Post-Election Party Favors 

The election's over.   A month has passed.   The smoke has cleared and the trick mirrors we used to try and find our way out of the house of horrors created by our individual and collective greed and corruption have been transformed into the three-way mirrors of a brightly lit dressing room where we are now being forced to try on bikinis and speedos that reveal all the ugly consequences of our former gluttony.       

We’ve finished congratulating ourselves on being able to show ourselves and the rest of the world that the majority of us have at least conquered racism.  Or have we?  Have we conquered racism, or have we as a society merely finally recognized that we have all become slaves and that to continue to make distinctions based on the skin tones of our fellow slaves is just silly? 

The election of a mixed-race president is indeed a cause for celebration, and a reason for hope in and of itself.  It provides much-needed evidence that mankind is still capable of evolving socially and politically.  This may very well mean that we can avoid the grand murder/suicide of humanity by the sadistic abusers who would rather see us all dead than see us to escape their control, than for us to leave them and be happy with someone else.  Yes, if racism, one of the divide and conquer tools long used by these sadists, has been revealed for what it is and is now reviled, that’s definitely cause for dancing in the streets.  

However, we fall short of jubilation.  Jubilation would require a jubilee in the original sense.  The following are definitions of jubilee from the Oxford English Dictionary:   

1.  A year of emancipation and restoration, which according to the institution in Lev. xxv was to be kept every fifty years, and to be proclaimed by the blast of trumpets throughout the land; during it the fields were to be left uncultivated, Hebrew slaves were to be set free, and lands and houses in the open country or unwalled towns that had been sold were to revert to their former owners or their heirs.

 name="m1.b"b. fig. or transf. A time of restitution, remission, or release.

2. R.C. Ch. A year instituted by Boniface VIII in 1300 as a year of remission from the penal consequences of sin, during which plenary indulgence might be obtained by a pilgrimage to Rome, the visiting of certain churches there, the giving of alms, fasting three days, and the performance of other pious works.
   It was at first appointed to take place every hundred years, but the period was afterwards shortened to fifty, thirty-three, and twenty-five years, and now ‘an extraordinary jubilee is granted at any time either to the whole Church or to particular countries or cities, and not necessarily or even usually for a whole year’ (Cath. Dict. 1885).

   name="m3.a"3. a. The fiftieth anniversary of an event; the celebration of the completion of fifty years of reign, of activity, or continuance in any business, occupation, rank or condition. name="2"silver jubilee (after silver wedding), a name for the celebration for the twenty-fifth anniversary; so name="3"diamond jubilee, applied to the celebration of the sixtieth year of the reign of Queen Victoria.

 name="m5.b"b. Shouting; joyful shouting; sound of jubilation.

 name="m5.c"c. A Negro folk-song of an optimistic and joyful kind, often having a religious basis; freq. attrib., esp. name="4"jubilee singer, name="5"song.

 While by some definitions, jubilation has been achieved, by others we are still far from it.  Yes, there has been a lot of joyful shouting.  Admittedly, I’ve been doing some myself.  It’s been wonderful to be released from the shackles of shame and humiliation created by the world believing that I, and the majority of Americans, accept someone as blatantly corrupt and idiotic as George Bush as our “leader”.  Then there was the added shame of knowing that the emperor wasn’t wearing any clothes, that the whole system was corrupt to its core, but being powerless to do anything about it.  When you’re led to believe you live in a democracy, that degree of actual powerlessness is doubly painful. 

 Personally, I find great comfort in the knowledge that at least Barack Obama is smarter than me.  That’s worth a dancing a little jig for all by itself.  The fact that he writes his own speeches for the most part is enough to make me break into a full-fledged polka.  But jubilation?  No.  That would require more than a mere changing of the guard.  It would require a change in who is paying the guards’ salaries.

 There are few phrases more powerful in any language than “all is forgiven”. 

It was interesting for me to note that the origin of the word "jubilee" is religious, and to realize that the power formerly held by religion has now been seized by banking institutions. 

For those of us not wishing to participate in the practice of usury, discrimination abounds.  Try renting a car, an apartment, or even increasingly, getting a job, without a good credit rating.  It has become almost impossible to do anything without participating in the banking system whether we like it or not.  Following the “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely” principle, we begin to understand how government can steal our tax dollars from us, give it to banks, and allow banks to lend our own money back to us and make us pay interest on it. 

 Clearly, our government is now owned by the banking system every bit as much as any other third world country we read about in which government operation is dictated by usurers.  These countries have long been controlled by institutions like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.  Operating under the guise of helping to alleviate poverty and create stability, these institutions finance governments.  They literally put governments into power, governments that agree to borrow money to maintain that power, and to pay the interest on these loans by collecting taxes from those they maintain power over.  The interesting thing is that in these so-called “fledgling democracies”  that are “helped” by banking institutions, the people who have to pay the money back have no ability to vote on either whether to borrow or how much, nor how high their tax rate to pay it back will me.  Nor do they get to vote on the social services the money will provide.  Does this sound familiar?   

