It’s always one of us, it’s never them

Nationalism is once again being promoted as a sane policy. We are asked to subscribe to the theory that we are not six billion people sharing one earth but rather a handful of nations who can only succeed if other nations are held in check.

Making America great again is not a policy, but rather a slogan that centers on blaming everyone else for our problems. It began by blaming foreigners. Once people bought into that premise, it was a short leap for groups of Americans to start blaming other groups of Americans.

Robber barons became millionaires a century ago by promoting strive between workers or classes of workers to distract them from who was really robbing them blind. Today’s billionaires are happy to see the same distractions keeping the heat off them.

In 1980, the top one percent possessed 36% of the nation’s wealth, the next nine percent owned 33% and the bottom ninety percent had access to 30% of the wealth. The rich saw this as an intolerable situation. Something had to be done. Something was done. The wealthiest in the country received tax breaks that allowed them to get even wealthier.

By 2010, the top one percent possessed 54% of the wealth, the next nine percent owned 23% and the bottom ninety percent saw their share decrease to 23 percent. There should be no confusion as to why there are so many losers in today’s economy.

There are so many losers because there are so few winners taking home so much of the spoils.

 

Yet we continue to pit one loser group against another.

 

Blaming other nations is not new. Blaming fellow Americans is not new.

It should never be about blaming in the first place, but at the very least, the richest nation in the world shouldn't be blaming its poorest citizens for its problems. They work for crummy wages doing the crummiest jobs and all they hear is, why don’t they pick themselves up and start taking better care of themselves.

Here’s a novel idea. Why don’t their employers start taking better care of them instead of taking such good care of themselves?

 

Both the long-awaited plan to replace Obamacare and the recent budget proposal come down to picking winners and losers. Every problem comes down to winners and losers. The job of every politician comes down to pitting losers against winners—the old against the young, the sick against the healthy, the educated against the uneducated, rural against urban, men against women, and religion against religion, arts against bullets, clean water against bullets, assistance for the poor against bullets. In budget battles, bullets usually come out ahead although you wouldn’t always know that from listening to the Defense Department.

Only one group consistently comes out on top.

The top one percent have been on a roll since the beginning of the Industrial Age but never more so than in the last half-century. Their share of the American pie has grown while those whose labor creates that wealth have fallen by the wayside. The rich win if the economy collapses. They win if the seas rise. They win if water becomes undrinkable, the air unbreathable and safety nets unsustainable.

Having fifty-four percent of the wealth isn’t just a number. It’s the definition of a problem. It’s a sign that everything is great for a very small number of people.

Big money has always influenced governments but never more than it does today. The current administration is top-heavy with billionaires and millionaires. It should come as no surprise that their solutions to every problem, including the healthcare bill, revolve around cutting regulations that restrict wealth and reducing taxes that might take that wealth away.

Fitzgerald once wrote, “The rich are different from you and me.”

In a way, they aren’t. They have the same wants and desires we all do.

But when it comes to money, there is no comparison. America possesses 42 percent of global wealth and one percent of Americans possess half of that. The rich are as different from the rest of us as night and day.

Yet, when it comes to taxes, we currently treat the rich as if they were just one more guy trying to make a buck. We tax their earned profits like wages and their capital gains better than wages. If we continue this trend, they will suck the life right out of this planet until there is nothing left for anyone else.

Shifting twenty percent of the wealth back and forth among ninety percent of the people is getting us nowhere. What would really make America great again is having the unrealized wealth of millions of Americans back in their pockets instead of the pockets of a few hundred billionaires.

I am not talking about small businesses, which are one of the groups that the super rich use to cover their own greed. Small businesses are like every other group being pitted against each other. They too are being used by the super wealthy.

The government isn’t the enemy. Social programs aren’t the enemy. The government is taking care of Americans because their bosses have not. The wealthy can either pay their workers—with better wages and benefits—or they can pay their fair share in taxes so the government wouldn’t be going broke trying to take care of them.

Somehow, we have to get America’s wealth back into the hands of the people whose labors created it.  

 

I'm writing this because I can—and that's a good thing

I’ve been reading a book, Free Press, Free People: The Best Cause by John Hohenberg. The author explains the role of the press, its shortcomings, highlights, and most importantly, its impact on society and the many attempts to suppress and oppress it.      

