Mike Malloy

[Don Smith]

One of the basic sources of frustration for many is the belief that someone, somewhere actually gives a damn and will work toward solving any particular problem because that is "how things are done".
Until I was wise enough to see the game, I believed that the "leaders' were paying attention to what was going on and that they would apply themselves to the service of the people and the republic.
It is positively unAmerican to not fix a problem.Grab the toolbox, crawl under the car, pull the pipes, whatever it takes, do something.
Many people still believe that the congress and all the king's horses are up there in the seat of government wrestling with the big issues of the day.
So they are frustrated when no solution is forthcoming, or, more likely, the situation becomes worse.
It ain't rocket science to see that nobody is minding the store,except to steal from the till.
Social services, education, the environment,these are a distraction from the main business of congress, which is to pump as many tax dollars out to special interest groups as quickly as possible before the cupboard is truly bare.
The natural tendency of people is to remain in place, wait and see,hoping that something or someone will fix the problem.
Things are going to have to degenerate a great deal more before people are motivated to act.
My fear is that we will end up with an even worse bunch of crooks than the ones now in place.
_________________
" A bayonet is a tool with a worker at both ends."- Lenin
Patriotism is a manifestation of the Stockholm Syndrome.
"How does it become a man to behave toward this American government to-day? I answer that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it."
-Thoreau
"Information is the currency of Democracy." Jefferson

[Yuri]

In order to steal from the till..........there must be something in the till to steal.

The cupboard is fast running bare and, in the past, the way that an international debt crisis was 'resolved' was through war. Not through limited/proxy skirmishes like those we've had up to now, but through all out conflagrations between several industrialized nations. Nothing solves a widespread unemployment problem like conscripting everyone into a war economy; nothing culls the overpopulation of peasants like mass starvation, bombing of urban areas, and battlefield slaughter.

Some may argue that we now have atomic weapons and that will prevent such lunacy. I’m not so sure. The Geneva Protocol banned chemical weapons in 1925 after WWI. These were the ‘unthinkable’ weapons of that era and, as a result, their use was avoided in WWII. However, WWII brought its own new horrors such as carpet-bombing of cities, genocidal extermination programs, barbaric torture practices in the Pacific theater, and atomic weapons. No one should underestimate the ingenuity of those who would lead us into a ‘cleansing’ war and the speed and ease with which savagery would escalate.

This, more than anything else, is my biggest fear. It has been three generations since the last outbreak of wide scale war madness – and already one major power has forgotten lessons of the past and imagines that torture – which was once an unspeakable crime – is now okay again.

In the face of such a potential development, the problems of today will be viewed nostalgically as the Good Old Days.
_________________

This space for rent

[Don Smith]