"Who Will You Choose?"

I have the good fortune of living in a small town on the outer fringes of a reasonably large city. Cities don’t do much for me, but that is in keeping with my nature. I like to have the freedom to drive down to the Post Office and get the mail. I like to stop in at the corner grocery store to pick up a few items, and chat with the clerk and the owner. I enjoy talking with the clerk at the Post Office who still can’t quite understand why there is such a frontal assault on an institution that has served this country well for so many years. I see a microcosm of what reality is in this country today. I see the middle aged woman, the wife of an absentee husband, trying to cope with raising two boys while her husband is away trying to earn a living in some distant state. They are all, each and every one of them, Americans. They are good and decent people who still reel in utter disbelief at what has happened to them and their fading dreams of a good life. They are a cross section of those who wondered how this country could have gone from the promises of a place for everyone, just a few years ago, to wondering what the final chapter in their lives will be as they sink, further and further, into the abyss of hopelessness that seems to be their common lot as they see a future that looms ever more ominous on the horizon.

We are, by our very nature, social animals. We were meant to engage in social intercourse with our fellow human beings. That means personal contact that is revered much more than the plethora of electronic gadgets to which we have entrusted our very souls. I like this small town because those are the folks that still find talking to others a worthwhile and enjoyable endeavor. It is the human element that is still primary in their lives. It reminds us that we are a part of something far greater than just “me.” And it is something for which I have a healthy respect and on which I place great value.

I don’t carry a cell phone because when I walk out the door of my home; that time is my time. It is mine to ponder the myriad thoughts about all that is around me and the dynamics of the human condition of which I am an integral, albeit small, but valued part. It is the warmth and the enrichment of all that gives my life meaning.

I, for one, don’t place much stock in the so-called wonders that have been wrought upon the world by Microsoft, Apple and the myriad “tech” companies that have numbed the human mind, all in the name of “progress” and a “better” world. Frankly, I can’t see that we are a hell of a lot better off because of the electronic gadgets that have come from the mental diarrhea of the “techies” that have created all that we are led to believe we can no longer live without. Rather, I see the richness of a world once dominated by feeling, thinking, caring human beings who gave us a world of wonder and enrichment that seems to be dying right before our very eyes.

Real education has given way to a curriculum that teaches us, not how to think, but how to achieve, the ultimate goal of which is the money and prestige one can amass before the final bell tolls. We are people that have forsaken the richness of intellectual discourse, the fine arts, the philosophical and still unanswered questions that generations have pondered for eons, and captured the minds of all that used to amaze us. For what? For the gimmickry that has taken away our ability to converse with one another? What used to be an inspiring argument with a professor whose legacy has vanished has been replaced by such great minds as Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and others of like ilk who have, at the end of the day, given us the wonders of electronics that have created a reverence for the silence of texting, twitter, facebook, iPads, iPods, staring blankly at a computer screen, and all that only serves to further insulate and isolate us from being cognizant of an unnoticed world that is all around us, and being an active participant in a life made up of real human beings. It has made us impervious to the suffering of all those who keep sinking further into the mire of life and drowning, ever so slowly and painfully, into the hopelessness created by all of those we now revere and who feed on the very essence of the poorest and least advantaged among us. We envy their vast fortunes based on creations that are destined to revolutionize the world one day and consign to the dust bin of obsolescence the next. At the end of the day all they have amassed is money and more money, most of which is acquired by plundering nations of their resources and exploiting the human condition of a population that has no choice but to work for a pittance in order to survive. They are the idols of today that, rather than emulate, we should fear. Their sheer gluttony may well, before it is ever satiated, simply consume the last vestigial remnants of what exists for the survival of this planet and the human element that depends on it for life.

They will have created a legacy that is nothing more than a wasteland of what once was and a can never be again. I don’t discount that as a possibility one bit.

Stop and think for a minute. How are we better off today than we were when the “Occupy Wall Street” movement was in full bloom? Do you recall how they were marching in the cities, demanding that the system be more equitable for the benefit of all? What happened to them? Do you see them anywhere anymore? Do you recall how the local and federal police were pressed into service, not to protect their right to engage in peaceful protest, but to protect the darkest and most sinister interests of those who brought this country, and indeed a large part of the world, to its economic knees?

Are you aware that MSNBC is a joint venture of General Electric and Microsoft? Who is beholden to them and all they covet? The people of this country? The system of government upon which this country was built? The resources that belong to all of us? The spirit and very souls of all those who look to them to make our lives better?

Are you aware that banks and financial institutions are making more money now than ever before? How does that square with you? Are you aware that corporations are making more money today than in their history, and that they are sending more of their ill gotten wealth to foreign tax havens in order to avoid their rightful obligation to share the burden of responsibility for keeping this country viable for all of us? Are you aware that, thanks to Bill Clinton and his emancipation of big business from its responsibility to the people who built this country that free trade is now sapping the very life-blood and vitality from an economic system that was to be there for all of us and future generations? Where did those resources go? It sure as hell isn’t to be found in the public treasury.

Where is the investment in that much-touted “infrastructure” our illustrious President has been “selling” for years? I am beginning to think it is nothing more than a cruel illusion. His real attention is, instead, directed to the scions of Wall Street, corporate capitalists, the massive military/industrial complex and a compromised and corrupt government bureaucracy that serves those who ply them with massive wealth and a favored status, all at the expense of the American people who they are sworn to serve, aka Eric Holder for starters. Then, there is the burgeoning secret side of government we don’t even know about. Therein lay the cadre of chief advisors and chief confidents. For whose benefit? How would you know?

What dominates our national agenda today? What should be issues of paramount importance to us all have, instead, become a cleverly created collection of issues to divert our attention from what reality is and the attendant cost to the country and the health of the nation. Not that most or all of them are not noble endeavors in their own right, but are they the most paramount of all that looms before us?

We have “marriage equality,” “immigration,” “gun control,” “sequestration,” “the problem of our national debt,” “the problem created by entitlements,” ad nauseum. However where, on our national political agenda, are issues such as addressing the persistent problem of massively corrupt banks and financial institutions that are “too big to fail? Where is the discourse on the obscene profits of big corporations and their very successful efforts at avoiding payment of their fair share of taxes to support the pressing and urgent needs of this society? Why have they gotten away with ignoring all those who have been chronically unemployed and disenfranchised because of the insatiable greed of industries that set themselves above the law, and now own and control the very political institutions that were put in place to serve us, the people who are the backbone of this nation?

Just take a few minutes to seriously listen to what spews forth from the mouths of Republican “leadership” and Democratic “champions” of the people. How much of that actually pertains to and addresses the real and pressing needs of this country. You could put it all in a thimble.

Like it or not, folks. We are a nation suffering from an endemic complacency and those who can spot it for their own benefit are wasting no time in capitalizing on it. Dream on!  When the sun finally sets on all this we, the people, will be the losers because we did not keep our hands on the tiller and our eyes on the road. We let it happen and, we may rest assured, it won’t be pretty. We are losing the very legacy that rightfully belongs to us and to those who will come after us. But, as long as there is fun to be had, passive entertainment to amuse us and unnecessary things for us to covet, we will be fat, dumb and happy.

When the sun sets on this sad state of affairs, we will be left with a wasteland of what they, the ones who have plundered this country, have deemed to be all they have decided to be our rightful lot in life. We will only have ourselves to thank for it.

Keeping in mind the fact that you no longer have Concorde as an option, ponder this. You are on a transcontinental flight and you have your choice of one of two seat mates; Bill Gates or Bill Moyers. Who will you choose?

I rest my case.

Cowboy Bob
aka The Sagebrush Philosopher
March 30, 2013