In 1862, Prussian premier Otto von Bismarck’s goal wasn’t to destroy the already weak press so much as to bend it to his will. He bribed, threatened and saturated Prussian newspapers with false and misleading news articles favorable to him and his government. The press bowed to his demands so willingly that he referred to them as the “reptile press” crawling on its belly. 

The most powerful man in Europe at the time even admitted that “Decent people don’t write for me.”

What was he afraid of?

A half century earlier, Napoleon—another powerful yet insecure leader bragged, “They [the press] say only what I wish.” He was stating a fact because those that didn’t wound up in prison.

What was he afraid of?

Runaway Trump Train

I was recently driving through New York State and saw something, which I imagine a lot of states are doing. They had set aside designated areas to pull off the road and text. We are all aware of the serious problem driving while texting creates on our highways.

Even more catastrophic are the train accidents and derailments we’ve read about that were caused by engineers texting, tweeting and do whatever they do on their gadgets when they’re supposed to be driving a train.

Then, there’s the Trump Train—not as spectacular or breathtaking as the Trump jet, but nevertheless the vehicle that was going to take America to that place called “Great Again.” The nations was going to ride this vehicle to that place where neither crime nor terrorism existed and everyone had a job. A place where everyone had health care that wasn’t Obamacare but was better than Obamacare. A place where everyone could grow up to become a billionaire or be president or even become a billionaire who become president. Oil, gas and coal would be back and would be cleaner and cheaper than ever. Guns would be in and newspapers would be out.

When this train finally reached its destination, foreign nations would again respect us . Our enemies would fear us. Our friends would love us and show their gratitude by showering us with money they've been stashing under their mattresses while we paid all the bills.

Poverty would be eliminated and education would be expanded and improved and made available to everyone. This train would take the country out of the dirty, congested cities back to the rural, picturesque America that trains used to ride through. Most of all, we could stop worrying about climate change and start enjoying the ever-increasing number of summer days suddenly appearing in January and February.

This was going to be the all-inclusive train taking everyone to the Promised Land—ALL ABOARD. Everyone except illegal immigrants who are probably murderers and rapist, refugees who are probably terrorists, and those of our own citizens who are too lazy to take care of themselves. Believe it.

Then something happened. Something no one saw coming—well some people saw it coming but no one paid attention to them. One group of citizens saw a candidate tweeting through the night and questioned his qualification to be president. “Who does that?” They asked. Certainly not the leader of the free world. Others said, sure, it’s not presidential but he isn’t president yet. Once he gets in office, once he gets that Trump Train started up and moving in the right directions, everything will be all right.

But everything isn’t all right.

For one thing, the train doesn’t have a crew—except for that crazy guy sitting with Trump in the engine car stoking the fires. No one seems to have given him a schedule so the train seems to be ambling along in all directions at once. At times, he seems to be speeding ahead and at other times, it appears the train has come to a complete halt. He flies through some stations like he couldn’t care less who was there waiting to get on.

Perhaps the biggest problem of all, he’s still tweeting. He’s tweeting when he’s supposed to be driving. People have told him to stop and like a teenager with a new license, he thinks he’s invincible. I suppose he will have to learn the hard way. So Sad.

 

 

When is enough, enough?

Non usque suus, quin eam fugiunt.*

Etiam non obscuram, sed eam attingit**

It is estimated that the universe is around 13.8 billion years old and still expanding. It could very well be nearing middle age and at some point, another billion years or so, it and we, could begin our long anticipated death spiral, eventually bringing an end to…I don’t know, a 30-billion-year, bigger-than-a-bread-box experiment in going nowhere .

The point is the universe is not going to be around forever, although never has forever seemed so long. The consensus of every single person living on Earth, backed by every religion trusted by those gentle souls, is that whether a God created the universe with a wave of His hand or did nothing more than jumpstart something that eventually was going to happen anyway, the appearance of man has always been the intended end game.

If everything simply fell into place on its own, man still has every right to be proud but he can’t really accept any credit. Being around when shit happens is no big deal even if we are the best shit in the universe—and we don’t even know if we are.

However, if a God is behind this, and I don’t mean in a sinister way; but if He is behind it, a logical question would be, why did it take so long to get to the main act? What was He expecting? Is He happy with what He got?

If we are the straw that stirs the drink, why are we only now entering at last call?

