The Relentless Attack on Americans

No, not by terrorists. The relentless attack underway is from this administration and its wealthy corporate donors.

It seems like every day there is some new story about a bleaker future for the middle-class and the poor. Last week it was the bankruptcy bill. Protect the credit card companies! Target people at the brink of financial collapse! Damn irresponsible credit junkies! (Of course irresponsible users are only a small percentage of the filers. The majority of bankruptcies are due to huge medical bills or from loosing a job.)

If a budget is our nation's theology walking, the bankruptcy bill is our kingmakers' attitude talking. What does this bill say to people? In a nutshell: Money problems? Boo Fucking Hoo!

Have a reoccurrence of your cancer after your insurance was cut?
Not. Our. Problem. It's between you, God and your family.
Couldn't get insurance because of your pre-existing condition? Too damn bad. Insurance companies shouldn't be told who to cover. Marketplace rules trump all baby. You should have saved more money.
God didn't cover it? You clearly didn't pray hard enough.
Family can’t help? Why should we help? You aren’t our kid.
Want Government help? What are you, a welfare queen? Fixing your problem isn’t the government’s job. If you wanted government to help you should have voted for the other guy. Now suck it. America, you missed your chance.
Empathy Ain’t Us.

The credit card companies (and the hospitals) shouldn't have to pay the price for your choice to have cancer, your choice to loose your job and your choice to save too little. You are either lazy, stupid or both. You must have chosen your investments poorly. Did you listen to lying analysts or
an executive from MCI, Enron, or Tyco? Idiot.
Smarter, better people like us put aside money for their cancer treatments, or we picked a rich family to be born into. You probably got that cancer from being lazy. Maybe you didn't work hard enough to retrain yourself so you could get a good job after yours was outsourced. You chose not to see the writing on the wall and got fired.
Smart people don't get fired. Or if they do they bounce back to a higher paying job in this great economy we have created. Hard workers don't get fired. We all know that people with friends and family keep their jobs. You must be stupid, lazy or most important; you didn't hook up with the right family or friends. You want sympathy? Go to church.

This is the underlying attitude of this bill. Of course we won’t say it out loud, but this is how we see you and your money problems. Your problems aren’t our problems. You are not our priority. We do what we are told by the people who really pay us.

Their view is that it isn't their fault that you got sick. They take care of their own. You are not their own. They didn't tell you to take that job in Information Technology, manufacturing, technical support or telecommunications that got outsourced --unless of course they did, in that case as Bluto would say, "Hey, you fucked up, you trusted us!". Like Molly Ivins says, Vote against equal rights for gays, get a soul crushing bankruptcy bill.

One of Spocko's good friends is struggling to find a job. She has been betrayed by the sanctimonious, oblivious rich, screwed by a massive corporation, swindled by her family and has endured physical problems that would test the toughest Klingon.
Her resolve is astounding. She doesn't see the dark future as this Vulcan often does when he looks at the statistics that represent human pain and economic suffering.
You see, Spocko doesn't just look at statistics loved by the rich, statistics like "The GDP, the only measure that really matters," according to one investor class member.

Karl Rove trick number 17.

Statistics that aren't seen don’t count. Don’t like the statistic? Change how it is counted. Example, the unemployed after their 18 weeks of unemployment runs out. The underemployed, the "independent contractors" scrambling for meager project work from companies that laid them off two years ago to look more attractive to Wall Street.

Two other friends are leaving the Star Fleet area. Multiple colleagues are doing the equilivant of scrubbing plasma tubes because it is steady work. It lacks the inspirational quality of exploring new worlds and new civilizations, but it does pay the replicator bill.

This administration is always looking backwards. Backward to the glided age to be exact. Back to a time when the robber barons ruled and worker’s lives were cheap and expendable.

This administration longs for a time when worker and environmental regulations didn't exist. They are working to recreate that time, chipping away at protections that get in the way to maximizing money for the corporate partners. That is the highest of all goals. Anything that impedes that goal is suspect.

Others long for a time where aliens, people of color and women knew their place and didn't question the status quo.

Spocko's long time work of training Star Fleet employees to be more eloquent has slowed. There isn't a lot of optimism in the space exploration business these days. Investing in humans has a low ROI. Robot vehicles are ascendant. It’s yet another case of outsourcing humans’ work. This time the outsourcing from humans to machines is on other planets.

Maybe Spocko will go back to being a simple science officer or retreat to the desert to meditate. Why the desert? To avoid mind melding with the fear and depression that I see in the face of so many humans. It is hard to see a bright future when I calculate the odds. But as my Captain often says, "Don't tell me the odds." I want to believe in the positive human endeavors that must exist out there, but it is hard.

We are billions of quatloos in debt; many thralls have forgotten the past and believe there can be nothing better. The impact of the relentless attack on American’s is starting to show. I want people to know this is not about them, but it impacts them. Do not forget who orchestrated these attacks on working Americans. It is NOT Al Qaeda (The Base in Arabic). It is someone else's "base" that is behind this.

I long for a bright future that mirrors a recent past. A time of optimism and hope. Not of fear and revenge. A time where workers, as well as capital, were valued. Where regulation was seen as a vital component of a healthy marketplace. Does anyone still remember the bright moment when workers were considered an asset, not an expense to be cut?