That Sound You Hear Is The Scales Falling From My Eyes
Well, anyway, the last of the underlayers of the many scales that were obstructing my clear vision. There were outer layers of large scales that had long ago fallen away. But still a few last little ones yet to shed.
The thing that caused the tremor that shook the scales off was the latest shocking idea coming out of DC, that scheme to bet on terror and mayhem coming out of the Pentagon. Tonight I'm flipping through the cable TV channels and I stop at CNBC. It's Louis Rukeyser. He reminds me of a character out of Dickens, and I like his droll deadpan delivery. You can't really tell if people on that channel are saying the right thing sincerely, or if they are merely attempting to project a phony impression that the stock market guys really care about them. Louis was dryly suggesting that perhaps people in the new Terror Futures Market could bet on how big a dent Donald Rumsfeld's head made in the ceiling when he heard about Poindexter's plan. And then he goes (I paraphrase), "...And we could bet on how long it would be before more such bad ideas come out of Washington... Fifteen minutes?" Goofy Dickensian smile. That channel only exists in my opinion to brainwash ordinary people into putting their money into rigged gambling enterprises. What the ruling classes won't invent to suck back the money they grudgingly have to pay the working man. And what won't they invent? Betting on terror, assasinations. Geez.
I'm back to Maxine's campaign slogan, "2004: Anyone But Him", times 100. And him. And him. And him, etc. Impeach them all.
So then I decide to surf around on some blog links and end up at Conceptual Guerilla, at an article about arguing with the Right Wing and how to beat them:
http://www.conceptualguerilla.com/corporatefeudalism.htm
It talked about something called corporate feudalism. This was related to that awful feeling I have when I go to the Dilbert Factory. The strangling fingers of the corporate beast, around my neck! I am the oppressed. Only not so oppressed as others. By the way, I had to quit the Dilbert job today. Next week I will go there a couple more times but I needed to be able to devote all my time to the other project I'm doing, all of a sudden. But I digress. I see there are tiers of oppressed. Like the Inferno. Pergatory. We're there, now. There are many things I don't know, though. But I gained further understanding about how our hell is structured economically. It is not a pretty picture.
I've come from an open, well-educated, fortunate background. My family were not rich, but we sometimes seemed to have more than others, relatively speaking. We were the only non-Catholics on our block in Seattle, I think. There were something like 63 kids on our block. Many of them foster children. Next door to us was a family of 8. Their house was like an army barracks. Bins with everyone's names on them for laundry, giant cans of food, bad food like white bread and peanut butter and jelly. They were poor. We only had two kids, and our parents could afford a big Christmas tree with all the trimmings, including lots of toys and presents that our neighbors were envious of. We were in a different social class, but not that much further up the scale.
We attended public schools but somehow managed to get a pretty good education. I think the schools were a lot better then, the teachers were better. This was in the 60s and 70s. Me and my brother were lucky enough, or smart enough or something, to get into a lot of special, advanced programs. We had opportunities to learn things that ordinary Americans hadn't had up until then. Like music and art. We loved those subjects. We played instruments and I sang in choirs and madrigal groups. We had piano lessons. We traveled to Europe and saw great art with our parents at high school graduation. I went to an art college. When I was in junior high, I guess eighth grade, the girls were finally allowed to wear pants. And we could take shop. Up until then, we had been offered home ec. I learned how to embroider and sew in school. Do they still teach that stuff? It seems so old-world to me now. I moved on and learned how to use computers. Modern world. Became an urban professional. Developed political sensibilities. Etc.
But now I look at what's going on in the country and middle class people perhaps don't have the same opportunities these days. Because everyone is being forced to work more for less. There are more people of little means around. I went downtown the other day. I hadn't been there for a while, and it was spooky. There were a lot of beggars and drunks, and I keep noticing a certain kind of over-50 unshaven, grimy looking guys driving around in camper trucks that they probably live in. They seem to be everywhere.
The point is I guess I'm lucky I seem to have caught a wave of unprecedented learning and understanding that people a generation ago couldn't have. And I couldn't have unless others who had come before them had worked so hard to establish conditions under which as I mentioned, an ordinary girl could get the kind of opportunities I did for education. But now that time seems to be in decline and I think it's very sad. People are really losing a lot. We're losing cultural sensibility and social control to corporate interests. Take a look at this piece from the same site, about "Cheap Labor Conservatives."
http://www.conceptualguerilla.com/blurbs.htm
The corporate interests are too strong now. That's what I saw when the last scales fell. Chunk. Crash. And the government is in league with them, and they're against you and me. Representative democracy is dead.
Splash. That was a tear, not a scale.
11:32:23 PM 
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