I recently saw the documentary 'Inside Job'. I knew from the inside that the financial industry is bent, have done for years, and I personally saw the housing bubble coming from a mile off, it's one of the reasons I went all cash in February of 2008, but when you see this film you realise just how deep the rabbit hole goes. And just how complete the infiltration of D.C. by greedy bankers really is when it comes to fiscal policy and governance.
Then I watched the documentary 'Gasland'. I felt a mixture of deep sadness and burning anger as the film wove it's story of industrial greed and total apathy at the human cost of doing business. The fact that the entire freshwater supply of NYC may be soon be rendered completely undrinkable boggles the mind. The fact that no-one seems to give a shit boggles it even further.
The SCrOTUS just took away a $14 million judgement from a man deliberately kept in jail and almost executed for a crime the prosecutors knew he hadn't committed. He sued the prosecutors and won. He was awarded one million dollars for every year he was falsely incarcerated, plus a million for costs. But on appeal the SCrOTUS took it away from him on a legal technicality that defines the very concept of splitting hairs. To top it off the House-Boy-in-Charge, Clarence 'pubic hair' Thomas, wrote the majority opinion basically stating that the victim was shit out of luck and just needed to get over it.
Then comes news that the Attorney General has caved into the squawking and squealing from the flag-waving, chest-thumping, fake-patriots on the right, and decided that even though the courts have said they do have Constitutional rights, those imprisoned at Gitmo will never see the inside of a courtroom. Instead they will be tried, in secret, by secret judges, in secret tribunals against secret evidence. The only thing not being kept a secret will be the inevitable guilty verdict. I thought that's how Russia used to operate before they became our 'friends'?
And then we turn to the young, energetic, intelligent, and thoughtful President in the Whitehouse. The man that inspired the hearts and minds of tens of millions of citizens with soaring rhetoric on the campaign trail, seems to have spent the last two years running away from his campaign promises faster than a jack rabbit on crack. On a side-note he has just launched his re-election campaign. Not sure what the slogan is, maybe "Change: This time I really mean it" but he has seen his last dime from me. I feel stupid enough as it is watching him back away from, reverse or ignore core parts of the platform he ran on in 2008. I won't make that mistake again. And neither will many others, I fear, unless he starts to actually do some of the things he was elected to do.
But my question goes to a deeper level than just being depressed because 'my guy' turned out to be only slightly less bad then the other guy in the last election cycle, and not the Liberal Messiah he had made himself out to be. It's more profound than that. I have come to the realisation that the entire system is fucked from top to bottom. I had suspected as much for quite some time, but it's only just recently become crystallized and come fully into focus, and I am at a loss with how to deal with it.
Look, I have known for a very long time that the 'American Dream' is complete bullshit. I have as much chance of being a multi-millionaire solely due to my hard work as I have at becoming the starting point guard for the Chicago Bulls, but millions, literally millions, of simple-minded idiots in this country think it's still a possibility. They think that if they just work hard enough, or long enough that one day they'll make it to easy street too. That's why these simpletons can be relied on, year in and year out, to vote republican, because they still think that one day they will be rich enough to need those tax breaks too.
The Wisconsin Labour Protests offered a brief glimmer of hope, organising peacefully yet so purposefully that they eventually did get their point out to the apathetic and otherwise disengaged general population that there was a crook in the Wisconsin Statehouse. But, the final chapter in that story hasn't been written yet, and who's to say if similar moves by similarly-minded governors in MI, FL and OH will be successful in getting workers one step closer to slavehood, where the WI governor appears to have failed?
I'm really not trying to be a downer, I'm really not, it's just that I'm at a point where I feel that for the first time I can clearly see just how screwed we all are, and I'm I have no earthly idea how to progress from that. The corporations own the politicians, the courts, and the media, lock, stock and two smoking barrels. How do you overcome that?
It's like having your blinders taken off and instead of seeing the wonders of the world spread out before you, you just sort of go 'meh'...and then wonder if you'd have been better off never having taken the damn things off in the first place...
Time for a drink...
Cheers!!
No comments:
Post a Comment