies you like to deny this, but it is a historical fact. If you were
raised Catholic, like so many of us, you will either be indoctrinated to toe
the company line or loath the whole thing. People like me have developed a deep
seated disgust for many so-called ‘Christian’ churches. Spirituality and religion
are two very different things. Still, there is wisdom to be found in the Bible,
and in this case it’s Matthew 7: 15-20, New International Version.
“Watch out for false prophets. They come to you
in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. By their fruit you
will recognise them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from
thistles? Likewise, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad
fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good
fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the
fire. Thus, by their fruit you will recognise them.” – Matthew 7: 15-20 NIV
Admittedly, we’re not burning folks (yet,
let’s see where this farce of a President goes), but the point is still very apt.
We recognise people by their actions, not just their words. Trump says a lot of
things, but provides little – if any - evidence to support his most slanderous
allegations. Until only recently, and despite having access to the evidence disproving
his allegations for so long, he still insisted Obama was a Moslem and hadn’t
even been born in the US. As a result, his ‘fact’ was revealed as a lie. But his
most psychotic supporters still spread this lie despite the evidence and
Trump’s sort-of retraction. Trump’s actions reveal him for what he is, but his
mostly white sycophants are unwilling to accept the facts. No surprises there.
What made that whole campaign so ludicrous was
that there was no real discussion on policies or their funding because Trump
railroaded the whole thing into a smear campaign where he played to his
strengths: bullying and misdirection. There were no real answers about how he
would address issues of education, unemployment, health, welfare,
infrastructure, foreign investment and diplomacy, military actions, and all the
other important issues that had the potential to influence informed voting or reveal
how he planned to actually make the US great again. The few times he was forced
to address the issues, Trump provided glib responses that held as much value
and chance of success as a snowball in hell. Since becoming President, Trump
has begun to dishonour his promises, revealing what others have said – reinforcing
the belief he is a liar, and nothing he says has any value.
When did the US lose its way and what was the
price? The answer to both is the rise of unregulated Capitalism. This was seen
as the means to an end, a path to wealth, prosperity and opportunity, the
American Dream. But Capitalism requires exploitation and seeks to eliminate all
competition, and for every winner in a completion against others, there must be
at least one loser. The price of unregulated Capitalism is equality, justice,
freedom, liberty, and, inevitably, meritocracy and accountability. Capitalism
and Christianity are fundamental opposed, mostly polar opposites. Matthew 6:
24, New International Version, reveals the conflict where the notion of God
represents the ideologies sacrificed to pay for the promise of fiscal wealth
through unregulated Capitalism.
“No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.” – Matthew 6: 24 NIV
The US solved the conflict of interest that
arises between the two by printing ‘In God We Trust’ on its currency. The greatest
irony of all is that the Christian religion itself has been reduced to a
commodity in defiance of instructions not to turn the House of God into a
marketplace (Matthew 21: 12-13, New International Version). The role of the
Church and State is (again, regardless of whether you wish to believe it) to
regulate one another, to uphold the fundamental ideologies that provide the
foundations for our society, as well as take action (when and where necessary) if
they are corrupted by hypocrisy, for the good of modern Western society.
Too often we have seen a failure to do so.
The result is the entrenched culture of corruption that has festered, a canker
deep in the soul of Western societies, and in the US this has reached a point where
the tip of the brimstone can no longer be concealed because a tsunami of unrest
has caused the tide to withdraw and expose what was once hidden. Despite the
extreme right criticism and misinformation, Obama’s administration at least
made an effort to address some of the systemic failures, to restore some of the
things that made the US great, but they had to fight hypocrites and predators
every step of the way.
Universal healthcare is a basic human right,
but one that was absent from the US before Obama came to power. The notion that
everyone is responsible for themselves only works when everyone has the
opportunity to work for a wage that can cover their basic costs and leave
enough disposable income to save for emergencies. Christian values are, by
their nature, Socialist, but the loudest voices in the US consider Socialism
evil. Makes you wonder what they think of the message from the Parable of The
Good Samaritan.
