The Sage Observer

South Africa

Have you seen the news of South Africa in the wake of Nelson Mandela? The television screen was replete with pictures of the impoverished black people of the land, walking in streets of mud among the shanties in which they lived. It went on to tell us that the white population among them owned all the land while the natives had nothing. The augury of the presentation went on to show how the black people were forming armies and training their young to fight. The white landowners were understandably fearful of what might be in their future and that of their children.

Why am I telling you this? This situation in South Africa didn’t come about because it is a nation of lazy loafers and ne’er-do-wells. It is the direct result of the inequality of opportunity in income, wealth, education, and due process under the law over these past many years–a carryover of colonization and apartheid. This is what happens in a land where peoples are suppressed and there is a lack of equal opportunities for all, economically, educationally, and politically. This is what has been happening in our country over the past half century–especially in the past thirty-plus years. No one has to tell you about how the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. You know it. You are probably among the latter.

As I have pointed out on previous occasions, wages and income (in real terms) is decreasing in our country, and the preponderance of our people is in debt up to their ears (personal as well as national debt). Unemployment is exceedingly high with, current statistics notwithstanding, over twenty million people out of work, and jobs (and money) flowing profusely from our country to nations around the globe. Many just cannot make ends meet. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions of our people, go to bed at night hungry. Even more is on some form of welfare or another–our welfare rolls (state of dependency) have literally exploded. The standard of living for our economy as a whole is in decline, a trend I anticipate will continue for the foreseeable future; and as you might expect, worry, unrest, and discontent among our people is rampant. The sale of firearms and ammunition in our country has increased significantly, and the establishment of internment facilities and massive purchases of ammunition by our government’s Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), an agency of the United States Department of Homeland Security has also been reported (Ref: infowars.com). As if this isn’t enough, our government is politically broken. For all practical purposes it has become inoperative–almost beyond repair. As just one example, Congress literally threw $24 Billion into the trash vis a vis a completely unnecessary government shutdown (small change compared to other travesties in the past). They, also, cut food stamps, despite this plight of our people.

I don’t usually copy other people’s writings in my postings to this blog; but, if you will indulge me, I would like to make an exception and post a recent letter to the editor of a national newspaper. Except for a couple spelling corrections, I have not edited it one iota. I just want to give you one example of the feeling in this country. It reads as follows:

“In fact, the federal deficit has been inching down. And why must deficit reduction always fall on the backs of the least among us? The rich have been left happily alone on their pinnacle of invulnerability, there is about $33 trillion in offshore taxes left un-pursued, and no one on the right will so much as consider the phrase "raise revenues".

You can't turn the clock back to the mid-19th century. When enough people are marginalized and realize that they have no stake in a nation that doesn't give a tinker's curse about healthcare, public education, access to higher education, and has cooperated in building a workforce of terrified serfs at the behest of behemoth corporate interests with no national or ethical boundaries - the peasants will begin rioting, and the baby will go with the bathwater.

The rising inequity between the very rich and everyone else, and that includes a frustrated, hard-working middle-class whose corpse is being picked over by the corporate rich in this country like a dead pigeon is, I assure you, far more dangerous than the federal deficit. The government can print money any time it likes. But it won't have a fire hose long enough to put out the fire that will eventually ignite from the spreading gasoline pool of failure to thrive among everyone but the rich.”

I think that says it all, folks. That says it all. We need to change our direction before we, too, become like South Africa. We need to take back our government from the Shadow Government of the Corporatocracy and Power Elite. We can only do this with election and campaign financing reform; and by becoming politically active and eliminating private money from the election process, which will never happen if we never get with the program.

Ronald Miller

mtss86@comcast.net