On the Attack
Economic life in America (and elsewhere) is mostly a scam. You and I are bombarded 24/7 with advertising designed to fill our heads with the idea that we cannot live without an endless list of products that in the main we would be better off without. Countless billions of dollars are spent in luring us into stupors that create millions of little zombie-like buying automatons. We are led by the Pied Pipers of Madison Avenue like lemmings down the primrose path, up the hill, and off the cliffs of Stupidville only to land on our heads with empty pockets. The fall doesn’t kill us. It just batters our brains and keeps us firmly on the lower end of the IQ curve that is reserved for Idiots. From there we are flushed back to Stupidville on the River of Certain Return only to take our places to once again complete the cycle of empty pockets for us, and to vacuum up trillions of dollars for the Captains of Industry. It is a tale told by cheap television actors, full of sound and fury, signifying the end of the human race.
Let us begin this woeful tale with my favorite group of scam artists, the golfing boys and girls, aka professional golfers. Billions of dollars are sucked up out of the economy and distributed to producers of overpriced golfing paraphernalia, to the TV industry, to third rate announcers, commentators and hangers on, to golf courses, and to the “professional” golfing boys and girls. Those at the high end of the income curve rake in billions of dollars, while those at the low end must settle for about $30 to $50 million each over a 20-year career with no actual tournament wins. Meanwhile, 30 to 50 million automatons are out and about shoving our dollars into the cycle of golf to keep all members of this sector of our economy well-heeled for life. If there is some grand purpose to this game other than to scam and to be scammed, survivors at the average IQ level and above have yet to find it.
Repeat the same set of procedures for football, basketball, baseball, tennis, soccer, NASCAR, and the amateur set of dancers and singers on TV land, and we are now talking real bucks. While it can be said that the players in these games can outperform the rest of us with their skills, it can also be said that the rest of us (on sober days) can read, write, speak coherently, and chew gum with more skills than can the players of said games. But they all drive to their luxury homes in stylish cars and attire, dine in the fanciest restaurants, and vacation hither and yon in their private yachts whilst you and I must scrimp to find next month’s rent payment. (Did I mention that we are the idiots?)
I have omitted the entertainment industry and its lackeys from this essay because there are many starving artists among them. The moguls at the top are equal to the preceding moguls in terms of their ruthless pursuit of money. But there are no discernable differences in talents among the brethren in the entertainment industry in spite of the wide gap in pay. How they go about deciding who gets the top money in this industry is better left to those who seek to find employment there. I have no entertainment talent—and I know it.
But I have saved the brunt of my attack for the 7,500 bank CEOs and their network of 10,000 or so other CEOs, and a similar network of second level “good old boys and wannabes” that suck up about $20 billion daily out of our pockets and into theirs. I have battered and flailed this group of inheritors and sycophants to the nth degree, but the bastards just will not go away. Mainly that is because they have bought up enough of Congress to guarantee their hallowed statuses in perpetuity. It seems that the mighty fortresses they have built to ward off feeble writers such as me are no match for them.
Well, beating the crap out of this group of imposters is a dirty job, but somebody has to do it. If not me, then who? At least I have the unmitigated gall to take on an entire slice of society that is devoid of moral fiber, ruthless in their pursuit of money, utterly lacking in self-respect, and that put hate at the forefront of all they do. I qualify as a self-declared expert on all those points. I just don’t have their money. But I have something they do not have: A canon and a set of balls that explode on impact.
I was reminded of the period film, They Shoot Horses, Don't They. The lengths that people went to during the Great Depression to get noticed, find comfort or fame so they could make money and climb out the poverty they were in. My grandfather wrote many jingles for Burma-Shave. Never realized a single penny from all his effort.
Today is similar to the Great Depression except that most people don't know they are slipping into poverty by the very villains that you are pointing out. Only now it's the lottery, legal gambling, drugs, all kinds of flimflam schemes, comfort food and escapism.
For those miserable people out there (us idiots), it's time to stop blaming external sources like the politicians (our security, liberalism (?), morality, and "them") and start focusing on the real cause for our depressed state that Ed is revealing for us.
Ron
Love ya!
Jane