Suckers

There is apparently no evidence that Phineas Taylor Barnum ever actually said, “There’s a sucker born every minute and two to take him,” but he might well have done so. In any event, if he were alive today he would have said it differently, to the effect that, “Suckers are born every minute and a few to take them.”

Another “savvy” guy said, “Follow the money,” particularly good advice for the times as money has become considered speech and obviously is driving our politics. I suggest that if you follow the money these days you will discover a massive amount of suckers, otherwise known as the American public. You will also begin to see how it is that the duration of our elections, now beginning at inauguration and lasting until the next one, has developed into a permanent “cash cow” for the powers that be.

Consider, if you will, where do all these massive amounts of money originate? They come primarily from corporations who want something in return. Where does the bulk of all that money go? It goes to the major media, mostly television and to a lesser extent to radio and newspapers. And who owns the major media? Corporations own them, of course. So when a corporation donates money to a campaign they take it out of one arm of their huge conglomerate and give it to another arm of the same conglomerate. Ultimately it costs them nothing.

Along the way, however, it picks up more and more taxpayer money, as taxpayers are urged to give in order to counteract the more massive amounts corporations donate. The more the corporations donate the more taxpayers are motivated to give more. Even better, if Republicans promote causes they know the public opposes, like doing away with Roe vs Wade, Planned Parenthood, Medicare, voter suppression, global warming, and so forth, the public becomes angry and is thus even more highly motivated to give more. When you believe you are supporting the candidate of your choice you are, in fact, donating to GM, Wells Fargo, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Bank of America, or some other corporate owned enterprise. It doesn’t matter which candidate you support as your only choice is between the two candidates the powers that be allow you to choose between. And in spite of the rhetoric, whichever candidate gets elected, the outcome will be remarkably similar. If the person elected for some reason cannot fulfill their promises completely the other party will be blamed, even though they would almost certainly have done the same thing. It is basically a single party system disguised as two separate but more or less equal parties.

Basically what happens is that one corporate entity is acting as a “shill” for the rest, priming the system in order to increase the “take.” This is a scheme so diabolically clever it ranks right up there with the invention of credit cards and compound interest, both modern day functional equivalents of slavery. Of course the dumber and less educated the public the easier it is to con the suckers. Like all such con games it is necessary to let the suckers win once in a while, but you can be sure the changes will be more cosmetic than substantive. If you are angry about the state of education just give a bit more to the guy who promises to fix it…but don’t be surprised by the result.

You must have noticed that each election cycle lasts longer and is more expensive than the preceding one. Candidates have to raise money to ensure their re-election so the money begins flowing almost immediately and the charade continues on for months on end. Who benefits from this the most, obviously corporate owned media. This goes on for months, even years, in spite of the admission on the part of virtually everyone involved that the public actually doesn’t even pay attention until after Labor Day! The only conceivable reason for this to happen is to constantly milk the cash cow elections have become. Never before in U.S. history have so many been “taken” by so few. The beauty of the system is, as they own it outright, they don’t even worry about being punished, paying a little fine once in a while helps to keep it going. I can’t imagine any other population on earth putting up with this but, hey, hey, it’s the American way.

I can imagine some of the world’s greatest con men meeting either “down below” or “up above” to discuss what is going on in the world of confidence schemes: Charles Ponzi, who needs no introduction, Joseph “Yellow Kid” Weil, Victor Lustig who sold the Eiffel Tower, and George Parker who repeatedly sold the Brooklyn Bridge, and others as well. They must no doubt be laughing at their own little “Mom and Pop” schemes, when compared to the current super-colossal fraud we are now experiencing.

There is no kind of dishonesty into which otherwise good people more easily and frequently fall than that of defrauding the government.

Benjamin Franklin