Posted by junglest from ? (64.79.4.3) on Tuesday, March 19, 2002 at 9:15AM :
If I had said back in 1967 that President Johnson was lying to us, that no Vietnamese gunboat had attacked any US battleship in the Gulf of Tonkin, that fifty five thousand Americans would be used up for nothing...or that Nixon and his henchmen were behind the break in of the office of Daniel Elseberg, or the Watergate burglary...people would have said I was paranoid...a Conspiracy Nut. People don't want to believe their leaders are liars, cheats, and murderers...not until the proof is shoved into their faces and there is no way for them to escape...right up to that moment they will try anything...including attacking YOU, to avoid that conclusion.
You want a hint as to what this nation does out there in the world, look at how Corporate America treats its own workers and fellow citizens. Realizing that we had enetered a new era, one in which the sidewalks of our cities would become litered with the mentally ill...another stepping stone to being elected...and poverty stricken children...a "welfare" issue that also won many an election...and the marginally employed who get cast off in droves...as well as the barely employed who can't live a decent life on their paltry wages...and all of it while stockholder profits soar and Corporate salaries and bail outs go through the roof...Corporate America, down to the corner drug store, changed the name of what it used to call its "employees" and "workers". It turned them into "team members", and "family", and "associates" and "partners". This was supposed to soften the blow when they received their measely paychecks or were let go from the "team" into an uncertain future no one gave a damn about.
You would think these tricks wouldn't fool grown people...but take a look at what people spend their spare time doing and you'll see just how immature these people are...how likely they are to be easily manipulated into believing the swill their leaders feed them about how America is at its greatest when it behaves the most like a Corporate Bully back home and abroad.
Just as people step over the weakest among us on their way to a latte...and the bosses hire you with sweet words, knowing they mean none of it, and will let you go at the best time for them, and the worst for you, because you are always barely hanging on...so do they have no problem killing children in far off countries...countries you never heard of with a population of "aliens" about as familiar to most Americans as Martians would be.
Being lied to at home...used and abused and discarded at the slightest downturn, you'd think people would suspect their Corporate Leaders when they place hand on heart and manufacture tears as needed...when they welcome back your dead children from overseas...the same children they cut from welfare rolls and deny medical benefits to and would fire at the slightest dip in their pocketbooks. Just like the tears they shed for the aborted fetus are fake...as they are so damn indifferent to that kid when it's born...so will they value you dead far more than when alive because there was profit to be made from your death....as there was from your miserable life.
To the eternal credit of the Human Race, we can put up with a lot of abuse and hardship...had to be that way or we never would have survived the last 25000 years...but too often we put up with what we don't ned to, what we could easily change with just some effort, because we think everything is a volcano or an ocean, a force of nature we must only accept and endure...and of course Corporate America encourages us to think so...to think that what THEY do to us is "Life".
It's amazing what a soothing title and ten cents more an hour can do for a person. Is it any wonder people are depressed and drug adled...or that all of these drugs are legal and available to our children AND our dogs? Well...the argument goes, a depressed master will depress his dog...and a depressed dog and master can make little Johnny and Jane depressed too, and their schoolwork suffers...and everyone is jittery and jumpy when they aren't lethargic and devoid of all energy or hope. Drug the whole lot of them.
A slave working on the pyramids 4000 years ago had more "security" than most Americans do today...when they also can barely afford three loincloths, a rag, sandals and just enough food to get them back to work the next day.
WE are being used, abused and used up here at home. Why would these leaders hesitate to kill, maim and "lay off" people the world over? They don't provide basic medical coverage or nutrition to their own children...even to the detriment of our communities here...why would they not starve and abuse whole communities when it is "profitable" for them to do so?
The ranks of politicians used to be filled primarily with Lawyers...for better or worse they at least were versed in the notion of the rule of Law. Increasingly we have businessmen...petty ones usually, though zillionaires have tried to be presidents...instead of just buying them.
In Corporate America, people are resources to be used and used up...to be tailored and driven and discarded whenever their function is terminated. They are doing it to you and your children here at home...you know they are, if you'll just look around and admit you are NO "team member".
You, and that Afghani girl, and that Iraqi child, and that African child, and that Asian child...are tools and means for accumulating their indecent wealth...wealth we think they deserve because we would love to have it ourselves...but can't imagine what vile things are required to be done in order to make THAT much money...so we sugar coat the methods one would have to resort to...and they get away with fooling us because WE demand it.
Reality sinks in when it's too late...that's the Faustian Deal we make when the child is born.
-- junglest
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