Opinion/Editorial
DIAMONDS AND RUST
“It’s all come back too clearly” …the words from Joan Baez so long ago, as we tread water while waiting for the country to likely stop paying its bills, the former president likely going to prison and the war in Ukraine to continue on into the new year. The public lives without informed perspective. It’s fed what the powers that be want it to be fed, which maybe, and only now because of the pervasiveness of the Internet, does the public really get to understand. The ‘news’ on mass media today is like the ‘polls’ we all see predicting everything but really nothing, as they are paid for by those powers that be and therefore are tools of present and future controls, not instruments reporting anything about present or past facts.
The public today waits to be impressed or depressed, most of the electorate unaware that leadership of today is locked into a death spiral of deliberately ignorant and non-functional economic theory on top of selfishness and a nearly unstoppable seeking of public acclaim, notice and fake glory by its chosen leaders. Austerity is here, as the foremost Republican tool for control. That austerity is for anyone not hugely wealthy, however. Those wealthy are immune to everything and most of them, in fact, live in multiple countries, with many wealthy chateaus, and many times possessed of multiple citizenship. Many of them even carry diplomatic passports, having paid contacts in the highest of places everywhere. In hard economic times austerity works only with significant pain and death for those undergoing it. It severely disables the already damaged by creating doubt that there will be any brightness in a future that is hoped to lie ahead, like Social Security, Medicare, and retirement plans. Most people in this country know they are never going to join the one percent and they are absolutely accurate in coming to that assessment. The one percent usually derives its wealth from a base of other one percenters. Quiet inheritance is the biggest factor in becoming wealthy, with establishing a monopoly coming in as a close second.
“You who are so good with words, and at keeping things vague…” more wisdom from Joan and her song. We have only vagueness to guide us as we always await grim financial and foreign relations results. Our leaders, once elected, have no boss or other authority to hold them accountable except for a public that cannot influence or reach them. The public must wait until another election cycle comes up or go through the almost impossible effort to voice complaints or seek change. Recall does not work well in our culture because we suffer from the possessive syndrome: “He’s a thief and liar alright, but he’s my thief and liar, so we’ll keep him.” Hence, the entire Maga phenomenon. This culture has trouble with anyone admitting to any wrong. This culture demands but never accepts apologies, and therefore, given that all members of the culture make mistakes and are flawed human beings, lying pervades almost everything.
Our future election results, coming in next year, will have little to do with much of anything, even if much is discussed and many promises made. Our freedoms in America will continue to erode but only those freedoms for the common people. The one percent don’t go through airport scanners, don’t need any identification, aren’t subject to any kind of real search or evaluation when traveling, and don’t associate with the rest of the regular population. They are free and they will remain free until the population changes all that by changing and applying its collective, and currently nearly non-existent, will. That one percenters are also alone (with security guards and chateau staff as their only ‘friends’) and afraid, and afraid they ought to be.
That public must evaluate the lack of any real change in its favor, without it being called that, as it’s continuously being lied to by the mass media nearly all the time, no matter whether the messages are from Fox, ABC, NBC, MSNBC or CNN. Until the public is roused to the point where the last lyrics delivered in the old Joan Baez song there will be no real change: “If you’re offering me diamonds and rust, I’ve already paid….”
The diamonds were promised, again and again, but the only delivery has been bags, truckloads, rail cars and ships filled with ‘rust.’ The biggest question of all, and the one that goes right to the heart of what this article is about, is: “Can the public wade through the swirling muddy waters of media misinformation enough to stand in significant enough size to recognize the difference between cultural diamonds and societal rust?”
