On the surface, quotes such as the above seem quite, as the subject states, ‘a propos’ but if analyzed against time (history) and the social context, it takes on a totally different flavor.  It’s easy to blame others for one’s state.  You can blame anybody with power over yourself: God, Government, Financial institutions, Big Business.  Sure, it’s easy to pass the buck.  Especially when the bad guys are so obvious as they ride in wearing their black hats, their Winchesters and six-shooters ready to terrorize the people.

The key point Jefferson makes is about a people allowing a power to lord it over them and eventually, to disenfranchise and dispossess them.  Yes, Americans and Canadians have done this.  Guilty, one and all.  They believed they could have it all while they concentrated on giving themselves the good life.  That meant, of course, voting every 2 or 4 years, for whatever level of rulership was clamoring for votes.  “Who do we vote for, hon?”  “Isn’t it always for what’s his name?  He’s a Democrat anyway.”  “Oh, yeah, OK.”  And the votes are cast.  The rest is Government business. 

As for banks, well, where do people flock to when they want the new piece of land, new house, new toys?  A trip to ‘paradise’ or a cruise?  Money to go gambling in Vegas or Reno?  To whatever financial institution is willing to lend easily and freely at the moment as if paying it back was never going to be an issue.

Where do people go to get their houses, their SUV’s and trucks, their gas, their cruises, their toys, their games, their entertainment, their exotic or junk foods, their pet foods and so on?  To the Corporate world, where else?  No argument when it’s buying time. 

But there’s payback in many forms.  Some is in obesity and disease.  Some is in repossession.  Some is in children being sent to die in some place that was never even mentioned in school or college so the oil continues to flow to the pumps so commuters can continue to drive their Hummers to work. 

Without dragging this out, let me ask:  Who empowered these people?  The very same who now complain about them.  Bankers have always been rapacious predators.  Always.  It’s their trademark, if you remove the suits, the smiles and the flashy ads and billboards.  They literally feed from the social fabric.  They exist because people are greedy, selfish and distrustful.  Bankers have no money, nothing.  Everything they have comes from the people’s sweat and blood, yes blood.  Because if not bankrolled, the militaries would not exist either.  Then people may have to respect each other’s property and boundaries, individually and collectively.  But when you have a ‘superior’ military might, why not use it to take someone else’s resources?  Indeed, what other purpose do these serve?  But the people love their bankers when the charge card says ‘yes’ to an otherwise unaffordable luxury.  Now the predators want more: is that a surprise?  The nature of that business is that more is necessary.  Enough does not exist in that world.

The insurmountable problem now for benighted and financially beleaguered North Americans is that their so-called “democracies” have fallen prey to financial fascism—a totalitarianism of money.  Voting only encourages the bastards, it doesn’t solve anything.  Mr. Obama will not pull America, and by default, Canada, out of the social tailspin into economic collapse.  They may, for effect, ALLOW him to put in a few pathetic band aids on the situation but they cannot allow him to make any real and positive change.  Too little, too late, and too much being expected of one individual while those who voted for him (mostly out of disgust and fear of the other guys) now wait for the good times to resume as if nothing happened.  And if Obama did turn things around, guess what would happen?  Come the next election there would be so much political baggage attached to his term in office that ‘the people’ would turn and vote in Jed, or Jeb, or whatever the next Bush is being groomed for the next Republican presidential nomination. 

As my history teacher was fond of quoting:  “The more things change, the more they stay the same.”

Sha’Tara

…and my ‘à propos’ quote:

“There is not a more mean, stupid, dastardly, pitiful, selfish, spiteful, envious, ungrateful animal than the Public.  It is the greatest of cowards, for it is afraid of itself.” [William Hazlitt]

And being afraid of their own power, the People repeatedly hand it over to those who deserve it the least, and are the least to be trusted with any kind of power.