Anybody in a Western country that actually suggests
their society needs to restore equality, justice, freedom, liberty, meritocracy
and accountability – an end to neoliberalism – is referred to as a traitor.
It’s the same if you suggest women should get the same rights and pay as men,
though how supporting the idea of equality for another human being makes you a
traitor (and to what) is only clear to the insane. Here, in Australia, if you
dare point out injustice and suggest something be done to correct the systemic
failures and flawed laws, policies and procedures that led to that situation,
you are usually told by some lunatic to “get the fuck out of my country.”
As a sixth generation Australian, being told
that is incredibly offensive, especially by someone who may be only third
generation or less. It becomes embarrassingly funny when it’s a jackass saying
that to one of the Indigenous Australians who wants to know why there is so
much discrimination against her people. It’s even more insulting and offensive than
being told you know nothing of inequality and discrimination because you benefit
from ‘white privilege’ despite a lifetime of socio-economic disadvantage
following a childhood of extreme abuse at the hands of predatory parents and
men concealed and enabled by decades of systemic failure. On the plus side, any
casual stereotyping and racist remark directed at white people is not actually
considered offensive or racist.
But let’s get something straight. It is not
treason to demand our political representatives do their damn jobs and maintain
the ideologies that form the foundation of our society, even if they are struggling
with socio-economic, national and international issues. If we sacrifice our
fundamental principles, then what is left of our society? It is our duty to
demand an end to the excuses that are made to justify a failure to do what is
right or to deliberately undermine our core identity. Those who guard against
and expose complacency are patriots. Those who try to silence such patriots are
not only fascists but, by their actions, traitors. If anybody should get out of
anyone’s country, it is the predators and hypocrites that force victims to
remain silent. Again, there is something profound in the Bible on this issue,
speaking of a problem that has continued unabated for over two thousand years.
Jesus
replied. “And you experts in the law, woe to you, because you load people down
with burdens they can hardly carry, and you yourselves will not lift one finger
to help them.” –
Luke 11: 46 NIV
We have politicians living on wages and
entitlements forty or more times the full ‘welfare benefit’ provided for an unemployed
person, but who have the audacity to accuse the disadvantaged of having an
over-inflated sense of entitlement and being a burden on society. That is
projection and hypocrisy. In an environment where there is only one advertised
job for every ten or more unemployed people, and the ‘welfare benefit’ is
two-thirds the poverty rate, then the burden can be very easily observed as
being those in positions of authority for which they are woefully unqualified. They
are supposed to represent all citizens, not rule over them like parasitic
despots. The unemployed have no control over the economy, or ability to create
jobs – politicians do.
Slashing social services and welfare does not
encourage anyone to get a job when there are not enough jobs to go around, it
simply creates a volatile environment already filled with disenfranchised and
frustrated people who have been denied basic human rights like food, shelter,
dignity and opportunity. How will they finance their own survival in the absence
of legal employment opportunities? Think about it. They will be forced into
crime. It costs over $100K a year to incarcerate someone. It currently costs
one-eighth that to provide them with ‘welfare’ two-thirds what is needed to
meet the poverty line. Blaming victims is the act of cowards who are desperate
to conceal their own ineptitude. Attacking minorities only works if you can
conceal the facts and prevent all the minorities from working together instead
of turning on one another, because together they are the majority.
The only reason that the US, and all the
other Western countries, have reached this point of almost no return is because
predators have been allowed to manipulate people and maintain positions of
power. They rely upon the limited intellect of the collective masses to fight
amongst themselves and resort to default settings of self-centred greed and
bigotry to maintain what little they may have. This goes some way to explaining
limited funding to public education. What modern Western countries have is not
Democracy, it is Plutocratic Fascism where the wealthy rule by the consensus of
deluded people oppressing one another and themselves.
