In the 1999 movie "Cider House Rules" based on John Irving's 1985 novel of the same title, one of the leading characters, Homer is asked to read a set of typewritten rules that are tacked to a post where the cider house workers sleep. The workers begin to laugh and ridicule the rules such as "no smoking in bed" or "no operating the cider press" after drinking alcohol. Finally, one of them tells him to stop reading. "They aren't our rules. We didn't write them. I don't see no reason to read them, "he says.
I still marvel at the effectiveness of open aviaries. They have a remarkable ability to keep birds captive with no glass or cage of any kind except the walls that exist in the imaginations of the birds themselves. Whether it is fear of the unknown or just the naturaltendency of birds to avoid venturing beyond their comfort zone, something within the birds ' inner being keeps them predictably in line. Yes, I know aviaries are pretty and cool and all of that. But they are also monuments to mankind's propensity to figure out how to capture, manage and control other creatures for its own advantage.
That is where government comes in. Unlike other animals, people have concepts such as ideals, morals, and ethics that can also be aquamaps data sources: GBIF to draw boundaries around their movement. A common pattern of those we often see on the domestic violence docket is the "blame it on the" victim "excuse. Batterers of their spouses or children often explain that it was the actions of the victim that "drove" them to be such dirt bags. For those seeking to control otherpeople, fear and shame can be very powerful tools.
Don't think for one second that this toolbox has been overlooked by politicians, clergy, bankers and others whose mission in life is to make sure you don't wander far from the aviary. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand how the country got into the hole we find ourselves trying to claw out of today.
Mortgage Life Insurance Leads Programs
Our country cannot seem to distinguish between the virtual world and the tangible one. We let our politicians get away with treating rhetoric the same as flesh and blood. Why wait for an actual attack? We can declare war on "poverty" (the human condition), or "drugs" (plants and chemical substances the government does not tax), or "terrorism" (a criminal tactic) and point to this "war" as an excuse to undermine basicfreedoms. Never mind the absurdity of failing to make these obvious distinctions. These phony wars are by definition impossible to "win". And if winning is not the goal, the only other possible function they can serve is to take away our civil liberties.
The national poverty rate may not have gone back to where some nineteen percent say it was when President Johnson declared a "war on poverty". But one in seven Americans are now at or below the poverty rate; and that number has been climbing steadily since 2000. The idea that we are making progress in the "war on drugs" is not taken seriously by any law enforcement agency. And who really believes we will ever capture, kill, or otherwise dominated "terrorism"?
This tendency of ours to blindly swallow the substitution offictitious concepts for the real world has made us the perfect victim. We have legally defined imaginary entities (corporations) as "persons" with all of the rights and virtually none of the responsibilities that are incumbent upon you and me. This places them at a remarkable advantage when they compete against us in the halls of congress and on the street. Legislators, our law makers, are openly bought by an unlimited quantity of these virtual persons that decide what the rules of our "democracy" will be. While deluding ourselves into thinking we are guided by morality and ethics, we have delegated rule-making to a small band of robots that were hand-picked, paid for, and placed in office by investors that don't even pretend to have any objective other than to increase the bottom linefor their shareholders.
More people are hurting. And foreclosures are at an all-time high. So we are told that this generation lacks the moral character of earlier generations. Look how many are walking away from their house rather than selling their fist-born to pay the mortgage. How could they do that to the poor defenseless bank (you know, the one that has been guaranteed protection from our government)? What is the difference? Well, for one thing, when your grandfather would have died before he stuck the banker with the debt for his house, it was another human being-the banker that he did not want to leave holding the bag. He got the loan by going in and talking to the banker who decided (sometimes largely on your grandfather's character) to take a chance on him and write themortgage. He did not write the loan for more than the house was worth. And because the banker was not a crook, "no one could have sold the house to your grandfather for substantially more than it was worth. Your grandfather could not have qualified for such a loan. In an honest world trust is mutual.
If the government (you can't blame either political party because Bush started the bail-outs and Obama carried the program forward without missing a beat), had not come rushing to the banks ' rescue, what would have happened? Some banks would have walked away from the debt they owed to their depositors. Most of those depositors would have been okay because the government had insured their accounts. Did that make them "too big to fail" for our sakes? Not hardly. If that had happened theFDIC would have had to bail out human beings. But until Mr. Geithner came along with the Bush-Obama Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), no one was there to bail out their rich colleagues. Those not covered by FDIC (mostly corporations) that had more than $ 250,000 in deposits would have lost big and declared bankruptcy. When was the last time you saw someone criticize a corporation for filing for bankruptcy? No one really blames them. It's business. They are not expected to follow our rules. We are not the aristocracy. We are the surfs, in this case the victims. Is it rational to blame the victims for not following a different set of rules than the batterers?
I fear that we are becoming a society that no longer understands the humans used to make distinctions. It's every man forhimself; and it's all about the money. After all, there are rules involved here.
Copyright 2010, Rick d. Massey, JD
Replacing Our National Pride With a Victim Mentality
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