 If this isn’t slavery, or at the very least, taxation without representation, I don’t know what is.  We keep hearing about our trillion dollar deficit.  To whom exactly do “we” owe this money?  In our so-called democracy, when were we given a vote as to whether to borrow it?  When were we consulted regarding the terms and conditions of the loan? 

 Yes, Barack Obama is intelligent and articulate.  He is a vast improvement, if only intellectually and cosmetically, over the bumbling ineptitude of George Bush.  But judging by his willingness to give our tax dollars to banks and allow them to charge  interest for loaning it back to us, I would hardly grant him the title of great emancipator, regardless of his skin tone.  The actions of Condoleeza Rice and Colin Powell should be enough to prove that merely because someone’s ancestors have experienced slavery and discrimination, they are all for ending it.  For some, it’s enough just to trade places.  Let’s hope that’s not the case with our new president. 

 Even if it is the case, we aren’t powerless unless we believe we are.  We can all do our part to break the bank, namely, stop putting our money there for them to use to finance wars and dictatorships.  We can stop borrowing and start living within our means.   We can give up the illusion of personal independence that borrowing from banks instead of friends and family gives us.  To quote our new president, yes, we can. 

 For America, globalization means that we are no longer immune to the kinds of enslavement and exploitation that we’ve watched from afar, indeed benefited from, for decades now.  Our present and future actions must be based on the goal of creating a healthy interdependence, not the continued illusion of independence based on the exploitation of others or the delusion of guaranteed security.  Banks.  The world has become their sweatshop, and America has irrevocably become part of the world.  The price of our past position of privilege must now be paid.  Let’s just suck it up and pay it,  but let’s not allow them to charge us interest on it.  Let’s force them to say “All is forgiven”.  Then we can have some real jubilation. 

That is all.   

Blog entries should, I suppose, have a beginning, middle and end.  A topic, a theme, a story to tell, at least.   Despite the afterglow of just having been snowed in for two blissful weeks with my new wife, complete with yule logs in the fireplace and not a single cross word between us, and a New Year's celebration full of hope, I find myself becoming depressed.  

I blame myself.  I blame my unreasonable expectation that by the year 2009, mankind might have evolved to the extent that greed, corruption, and war might become extinct despite all the evidence that greed, corruption and war will cause mankind to become extinct instead.  I admit it.  I am selfishly disappointed that the rest of the world is refusing to share in my happiness, my desire for goodwill toward men.

News footage of tanks, unmanned drones dropping 2000 pound bombs, graphic photos of helpless toddlers, faces scarred beyond recognition, being cradled by weeping mothers.  Really, it's almost too much for even hope to bear.  Will mankind ever give up sibling rivalry, groups trying to prove that God loves them best and wants them to have the biggest piece of the pie by virtue of granting them access to the deadliest weapons, the biggest appetites?  The belief that one group is superior to another by virtue of its ability to enslave another group, morally justified merely by the absence of divine intervention?  

"Dad, he's hitting me! "

No response.

"See?  Dad thinks you deserve it".  

Maybe Dad is the one to blame, and we need to recognize abuse and neglect when we see it, grow up and leave home, get some therapy and take responsibility for ourselves.  Learn to define and execute fairness and justice for ourselves.  

Instead, billions of investor's dollars are being stolen--and the perpetrator's (Madoff) punishment?  Being confined to his penthouse and forced to purchase extra security to prevent being assassinated.  

"Dad, he stole my allowance.  Now I can't buy what I was saving for".

No response

"See?  Dad doesn't care about you?  I can do whatever I want to you."

Happy New Year. Same as the old year.  

A friend of mine is excited to have the opportunity to attend President Obama's inauguration.  I'm hoping that she'll soak up some hope while she's there, and come back and infuse me with some of it.  Evolution is such a slow process.  Sure, it's progress that we finally have a mixed-race president in a formerly openly racist country, trying to justify its past history of slavery. That's something worth celebrating.  We just have so much further to go.  I wonder if we'll have the opportunity to evolve further before the sibling rivals with the nuclear weapons blow all of us up with them in the process of trying to prove their prophecies right to justify their theft and murder and inability to learn to share.  

I weep for us, that's all.     

I just read on Wikipedia that the first recipient of Social Security, a sweet-looking old lady named Ida May,  contributed a total of just over $24 dollars to the system, lived to be 100 years old, and recieved over $22,000.  Since math isn't my forte, I'm not sure what the actual percentage of return on her investment was,  but it was big enough to make everyone ask  "Where do I sign up?".  The creation of social security, in my opinion, was a pivotal event in the evolution of American politics, society, and culture.   It was, and continues to be, the most massive manifestation of greed and corruption ever perpetrated by a society as a whole.  