Listen up, RWNJs. Your enemy is not the poor,
folks with skin a different colour to your own, folks from another country or
who believe in a different religious or political social construct to the one
you place all your faith in, women and children fleeing from war and terrorism,
lefties, Unions, gays, or any one of a dozen other things that scare you and
you happily blame for your own misfortune or stupidity. The only people
stealing your job, or your home, or your land, or your taxes is the government,
and maybe some shifty bank or private company with which they have some nefarious
deal, or actual criminals. Admittedly, there are nuts who might want to kill
you, but some of them justify it by the fact you behave like an arsehole and
they feel threatened by your sick and twisted extremist attitudes. Your real enemy,
though, looks you in the eye when you stand in front of a mirror. Your enemy is
you, Nancy, because you blame others instead of sacking up and facing reality.
The only people that can create jobs is
government. They do that by creating an environment that is suitable for
employment. A surplus in the labour supply keeps wages low, reduces demand on a
range of commodities, and allows people to be controlled by scaring the living
shit out of them with threats of unemployment and poverty. Lowering the minimum
wage and taking away awards and working conditions does not reduce unemployment,
and neither does cutting company tax. It simply allows employers to make more
profit. It is counter-productive. Competing with countries that exploit labour in
a manner that violates basic human rights to pay bugger-all in wages is only
possible if your government has the guts to impose tariffs to counteract those
cheap (in every sense of the word) imports.
Yes, tariffs work both ways. And they are
complex. They are a difficult balancing act where misjudgements can result in
Global Recession, as you’re about to learn if Trump does what he threatened and
imposes a 45% tariff on everything imported from China. I’ve no doubt people
who don’t know what my qualifications are will claim I don’t know what I’m
talking about. Clearly, the evidence would suggest far too many politicians, flunkies
and other ‘experts’ in charge of the economy could be accused of the same. The
official evidence for Australia’s LNP Federal Abbott government when Hockey ran
the economy into the ground and more than doubled the deficit despite
ultimately counter-productive austerity measures that stripped hundreds of
millions of dollars out of social and public services proves this point very
aptly. Bottom line is this: if we cannot sell what we produce here or in other
countries, we have no income from here or other countries.
If we agree to trade deals that make our own
businesses unviable, we get high unemployment and people with no money to buy
cheap-ass imported goods. If a product we produce is too expensive for our
domestic market then we have to evolve and find a way to make it more
affordable. The drive to maximise profits is crippling our society and
communities. Combined with an illogical and unreasonable effort to maintain
extreme conservative ideologies, this has doomed our society to a slow,
agonising death. We must evolve to become more independent, progressive, rely on
and trust ourselves, and deliver upon the ideologies we claim our society is
founded upon. Globalisation and the ever increasing demand for unsustainable
profit margins is like Trickle-down Economics – it has only made the wealthy
richer and screwed over the impoverished masses.
When a news feed on penalty rates appeared on
Facebook, there was an idiot woman who complained she had to actually work in her
own business on a weekend because she didn’t want to pay her “laze skum”
employees. She went on to claim they were “steeling” from her by getting
penalty rates. Given those kind of comments, with all her barely literate insults
toward those she exploits to make her profits, it made me wonder how her
businesses managed to last at all. She insulted anybody who criticised her
attitude, boasting of her wealth, and insisted her “theeving trash” employees
should be grateful she paid them at all. Then she mocked her critics with talk
of her upcoming sixth ocean cruise around the world. People like her prove the
point about an entrenched culture of corruption. You know why Richard Branson
is so successful? He respects and looks after his staff. People like that woman
should shut their idiotic mouths and learn a valuable lesson from that good man’s
example.
As far as my research has indicated, the ‘lefties’
did not start any foreign wars in the Middle East over the last three decades –
those were initiated by Republican and right-wing controlled governments. The US
governments, Democrat and Republican, have all participated in clandestine
factional activities supporting what they think can stabilise the region, same
as a lot of other countries, but the Democrats and other left-wing governments are
infamous for avoiding conflict. They consider such overtly aggressive acts too
expensive. I don’t care if RWNJ disagree with me. Their unwillingness to accept
reality and study the facts is their own problem. I cannot reason with
unreasonable people and will not engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed foe
because that is a war of attrition that ends as it started – them still being
complete idiots who adopt a policy of scorched earth.
