I have a problem with this

 

 

 

Again, this entire article is going to be based on my personal opinions. A lot of the things I am going to say can be corroborated by evidence elsewhere but I'm not going to go dig it up.I suppose the preface to this piece goes back to the election next week in the US again, because of the possibility of deep and fundamental change taking place in American society. When the US sneezes, Canada catches a cold. If you, dear reader, want to look up anything, I'd recommend checking out a snapshot view, depicted with graphs that Fortune Magazine put out showing changes in the US economy since Obama took over in 2009. He's not quite the bogeyman that his opponents have been portraying him to be. Having said that, no political leader has ever been singularly successful at rescuing their country's economy, but they all want the credit for it when it improves and to shift the blame when it worsens. Economies tend to cyclical independant of political thought but that seldom gets remembered during an election campaign.

 

That's not even what this article is about, this article is about a US president of all people talking about the 're-distribution of wealth'. The bloodcurdling screams of 'rampant socialims' Hitler! better dead than red! (an oldie but still a goodie), class warfare, and the list goes on ad nauseum, reverbated around the globe. I even read a post on a news-site that Obama is a Marxist-Hitlerian. Seriously, who could even think that up? What's frightening is the lack of basic information that so many people posting on the Internet seem to have regarding political and economic thought or history. People given to hitching their star to extremist dogma are fated to become easy pickings for others who put forward an almost cult figure type of charisma. It's formulaic; play on your follower/audiences' fears, exploit them to the nth degree worst case scenarios, find a common enemy and lay the blame at their feet. Everything will get better when we get rid of X, X is the embodiment of everything you've been taught is wrong in the world, X is a tool from the devil's workshop, and, my favorite, X is a handpuppet of the real masters of the New World Order. Thus, we have the advent of tea-baggers, thus we have Occupy Wall Street. Voltaire, credited as being one of the people who ushered in the Age of Reason in Western thought, once said "Anyone who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit injustices." Worthy of consideration' I think; know who'd agree with him? Himmler, Lenin, Manson, Jones, Hitler, Koresh, Robespierre (llik them up, you can't expect me to do all the heavy lifting around here)

 

Let's break one thing down right now. If the New World Order exists in any of the guises or manifestations that I've had described to me over the last couple of years, then they are far too powerful for anyone to do anything about and we're all screwed.So forget about it and go on with your life.

 

And what a life it is! If you can afford a computer to sit at and read this, or the time to sit at someone else's computer or a public computer, you're doing ok. Now, please recall that a whole three paragraphs back I titled this "I have a problem with this"  I didn't say I had a solution and I don't. Also, dear reader, I can't possibly know or guage your opinion or opinions if I'm lucky enough to get more than one. Did you cheer for the Occupy movement? Do you think that Teabaggers are spot on with their  well publicized revulsion at government interference in their lives?  Redistribution of wealth is, after all, a scary concept. If I come out of my bank late at night with a stack of twenties still in my hand, reading my transaction record and there's a guy standing there pointing a gun at me, you can bet I'm going to be more than willing to redistribute my wealth. On the level of an entire nation though, who decides how much wealth gets distributed where and what does that do to the extremely wealthy elite who don't want to share any more and believe that because they earned their money, they don't have to share? I don't know the answer. What about the fact that whatever percentage of the overall wealth is controlled by the one percenters, there's still far more distributed wealth in 21st century North America among the other ninety-nine percent than at any other time in the known history of the universe?  There is no doubt in my mind that life can become very harsh for an unemployed person in Canada or the US. Mortgages get foreclosed, debt piles up and the stress of debt collector harassment can be overwhelming. Families can literally go hungry in the streets. A condition I never thought I would see in my day. But, that is not the case in most situations, because even our unemployed are better off than an awfully large chunk of the global population.

 

 

Certainly in the age of the information superhighway and entire communities' livelihoods being outsourced to the Far East and middle class Canadian teenagers having at least a nodding acquaintance with what 'Bollywood' is, one dares not refute McLuhan. The global village exists and it is right outside our doorway and inside our homes. We brought the concept home like a wee schoolgirl bringing home a vicious, flea-bitten feral cat and announcing to her parents that it's her new pet. Awareness, some would say, equals responsibility.

 

We are all aware of what living conditions are like in the best and worst places on the globe. How much do we do about it? How much of our own personal wealth should we be willing to redistribute and what assurances do we get that our help will go where it is supposed to? I don't know. I do know that my dog gets better nutrition and better health care than an awfully large percentage of the human population and that some of those humans live very close to home. I know that government controlled agencies--in more than one country--have allowed crops and produce to rot in storage in order to influence market prices, driving supply down drives demand up. I know that tying aid to trade has proven to be a failed policy over and over again, but Canada, among other 'have' nations, still adheres to it. I suspect that on Sunday mornings when people tend to relax over an extra cup of coffee and start flipping channels on their 50 inch flat screen, that the pleas of all those celebrity charity endorsers fall on deaf ears for a good reason. I can't afford it? No. I can't trust them to make sure the money goes to the needy? No. All of these international charities are just scams? No, and please Alex Trebek participating in a scam? I think not. These poor people on the tv screen are too far away to be a threat to me? Bingo, move to the front of the class.Or, ask yourself, what about the people who are that needy who aren't so far away? What happens when they start listening to some charismatic leaders dogma, it's a simple formula remember.  So, do I want to give up my little piece of the dream that I've scrabbled hard all my life to get? Not a chance, I'm not that altruistic. Could I? Probably if someone gave me a well defined plan to adhere to, but for now, all of my revenues are tied up in grocery futures. Are there solutions? I hope so, and I hope that someone starts using these global communication tools for something besides checking out the Kardashians latest fashion faux pas, maybe we can get some dialogue going out there among people who do have the answers.