Alone

Where We Are

I think I can explain the general angst we are all feeling.

I believe I can tell you exactly why we are all upset and a bit angry about this past dozen or so years where we all feel so aggrieved.

Each of us has come to the realization that we are not all in this together.

If history tells us anything it explains that Americans face a crisis together. Americans rally around one another, they provide support, they will sacrifice for one another.

From the Great Depression where everyone suffered together collectively, where even the rich and wealthy of Wall Street saw loss of everything they’d accumulated, where neighbors did what they could to keep hope alive, and persevere, through World War II and rubber drives, metal collection, there was a spirit of everyone in the same boat, and attempting to row in the same direction.

From FDR’s fireside chat that galvanized Americans as one, facing the shattered economy as one, through the sacrifice of sons and daughters to the second Great War, Americans suffered collectively.

There is that old adage about neighbors in a village having the opportunity to avail themselves of their problems, so they gather their own problems together in a basket and take it to the town hall to perhaps trade them away to ease their own burden. Only to find after hearing at this town hall an airing about the problems in everyone else’s basket, each neighbor decided to take their own basket back home, their own problems their own, and they will cope, only now with an understanding that everyone is facing problems, they are not alone in their suffering.

When we needed labor in factories during World War II, with the men all stationed overseas, the housewives rallied and entered the plants. Children collected tin cans, and there were scrap metal drives.

In the Sixties when disaster struck our Apollo mission the churches filled with those in prayer for our astronauts, the people gathered in window fronts full of televisions to view the fate of “our boys”, they stood ten deep on Broadway to see the ticker spit out the latest information.

But today, right now, there is an anger, a disgust, a growing animosity, because we are no longer in this all together.

The poor and newly arrived illegals have benefit packages that run to the equivalent of what a full-time job would produce. Free housing, free food, free healthcare, a free phone, and even free money. In some blue jurisdictions add it all up and people are sitting home with a flow of goods and services that would equate to a seventy-thousand a year job in equivalency. No effort. All take.

The rich have gamed the system through both hedge funds and tech firms that swallow billions of dollars in government contracts, an income stream that guarantees huge profits, growth, and a permanence that cannot be challenged.

Fifty years ago Wall Street produced winners and losers. Today the hedge funds always win, only the small investor loses.

The flow of funds into the wealthy is so large at this point that they are immune to economic challenges. Interest income alone dwarfs what the average man can earn by a factor of 1,000 times, 10,000 times. More money produced from investment income than can be spent, no matter the largesse.

The Middle Class is stuck with all the burden, they produce the soldiers that die in the unnecessary wars, they are the worker bees that populate the companies that purchase our politicians, they pay near fifty percent of their income in total taxation, they are the engine that makes America “go”, but never really see the fruits of their labors.

All of their earnings go to survival. Their “reward” for being good worker bees is two week’s vacation at the beach, as long as grandma, and grandpa, can throw in a few grand to ensure the tradition. The kids don’t understand that they are getting onto the kiddie rides on credit line dollars, parents keep them in the dark as much as possible that the family finances are strained. All the children know is they can’t wait to get onto the rides at the boardwalk.

The Average Middle Class Joe sits in his easy chair stoically, a mind full of worries, and realizes that he is all alone.

Downtown in the “no go” zone of public housing, crime, filth, and degradation, everyone is on the government dole. They produce nothing to contribute to our greater good, in fact, they are a drain on our total society at large. They are a net cost to us all. And not just in the transfer of wealth in tax contributions, but in crime, fear, and property damage.

The Average Middle Class Joe sits, sees, and hears about a Palentir and their half-billion dollar government defense contract, about the FBI paying four hundred million to Facebook, how Google is so entwined with our government that no one can say how many billions of dollars in US tax dollars Google receives. And Elon Musk and his earth boring equipment machines, and Space exploration, and satellite launching enterprise, billions and billions of our dollars are flowing through Elon’s corporations, forget sales to the public of his Tesla cars and trucks, government subsidies have guaranteed his existence and profits into the future and beyond.

And the Average Middle Class Joe sits and sees all of the Oligarchs at the top of all of these corporations use their huge cash flow to purchase up every politician in America, to keep the money flow going, and to ensure that nothing challenges their power.

Not economic conditions, not foreign competition, and certainly not elections.

They have so much money they buy up both sides of the aisle. Democrats the American People lose, Republicans the American People lose.

We all want a new coin to flip but the rich and powerful insist we keep using the same one.

I don’t believe for a minute the television star in California has a chance to unseat the incumbent Democrat, they’ve rigged the mail-in voting, they’ve rigged the machines, they’ve rigged every election to the extent that it is impossible to beat the system.

We have reached the point where we cannot vote ourselves out of this.

Trump is proof. Compare his campaign promises to his current governing. His current all Israel, all the time support, and warmongering, is as far from what he campaigned on to win that there is no real comparison between the two.

He has fulfilled zero of his campaign promises, and turned on his base to the extent that he is unrecognizable.

The Swamp always wins.

The first year of the Trump Presidency is the exact time that every Middle Class Joe woke up and realized that yes, it is absolutely true, I am the chump that I’ve heard about all my life.

The Average Middle Class Joe awoke to the realization that he is the chump, he is alone and absent any “brotherhood of man” in this nation who can share the pain, and that there is no way to vote himself out of this predicament.

And somewhere deep down inside he has realized that they are now building the AI system of control with all of these Data Centers that will permanently enslave not only him, but his children, and his children’s children. The social credit score system is coming, they are building it now with thousands of Data Centers across our nation. Approved by town councils everywhere, purchased up by the owners of the Data Centers.

The Average Middle Class Joe in America right now has no power, no standing, no one to help him, and no hope, but hasn’t quite realized that last part yet.

He still dreams. And sometimes big dreams. Where somehow he elevates himself into the Oligarchy, and his family rises above all of this.

This ridiculous dream, this silly dream, this fanciful notion is what gets him up in the morning, and gets him out the door, to persevere, to keep moving, even in the face of impossible odds.

The game ended years ago. The plan was put into place. These are the end stages.

Average Middle Class Joe will be squeezed from his job, sent hurtling to the lower class through UBI, Universal Basic Income, where the flow of cash is closely monitored to maintain integrity in the dollar, and where one must be subjugated lest their social credit score drop and they find their bank account frozen.

One third will prosper, two thirds will find themselves in favelas, shanty towns similar to third world Brazil, and then, and only then, will Average Middle Class Joe feel as if he is a part of something bigger than himself, that there is a collective, that Americans have come together.

They will have all come together in their lack of asset ownership, their dependence on the state, and their lack of any ability to change their own circumstances and plight.

We aren’t in this together.

Until we all will be, only then there will be no Middle Class.

Just the dependent class and the rich who live beyond the rules.

We are almost there, just a few more Data Centers.