Plutarch wrote, “For at the very delivery of their money, they immediately ask it back, taking it up at the same moment they lay it down; and they let out that again to interest which they take for the use of what they have before lent.”
He was describing the money lenders of his day, which was about 100 A.D. Some scams have been going on even longer than we might imagine. Slowly but surely we seem to be catching on, but we really need to pick up the pace.
The two major parties of capital, debt and credit are busy, as usual, arguing over whether to let their market deity rule with minimal or maximal human manipulation on behalf of the rich. Republicans favor overt control by royal wealth and let the common folk be damned, while Democrats favor a more covert style which offers some props for the peasants in order to prevent revolution. Republican Party servants to wealth are so out of touch they might bring on total collapse or worse, open rebellion. So Democratic Party servants to wealth protect capital by showing some concern for the majority whose losses are the actual substance of all profits, thereby avoiding rebellion if not collapse. But even with this slight difference, the presidential election is simply an ad campaign for human detergents arguing over which party is newer, bluer, softer, and even whiter, but with affirmative action highlights in its servant class.
Unmentioned by the two major corporados of capital is a global economic crisis threatening more wars, environmental destruction, financial collapse and even survival of the race. That is, the human race and not one of the fractured sectors separated by induced theories of superiority or inferiority to make it seem that master race/chosen people mental disorders represent sanity. In essence we are all equal, but capitalism and the profit-loss system have little to do with essence. When the Titanic sank, poor people in the lower decks may have died first, but many of the rich people also went down to a wet grave. In keeping with class bigotry and social division, a newspaper of the time headlined :
Col John Jacob Astor Drowns
Millionaire Among Hundreds Of Others Who Lost Their Lives In Catastrophe
That one millionaire among hundreds of “others” matches present reality, considering how many of us are among the “others” and how many of us are “millionaires.” Of the hundreds of millions of dollars already paid to the campaigns, how much has come from honest and gulled “others” financing those who will take their money and charge them interest for it, and how much from the minority rich? And the wealthy minority get exactly what they pay for: Continued ownership and control of a system which is making fewer people much more rich, while giving more people much less democracy. And simultaneously destroying the natural and social environments.
Still, in the tradition of electoral shams offering capital’s servants as alleged people’s tribunes, we will be implored to please, please, please not vote for the greater evil and choose the lesser evil. Or we will all die. Many of us will follow custom but even if we don’t—the vote against either servant combined with those who don’t bother to vote is always the majority of the electorate—the day after the election we will face a declining global environment no matter which lesser evil is chosen by the minority of voters who will obey the panic and conscientiously vote for polio instead of cancer.
Voters are being told—as usual—that this is the most important election in history, and the supreme court selections, if any—as usual—will assure a millennia of change or reaction, depending on which side of the coin we are shown and forgetting that is only an either/or choice between heads or tails and hardly anything really different, which is what we need.
Past historic court decisions have been very good for some of us, but always at the expense of others. What else is new? Those who profit are always balanced by others showing a loss and the loser group is growing in numbers—and losses—while the other side shrinks in numbers as its profits expand. All of the courts—supreme, subservient, activist, passivist, strict constructionist or even controlled demolitionist—represent the laws of a failing system, not the people it is failing.
Given the choice between cancer and polio, many good people will choose potentially crippling polio, since potentially terminal cancer would be so much worse. But the malignant social disease will continue and become terminal unless those good people demand, work for, vote for and finally get real change beyond putting an allegedly multi-cultural minority-divided individualistic warrior smiley-face on a social body suffering a disaster.
There is a way for the vote to actually mean something and that is to select Jill Stein of the Green Party. She not only represents a party and perspective beneficial to all and not just a tiny minority at the top, but a vote for the immediate future that can help greatly in the next election. A 5% vote for the Greens will mean millions of dollars in public funds—our money—to make it possible to not only mount an even greater campaign in four years but to establish a party presence in every one of the fifty states to act as a potential core for all the activists operating outside electoral politics because they find it so repulsive in its present form.
Until we reject the dualistic trap of voting for either bad or worse, a more recent quote from only a century or two back will still describe our electoral reality:
“In politics, as on the sickbed, people toss from one side to the other, thinking they will be more comfortable.”—Goethe
Frank Scott writes political commentary and satire which appears in print in The Independent Monitor and online at the Legalienate. Email: fpscott@gmail.com.