Sure, it sounded wonderful on paper.  Still reeling from the depression, flat broke, malnourished, uprooted, and paralyzed by fear, people were promised "security".  They were promised that no matter what, they would be rewarded for their years of hard work.  They were promised that they would never again be homeless or hungry, that the government would provide for them.  If everyone contributed, and allowed the government to manage their retirement funds for them, why, they wouldn't have to be responsible for anything more.  Just like Ida May, they could, for just pennies a paycheck, live out their golden years in worry-free idyllic comfort.     

Since Social Security is a form of insurance, which is a form of gambling, the bookies were betting that the vast majority of us wouldn't be like Ida May and live to be 100, but rather, like my father, who died the year after he retired.  Although workers' contributions to the program didn't rise from 1% to 6.2% of earned income until the 80's, his contribution was significantly higher than $24 dollars.  His timely demise was the stuff that insurance companies' dreams are made of. 

Gambling itself is an attempt to get something for nothing, or at least more for less.  Since modern medicine has made it possible for more and more of us to live far past retirement age, the social security fund is being depleted.  The insurance industry has responded by infiltrating the health care system itself.  Rest assured, the industry is more than making up for the losses in extended payments for those living longer by charging outlandish premiums for health care to those daring to do so, and everyone else as well.  Aside from the corrupting influence of gambling on individuals and society,  consider for a moment the other moral ramifications of social security.  

First of all, it is taxation without representation, to put it mildly.  To put it less mildly, it is a form of society devouring its young, selling the yet unborn into future slavery.  Can a system based on this premise be moral? Is it just me, or does anybody else think that a society that devours its young is not a sustainable society?  I also see a correlation between social security and rising rates of child abuse.  I have to ask --if you don't have to care for your children to insure that they will care for you in your old age, because the state will take their money to do it no matter what you do, where is the incentive to properly care for your children?

Where is the incentive for personal responsibility at all?  If there are no consequences for living a profligate life, then why not spend all your money in Vegas rather than buy your child a winter coat?  Indeed, Social Security funds are now being used to fund all manner of profligate living.  Gluttons are rewarded with SSI disability funds when they become too obese to function.  Alcoholics and drug addicts are awarded lifetime benefits for being too depressed to work after having fried the parts of their brains that produce the chemicals necessary to experience joy.  Social security is definitely contributing to a lack of individual responsibility, even if it is preventing a revolution by keeping potential troublemakers in government housing watching television and waiting for their monthly food stamps instead of out demanding meaningful work at fair wages. 

The most important moral consideration for me, however, is what social security is NOT contributing to, which is private enterprise.  I'm talking about FREE enterprise here, not supposedly private companies living off government contracts paid for by people without their knowledge and against their wills.  What kinds of businesses might now be in existence and thriving if the average person had that 6.2% of their income to invest in whatever they chose, rather than allowing the government to "save" or "invest" FOR them?  We know the kinds of businesses the government has invested in--Halliburton, Blackwater, banks, insurance companies.  (Did you know that if you are a state or federal employee, your 401K was being invested in Kellog, Brown, and Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton?  Can anyone say "complete corruption"?) Might we have the kind of businesses that produce something valuable and useful, say, winter coats, that people buy of their own free will, while paying workers a living wage to manufacture them? 

As long as insurance companies hold healthcare hostage, companies will continue to either extort taxpayer dollars to build and manufacture in the U.S. or build elsewhere, where labor is cheap and healthcare costs are nonexistent.  I want my money back.  I'd gladly risk winding up an old bag lady for the opportunity to invest the 6.2% of all my income for the last twenty years in something worthwhile.  But, then, I don't get a vote.  My greedy frightened forebears voted for me, and everybody still wants their share of more for less. Hmm, this is so depressing, maybe I should apply for benefits. 

That is all. 

I haven't even fully recovered from learning that, against my will,  my tax dollars have been appropriated by the banking "industry", and now, automakers are asking for the same kind of handout. 

My symptoms are similar to those experienced by victims of physical rape--sleeplessness, generalized anxiety, a sense of having been violated, feelings of impotent rage and helplessness.  This is the level of impotent rage, the degree of percieved victimization, that drives people to be guests on the Jerry Springer show. 

Yes, disturbingly enough, I now sometimes find myself wanting to bob my head and say "Oh, no you didn't!" and lunge violently and repeatedly at the guilty party while being restrained by burly stagehands, oblivious to the ridiculing laughter of the audience.  

