I was just telling my wife, playing spider solitaire at the table behind me in our computer room, that, in the tide of human affairs, her triumph over the game may be noteworthy, and I hoped she would let me know when she prevailed. This morning she went through a process called stereotactic radio surgery to remove four scattered lesions from her brain. And this evenng she is comforting herself by challenging her skills to overcome the game even if she is unable to overcome small cell lung cancer and the brain cancer caused by nicotine, a product licensed for sale under false pretenses by various states and the United States.
In fact I just saw a segment on PBS that indicated warnings on cigarette packages would become even more graphic with photos of lungs damaged by cigarette smoking. But the contribution of international and domestic cigarette sales to the U.S. economy are so significant that production and sales are still licensed in spite of the hundreds of thousands of deaths attributable to them and the devastating costs to the medical care system in the U.S and around the world. While the domestic cigarette industry paid a fine in the hundreds of billions over years for its criminal disregard for human life and while the legal system trumpeted its triumph, the cigarette industry won the biggest triumph of all. It ended its responsibility for people like my wife whose disease was discovered after the settlement. And it retained its license to kill for a profit with impunity.
This cost of products and services, who makes them, who pays for them, who benefits from them, has become particularly relevant only today because of a presidential panel reporting on ways of reducing the federal budget deficits that, according to the chairmen, threaten to bankrupt the nation if they are not brought under control. All of the factors contributing to our economic woes are so complex, you aren’t going to find somebody on the street who can explain them or how to fix them without the advice of the Tower of Babel gurus spreading their confusion.
Or are they that complex that you can’t understand them in just these few short paragraphs?
The battle goes on between at least two modern manifestations of alternative models regarding the role of people and of the institutions through which their lives have been managed since records have been kept about Socrates and the other sages and philosophers concerned about the future of humanity.
The cigarette settlement places in bold relief how the two modern models worked, not in opposition but, with a clever twist, like shadow systems in support of one another. A dog infected with deadly parasites.
My question is why does the dog keep sacrificing itself?
In the 18th century democratic model that drowned the prior relationships between the people and their controllers, the people theoretically became owners of their own destinies. “All men are created equal” and all that. But the people were useless to themselves and to their controllers without some means to organize their voices into one and to express their will collectively. Hence the Constitution of the United States, our first American corporation, that provided the political structure for the people to speak collectively and, cleverly, for their controllers to create a program that balanced their own needs to exercise power and live large while providing the collective voice of the people a faux forum to express their demands for decent lives for themselves and their progeny.
In the anti-democracy shadow system, the people continued to be pawns of the powerful while believing they were in the driver’s seat. Systems were created, with the unwitting consent of the people, for the rich and the powerful to continue to consolidate their benefits while the people were deluded into believing screwing nuts on bolts on an assembly line provided them the dignity of work; and the dignity of work justified their struggle to provide better lives for their progeny.
The democratic system and the anti-democratic version worked in concert successfully, one modeling the other so the anti-democratic system was almost invisible, for over 200 years. The rich prospered and the people became more numerous and closer to realizing their dream of a decent life for their progeny. But then the wealthy became greedy, wanted a greater share of the wealth. And their intention became manifestly more obvious than ever this very day.
At a time of manifest imbalance in income distribution when the masters’ share increased from 1% to 23% of the delta difference in income distribution in the past 20 years and 5% of the wealthy now own more than 50% of everything, a bipartisan panel of elected officials of the Original American Corporation and related special interests announced their program for fixing what was wrong with the system.
The anti-democrats became so bold that, today, they proposed a series of steps to make the people work longer, surrender their federal retirement benefits, reduce or eliminate their health protection, contribute their bodies for the defense of the Original Corporation, suffer the destruction of their living space for the benefit of the producers who pollute their environment without limit, and do it in the name of protecting the engines that create and will finally eliminate the ruse of democratic self determination.
The corporations, including the Original Corporation, sacrifice practically nothing to reviving the State. The proposal recommends a 10% reduction in Federal payrolls at the same time legislators keep their almost 25% pay increases in the past ten years. The Banks continue to get free money from the government while they give no free money to their customers to continue to make payments for their mortgages. The corporations fire employees to increase their corporate profits while the new proposal suggests cutting unemployment benefits. The corporations ask for tax cuts while finding offshore outlets with cheaper labor to produce their products and sheltering their income in tax havens or investing their profits abroad in the name of free enterprise. And the Original Corporation creates the military infrastructure to protect itself and its political operatives from extinction.
It is a deception without parallel in history. And it is so successful that the people have surrendered the dream that once drove farmers and patriots to war in the belief they could finally be rewarded for their work.
The anti democrats have developed a diabolically clever scheme which can be summarized by the success of the Tobacco Industry in sacrificing the People for their corporate avarice.
There is a tide in the affairs of people as in a tidal wave that finally levels everything before it to create a tranquil new sea. If the cigarette settlement is any model of the poison the public is swallowing to support decent lives for their progeny, they are being sorely betrayed and a storm of transformational proportion is on the way.
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