If you engage your brain you will understand
why right-wing folks believe offense is the best defence and lefties want to
avoid conflict. Lefties believe in investing in infrastructure and people. They
want universal health care, better education, jobs, and all the things that
deliver equality and internal stability because they think this will reduce
frustration and help prevent folks from becoming disenfranchised. Their success
levels vary depending upon what they can invest and the competence of those
given authority to make it happen. Right-wing folks want to flex muscle because
they know that sometimes a demonstration of strength and action now avoids
escalation of conflicts and a need for more aggressive action in years to come.
But also (especially in the US) because they can sell arms, create business
opportunities, and make sure things like oil flow back into the US at a cost
that won’t screw their economy over while keeping wages down to avoid inflation
issues leading to huge National debt levels. But, in so doing, they tend to ignore
infrastructure maintenance issues and unleash austerity measures to pay off the
incurred debts and this triggers recessions that impact upon the most
disadvantaged.
Wars cost money. A shitload of it. And in
most cases they are not viable - the return does not outweigh the cost. You just
tend to end up with a bunch of dead and crippled young folk, broken families, impoverished
widows and orphans, and angry, disgruntled people with mental health issues, grudges,
and (in the US) access to firearms that can kill dozens of people at a time.
Yeah, friggin’ guns because it’s in their Constitution. It’s the Second bloody
Amendment. It is one sentence, two lines that include the phrase “well
regulated” that gun nuts (not the law-abiding gun owners one bad day away from
contributing to the stats) want to ignore and shout down. It’s an addition to
the Constitution, just like any other law that is added to it, like one that could
make provisions to (God willing) protect kids and good people from nongs with
guns, or one that requires Presidential aspirants to take a psych evaluation
before being endorsed by a political party and booted at any time if needs be.
The US use to have a law that said it was
hunky-dory to own other people, but now days that kind of thing is frowned
upon. Yet they still have access to guns and far too many of the people that
have them are well off their axels. You’re a RWNJ that wants a gun? Fine. That
Amendment was written at a time when guns were black powder things, so you can
have a musket or pistol. Not multiple automatic weapons, machine guns, body
armour, rocket launchers, and explosives. Go nuts. Don’t shoot yourself. Then
again, chances are you will, and most of us could care less. Just try to do it
right so you don’t waste someone else’s money to cover the cost of your health
care. The money and bed could be better invested on worthwhile people. That
comment was offensive? Really? Well, you RWNJs would know. For a bunch of
bullies that spend so much time going out of your way to insult, mock, threaten
and offend people, you are surprisingly thin-skinned. Doesn’t feel very nice,
does it?
Get use to it. You’ve been bulling better
people than you for years. They’ve put up with all your self-centred
temper-tantrums all this time. They tried to tolerate you and meet you
half-way, but now they’ve had enough. Trump once pointed out that the world is
laughing at you, at your stupidity. That’s not entirely true. We were laughing
at the stupidity of Trump and his merry band of knuckle-dragging half-wit
sycophants. They were a gift in abject idiocy that just kept on giving. Trump
said it had to stop. It did. About half-way through your Presidential Election campaign.
Nothing really changed. It just wasn’t funny to think that dickhead might be
put in charge of 320 million people and nuclear weapons. Especially when he
said they should be used against the enemies of the US, issued a thinly veiled
threat that other nations that did not comply with US demands were its enemies,
and then demanded the launch codes. And who decides who is an enemy of the US?
Trump, a lunatic who has to “get even” with anybody that dares challenge or say
no to him.
Diplomacy and negotiations do no begin with
the threat of a nuclear holocaust. There’s nowhere to go from there but
straight to hell. Trump said you lot had to get smart, fast, but the evidence
is apparent and abundant: him and his mindless mob of zealots seem to be getting
stupider by the day. The world doesn’t have a problem with the good folk of the
US. We like them. But your inbred hill-billy cousins and their lunatic king are
the proverbial dog-shit on the path of civilisation and human progress. A smart
person would get off the tainted trail and find a way around it. A fool would
ignore the warning signs, step in it, and the stench would follow them around
until they found a way to wipe it off. You lot wilfully jumped in it. Then
rolled around in it. Not smart.
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