Commentary by Brother Giovanni, PNN, Worldonian roving reporter
From part one:
We also created a nation of thinkers who were able to question things like they have never been questioned before. Out of the fifties we bred the sixties and we began to scrutinize all institutions and authority.
We created the mechanisms to eliminate poverty, bring quality education to everyone and to create a justice system that would have equal access as its priority. And then a funny thing happened on the way to Utopia.
Part two continued ……..
First of all creating Utopia costs a lot of money. And while we were becoming more democratic, “we the people” had become a pain in the rear end to the powerful institutions - educated, free thinking, free people have a way of doing that. But undoing all of this energy isn’t easy.
The process goes something like this: First you have to let the managers, who are well paid to run the system as it is, know they are paying a significant part of their income in taxes to keep this equality thing going. Then you have to let them know while they were deserving of government programs, this new group now coming of age isn’t. If these new people coming of age happen to be of different ethnicities and races this makes the sale a bit easier.
Still not easy to do … not easy to do unless you can control the news, elected officials and equal access to the law. And as hard as this may be do, this seems to be what has happened.
Corporate takeovers and bad economies go hand in hand. Before you know it, the news, banks, and major institutions are in the hands of the few – and guess who they are. In the meanwhile make sure that running for government office is so expensive it has to be financed by “sugar daddies” who just happen to be these same organizations.
We all know this, but sometimes accentuating the obvious is necessary. And don’t forget, just to keep the process looking democratic, it’s important for political candidates to have the appearance of a “grass roots” organization behind them allowing potential voters to send in their individual twenty-five dollar donations.
So education goes unfunded, programs that allow equal access to the law are unfunded. (Class action suits and constitutional challenges are a real pain in the butt to anyone in charge.) In the meanwhile run up huge government deficits’ making sure the money goes to those who already have most of it anyway with little left over to go to anyone else.
Then cut programs for ordinary people and also cut taxes for the rich, and if you can get away with it, blame it all on the labor unions, government employees and retired people.
This may be just too far fetched to believe, or is it? Edward Murrow and Henry Ford, where are you when we need you?
Brother Giovanni "thoughts while traveling west"