Instead, however, I propose a simple, logical alternative--let the oil companies and the banks bail out the auto industry.  Think about it--who has profited more from the sales of  expensive gas-guzzling SUV's than oil companies and banks? 

It would appear that there has long been a polygamous marriage between these three industries.  One would almost think that there was a prenuptial agreement between them in which the auto industry would manufacture vehicles that would use as much oil as possible and take the longest to pay off in order to maximize profits to all concerned.  

I say that we don't allow the oil companies and banks to claim that the marriage never took place or was never consumated  now that the honeymoon is over.  The auto industry did the equivalent of sacrificing itself to send it's partners to medical school and now that they're enjoying the windfall profits, they want a quickie divorce.   Let the auto industry take them to court and get their fair share of those profits so they can re-tool and make themselves more attractive to the greener partners of the future.      

This arrangement would benefit everyone in the long-term.  Oil is not going to last forever.  It's getting more and more expensive to install corrupt foreign governments who will sell it cheaply while pocketing the profits and starving the populace.  Waging war for it is even more costly, although Halliburton and Blackwater profited handsomely at taxpayer expense.  Let's face it, we've all been paying indirectly through taxes to support the oil industry for years.  I say it's time for them to give something back.  The government, we the people, are out of money.  

The auto industry is claiming to be socially responsible, that they want the money to "save jobs". What "jobs" would we be saving? CEO's making 26 million dollars a year, and  union workers taking home 95 percent of  $75.00 an hour even while NOT WORKING?   And all of this to paid for by taxpayers making $10.00 or $12.00 an hour with no health insurance? 

Can professional economists really be so corrupt that they can argue the viability, much less the sustainability, of an economy in which there are more government than private sector jobs? If the treasury prints out a few more trillion dollars to "save jobs", we will soon resemble pre-WWII Germany, in that a loaf of bread will cost a thousand dollars and we'll all be looking for a savior, ready to accept Satan himself if his promises are pretty enough.  

That is all. 

Copyright 2008

I'm getting married on Friday.  Okay, we're registering as "domestic partners" , which will entitle us to some of the legal rights of married heterosexual couples.  I am not, however, unlike many of my friends, one of those clamoring for the right to be married either legally or in the church.  For a very moving argument for this right, I could never do better than this peice by Keith Oberman of CNBC.   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVUecPhQPqY

Personally, though,  I resent having to go through any kind of process in which either the church or the state are involved in my personal relationships.  For me, separation of church and state are not enough--I want my personal relationships separated from both church AND state.  Further, I want them separated from the medical insurance industrial complex that is holding us all hostage. 

It is they who, in their continual quest for profits based on societal control, have arranged things so that we are not allowed by hospitals, insurance companies, and inheritance laws to list whomever we see fit as family members. 

If my wife and I did not register legally as domestic partners, we would have to pay an attorney thousands of dollars to purchase the right to carry out one another's final wishes in case of an accident or debilitating illness.  

Some may be offended by my use of the word "wife", as it implies both legality and holiness, something that many apparently want to reserve for their own exclusive clubs alone. Indeed there is something about the word "wife" which captures a sense of respect, commitment, and the honor of choice like no other word, except perhaps "husband".  Placing the word "beloved" before "wife" is enough to bring tears of reverent joy to my eyes.  Reverent joy is what I feel when I contemplate joining our lives. 

Fortunately, the use of words cannot be legislated, and although the religions from whence so many of our most beautiful and meaningful words originated have bloody murderous histories of forcing people to conform and tithe to sustain their power, it is just as possible to separate meaning from church as it is to separate church from state. 

No, I don't like the phrases "signifigant other" or "life partner" any more than I like the word "lesbian", which sounds like some sort of rare disease.  No, I prefer either the old fashioned word "****"  or the new-fangled "****", which may be better for me, if only because I reserve the right to wear makeup and heels whenever I like.  Or not, which is just as important.   

I would urge all those who are currently using their energy to fight for or support the struggle of homosexuals to legally marry to put that energy instead towards breaking the stranglehold insurance companies and health care systems have over our personal lives.  Let us all fight to choose our own families without having to pay thousands of dollars to greedy middle men to do so.  If you want to take in a poor neighbor child and share your benefits with them, who are the state and insurance companies to tell you who you are allowed to share with?  But then, they don't want us to share.  They want us all to be dependent on them by having to borrow thousands of dollars at 21 percent interest for the right to share with those we love. 

Banks and insurance companies are just as ruthless as the old religious regimes  they are replacing--and they have the state and it's armies to back them, with our tax dollars.  We are literally paying to be enslaved by them, for them to control where we work, and for how long.  In my opinion, it's always better to work towards freeing all of humanity that one particular interest group.  That way, no group ends up having more rights than another.  

That is all.