March 2025 – ThinkB4its2Late

Great song by Bob Weir, vocalist and guitarist for the Grateful Dead. “It’s so easy to slip, it’s so easy to fall. And let your memory drift and do nothing at all”. So appropriate. It’s so easy to let the world skip on by especially if you are a politician and more worried about your career than the people you are in an elected position to watch out for.

So easy too for a democracy to become that in name only. Russia calls itself a democracy. But notice how anyone who opposes the current ruler ends up dead. Usually they get put in jail and then die while there. Sometimes they are poisoned while in other countries, with substances that are only available to defense departments of large countries. Russian laws are there for the aristocracy, not for the people. The people have no rights against the government. Anyone challenging the ruling class is arrested or killed. The exact opposite of what the founding fathers intended when they wrote the American Constitution. A government by the people for the people, not for a select few who work themselves into positions of great wealth and power.

Because many have been left behind in the economy of today they are rightly upset about the way the government is functioning. Currently many people think that having three equal branches of government is too cumbersome and would prefer to have a CEO, or two, to take charge and get things done. It might help in the short term. but down the road when there are no restraints and things aren’t going the right direction it will be a different story. There are very few in history who have given up power once they were offered it. George Washington was one. He could’ve kept the presidency for as long as he lived but he chose not to. He realized that it wasn’t him but the people who needed to be in charge. Leaders of democracies are responsible to the people, who have the ultimate say over them. But if the leader sets out to tear down the curbs and restrictions on his power, and no one stops him on the principle of it, then it won’t be possible to go back. Hitler was elected too and he dissolved the governing body so that he could do what he wanted to without anyone standing in his way.

Our current leaders admire dictators. They think they themselves are good at dictating. They really don’t believe in the three branch system of government. I doubt they have ever read the constitution, or had any understanding of it if they did. It’s not in their nature. One person, or two, with a handful of cronies ruling the empire. That’s how they operate. Because it’s so much easier, of course, than having to convince others who disagree with you, that you are right. We’ve lost, not only the ability to compromise, but the ambition to compromise. All or nothing is the new modus operandi. And every day they are testing the limits of their power, always pushing for more and more, at the expense of the other two governing bodies. Whittle away at the legislature here and a little at the judiciary there and soon neither will have the powers granted by the constitution. All the reins will be in one set of hands.

Is this what America has come to? Are we really willing to give up the greatest democracy in the world because it’s easier than working out a solution we can all agree on?

All it will take from here is to do nothing. But it’s going to take an overwhelming majority to do something, and soon, before there’s nothing anyone can do.

Just when was this period of time when America was great? Because it’s looking more and more like the early twentieth century. Then, a few men had amassed enormous wealth. Small businesses were bought up and shut down to stifle competition. Prices kept rising because anyone who tried to come in with a better product at a better cost was quickly put out of business. That seems pretty close to what’s going on today. CEOs travel around the world on their private planes, going from one luxury mansion to another while the cost of living for working families keeps rising. Groceries, gasoline, not to mention rent or the cost of owning a home, all have steadily increased, and rapidly increased since the rise of the super rich.

Is there a correlation? I suspect there is. Technology is right there in the middle of it, maybe at the root of it too. Technology has allowed companies to offload many of the costs of doing business onto the consumer. For instance, how often do you get a paper statement in the mail these days? Not often at all and in many instances you pay a fee for that service. While it may be fine to skip the paper invoices, where did that savings to the company go? It went right into the exorbitant salaries of the executives and the shareholders. Self checkouts have saved companies billions, maybe even trillions. Prices continue to rise though because the wealthy not only need that money, but deserve it too.

When job cuts are made at an organization, who benefits? I heard one woman on the news the other day saying she hoped the savings being found in the Education department would be passed on to the states. I had to laugh. Those savings are going to fund tax cuts for the rich. How is it possible that billionaires many times over care anything about the poor? The poor are there for them to take advantage of, and to be afraid of. After all, the extremely wealthy, with a few exceptions, believe that every one is just like them. Willing to do anything to set themselves up with so much money they never have to worry again. Because they are ruthless, they believe everyone else is too. They live in a world where everything is cut-throat, get the other guy before he gets me. The fact that there’s a whole world out there who simply want to work for a living, have enough to raise their family and have a little fun once in a while, is alien to them. That money might not be the be all and end all of life is deeply offensive to them. People who want more from life than money are considered losers. They are to be stamped out because without the masses working as hard as they can funneling money into the hands of the few, how can they amass their enormous fortunes?

There’s talk about this new return to the greatness of America putting humans on Mars. Just what kind of a place is Mars going to be? It looks extremely likely that everyone will work one hundred and twenty hours a week until they are used up, then cast aside to make room for the next guy to make his sacrifice. Slaves to the ultra wealthy. A few women, slaves as well, will be there for servicing the men. I wish all the ones who want that kind of a world would just go on and go. If you can’t make it to Mars, set up some space stations somewhere in between. When you look back down to Earth maybe you’ll see us losers waving good-bye.

ThinkB4its2Late

Use it or lose it

ThinkB4its2Late

Month: March 2025