Say what you want about creationists but they put their money where their mouths are. They are certain God intended us to be special, so they have us entering the scene right in the first act. Unfortunately, according to them, that beginning was only a few weeks ago and to put it bluntly, the evidence proves otherwise.

If God intended all along for us to make a late appearance, all I can say is, you’ve got to admire His patience. Never has an individual—God or otherwise, put this much effort into a project and then waited so long to see the finished product.

Cars come off assembly lines a few hours after entering them—Cadillacs slightly longer, Ford Fiestas slightly quicker.  I know producing a highly intelligent human being is an entirely different ballgame because each one is “unique,” but we’re only “unique” because we keep saying we’re “unique.” If those Cadillacs could speak…I’m just saying.

I’m also saying 13.8 billion years is a long time to get to where we are today if the original purpose was to get to where we are today.

Childhood Memories of Buying a Christmas Tree

This is a revised version of a story that appeared in the Virginia Beach Sun on December 1, 1988.     

      Men measures their progression through time in many ways. As young boys, we cut our neighbors grass and as adolescents, we deliver their newspapers. As adults, we bring them their mail and sell them their cars and as old men we exaggerate how well we accomplished all of these tasks.

      For me, the one sure measure of time and my own journey through it has been the Christmas tree—or more precisely, how I have gone about getting one each year.

      I remember as a child, in Rochester, how my father and I would walk up the street to the City Service gas station where the man would have all his trees leaning on one side of the building. They would be stacked up in a giant heap making it impossible to compare them but nevertheless my father would hold up one after another, and ask my opinion.

     “What do you think of this one?”

  “How do you like this one?”

  “How about this one?”

  “Do you like this one?”

  Until finally he found one that he liked.

  “This one looks pretty good. I think we’ll get it.” My father would then pay the man what I suppose was a couple of bucks and then we would carry it back home. Not even the freezing cold could dampen my excitement.

When is Enough, Enough?

*nec dominam usque canit adipe

**Etiam non obscuram, sed eam attingit

It is estimated that the universe is around 13.8 billion years old and still expanding. It could very well be nearing middle age and at some point, another billion years or so, it and we, could begin our long anticipated death spiral, eventually bringing an end to…I don’t know, a 30-billion-year, bigger-than-a-bread-box experiment in going nowhere .

The point is the universe is not going to be around forever, although never has forever seemed so long. The consensus of every single person living on Earth, backed by every religion trusted by those gentle souls, is that whether a God created the universe with a wave of His hand or did nothing more than jumpstart something that eventually was going to happen anyway, the appearance of man has always been the intended end game.

If everything simply fell into place on its own, man still has every right to be proud but he can’t really accept any credit. Being around when shit happens is no big deal even if we are the best shit in the universe—and we don’t know for sure that we are.

However, if a God is behind this, and I don’t mean in a sinister way; but if He is behind it, a logical question would be, why did it take so long to get to the main act? What was He expecting? Is He happy with what He got?

If we are the straw that stirs the drink, why are we only now entering at last call?

The Ice Hill

     I had just gotten off the phone with my buddy Joe who lives up in the Detroit area. We’ve known each other for almost 60 years but probably don’t talk as often as we should. With the Winter Olympics entering their fifth day of round-the-clock coverage, the two of us were probably bored to the gills and took the opportunity to call.

Talking so infrequently has gotten both of us out of practice in the art of meaningful small talk. We talk about what we’re doing but, the truth is, we don’t do much—at least nothing worth talking about.

The grandkids come up, as does our ailments and the high cost of treating those ailments. Politics surface occasionally but neither of us has a real personal stake. We’ll both survive whatever Congress can throw at us.

Our lives resemble more of a holding pattern and fortunately, we won’t have to hold on forever. Detroit’s terrible professional sports teams continue to haunt Joe just as Virginia Beach’s lack of sports teams irks me but, again, neither of us really care.

There was a time when not having anything to talk about didn’t make any difference. Like those long summer afternoons when it was too hot to play baseball—too hot even to play catch. Neither of us had a problem with lying on the grass and watching the clouds pass overhead.

Now, it’s like the clouds really have passed us by.

“We’re going camping, this weekend,” Joe said, matter-of-factly. “We’re pretty excited about it,” he added, predictably.

Sounds exciting,” I said, as my elbow slipped and my head dropped. Our conversation was fizzling out faster than a 3 a. m. campfire and then Joe provided the spark.

“Remember Camp Cutler?”