Me and Kati (7)

Well Kati, it’s just you and me again. I talk and you listen, a splendid way to carry on a conversation. And as you can’t talk I can say things to you that might not bear repeating. The off-year elections are finally over, producing results that have been pretty much predictable. That Virginia guy, Kookinelli, or whatever his name is, lost. But he didn’t lose by so much as to affect the true Tea Party believers. They think he was a martyr, or perhaps a hero, rather than a loser. And of course, magically, it was not because his positions were so extreme or vile, but because the Party didn’t support him enough. It is clear that many voted against him rather than for his opponent who could have easily been defeated by a more reasonable candidate. Terry McAuliffe was not exactly what you might describe as an ideal candidate. But he won, nowadays that’s what counts. It’s a far cry from when “how you play the game” mattered to anyone.

Anyway, paradoxically, Kookinelli lost and is regarded positively, whereas New Jersey Fats won and is now under attack for not being conservative enough, actually touching President Obama, and other mortal sins against insanity. It is obvious that Fats is going to run for President in 2016, but not at all obvious he will be able to get the nomination. He hasn’t “made his bones” by calling Obama a liar, a socialist, communist, Kenyan, or any of the other more vile insults the Republicans banter about behind closed doors. Although many believe he would be a great candidate to run against Hillary, I, for one, doubt it. He is clever enough to make some believe he is a moderate even though he is just about as conservative as the rest of the ultra-conservatives now regarded as merely conservative. He’s not going to have it both ways. That is, he can’t be regarded as conservative enough for the Tea Party Loons unless he moves extremely to the right, and if he does that he won’t have a chance against the fair Hillary.

Anyway Kati, I don’t know why it matters much one way or the other. I would never have believed, had I been forewarned or not, that in the 21^st century I would be living in a country increasingly like the London of the 18th or 19^th centuries. Can you believe, Kati, that we live in a nation where a small minority of the population is allowed to have fortunes so massive they cannot even be imagined by most “Others.” And the Others have been pretty much reduced to a new kind of serfdom or peasantry through wage slavery and interest payments, including the best of our young people who have become so crippled with educational debts they will perhaps never be able to realize any of their dreams. Even more shocking Kati, is that millions of our people are living in poverty because of their low wages, or criticized for not working at all even though there are not enough jobs to go around and attempts to create them are repeatedly blocked by those who enjoy the punishing and shameful status quo. Millions of citizens, even hard-working, honest people who play by the rules, have no health care, and cannot adequately feed or educate their children, are at the mercy of powerful interests  working nonstop to keep it that way. This horrid situation does not exist because of some early primitive notion of “The Divine Right of Kings,” but, rather, because of “The Devilish Might of Unrestrained Monopoly Capitalism.”

I have sometimes described our contemporary mode of life here in the U.S. as a “Culture of the Absurd,” and absurd it is when you think about it Kati. There are basically simple solutions to our current problems (or non problems, depending upon who you believe). Unemployment, for example, could be easily overcome by fairly taxing the obscenely wealthy and corporations and using those funds to create much needed jobs in superstructure, education, and so on. Our expensive, inefficient health care system could be replaced by an efficient, less expensive, single payer system that would send the greedy and completely unnecessary insurance companies where they belong, that is, out of the health care business where, parasitically, they absolutely should not be. Virtually all of our problems could be solved by seriously taxing the obscenely wealthy and cutting back drastically on our military spending. If we gave up our obvious desire to be in a state of constant war the military/industrial/political complex would have to change dramatically, thus allowing meaningful jobs to be created rather than those that exist mainly to keep our militarized culture functioning and interfering worldwide with the lives of others. Of course, Kati, none of this is about to happen. I fear we are already too far in the clutches of the Fascists to overcome “the best government money can buy.”

"Still another danger is represented by those who, paying lip service to democracy and the common welfare, in their insatiable greed for money and the power which money gives, do not hesitate surreptitiously to evade the laws designed to safeguard the public from monopolistic extortion.

Their final objective toward which all their deceit is directed is to capture political power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjection.

They claim to be super-patriots, but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution.

They are patriotic in time of war because it is to their interest to be so, but in time of peace they follow power and the dollar wherever they may lead.” 

Henry A. Wallace