Tuesday, October 12, 2021 1:57 AM
You Never Give Me Your Money… (2021Oct12)
( -or- ‘Reproof To Any Claim’)
Money was meant to be utile. Those who have learned to abuse the concept seem to believe it confers honor and power upon them. They have complicated society to the point where everyone has become complicit, for survival. That still begs the question: Why do we let them ?
Today, we let most of them because—they’ve hired mercenaries as a ‘security detail’. That was the point they were supposed to understand that it’s wrong to take so much, and give nothing but betrayal in return—but they went with ‘security details’. I guess when you start stupid, you continue Stupid.
My point is: the power of wealth is founded on the Fiction of money, the legal fiction of a corporation’s ‘personhood’, and human nature. We can address that as an issue, or dismiss it. It’s killing the planet & threatening to genocide humanity—but, hell, we can dismiss it. Who really cares, right? Not me.
I’ll be dead (according to my doctor, at least) long before my kids face the hellscape created by Big Oil—& (if you can believe) they’re still trying that three-card-monte doubt-&-denial game, with the planet already Aflame! What a bunch of MF-ing scumbags! Could you imagine? They must remove the mirrors from their fucking houses.
I am a learned scholar of 65. That’s not something I would have ever said, in the recent past, pre-Tea-Party-fascist-resurgence, when it was both self-evident—and something folks respected me for. I had no need to describe myself in the pre-Post-truth Era. And I am even now uncomfortable, talking about my ‘gifts’, such as they are.
But, I have them, just the same. I know our nation’s history as well as most professors; I’ve read most of the literature of America and Britain—fiction, plays, and poetry, and translations of Miguel de Cervantes’ “Don Quixote de la Mancha”, Leo Tolstoy’s “War and Peace”, Alexandre Dumas’ “The Three Musketeers“, Hermann Hesse’s “Siddhartha“, et alia; I’ve studied painting, sculpting, mosaic, draughting, fresco, woodwork, wood-carving, horn-carving, and I have used every “shop” power-tool, big or small. O, and I also dig music.
I’ve met top execs in their exclusive, pent-house dining halls; I’ve shared pup-tents with homeless junkies; I’ve ridden a bus from NYC to LA, and flown a jet back (tripping, re-reading LOTR) from my failure to make a go of Reed College, in Portland, OR. But I made my fortune in what was not yet a college course—programming.
So when I claim to understand the basics: Math, Physics, Chemistry, Astronomy, Geology, Biology, Medicine, Engineering, Economics, and Realpolitik—I don’t mean I have a Vague feeling that I ‘understand’ these subjects (nor do I claim Expertise)—I mean that I can follow a careful explanation as well as the next PhD. I mean that I’ve followed progress, on the daily, for decades—while learning more and more about the trail of time that led us here.
To be blunt, I cannot respond to a brat who confronts me with “What They Know”. The proper procedure is to Ask me if what you heard is true—I will gladly confirm any facts you’re new to. When someone (who was hitherto not exactly scholarly-inclined) begins to scream and shout ‘new information’ which is true by virtue of how Intensely they want to believe it—I have to wonder who wound up these poor, too-easily-manipulated ‘despera-mericans’?
“Pride cometh before a Fall”. In our American Pride is our downfall. We grew great by having open doors, if not open arms. We grew great by having few laws, but those ‘greats’ lobbied those laws in-shut for others who might compete or disrupt. We supported our needy only when and where the Church gave us license to also Condescend to those needy.
The tremendous wealth, held in the hands of those who, additionally, decide who goes without, is an insult to justice, and reproof to any claim to faith or decency those fatcats may make. All hail Democracy! May it survive the decade.
