Has anyone else noticed the massive fear campaign directed at us by the media? It would seem the Rich and Greedy have nuzzled up with their political mouthpieces and are now in the process of trying to scare the hell out of us with their lies and innuendo.

C’mon, guys, give it a rest, will ya. You’ve been sucking the system dry for years, collecting your ridiculous salaries and obscene bonuses while running the companies into the ground. You walk away with millions and a whole lot of poor working folks end up losing what little they have and queuing up at the food line. Well, loath as I am to use a cliché, the chickens be coming home to roost.

You’re out there trying to scare us into thinking that our failure to support this staggering level of corporate welfare will somehow force the banks to stop lending which in turn could jeopardize company payrolls, car loans, mortgage loans, college loans, even, and I find this so absurd, cause people’s FICO scores to go down. Man, you all are getting desperate, huh?

Well, here’s a thought for ya: if people’s FICO scores are going to go down over this, why don’t we just really screw the scores and call a general strike: stop paying those mortgages, those auto and student loans, rip up those credit cards and toss the next credit card bill in the trash. We might go down but you’d go down with us and that, IMHO, would be cool.

I’ll be the first to admit I know little about economics but I do know this: If a bank loans me a dollar, that dollar is making money for the bank. If they don’t loan me that dollar, they make nothing. So please, don’t hand me your crap about financial collapse. If I don’t have the dollar, I’ll get by. Been poor a long time. I may not like it but I’m used to it. Are you?

This is High Noon, Shoot-out at the OK Corral. I just hope there are enough of us brave enough to stare you all down. By and by you’ll loan the money that needs to be loaned. After all, ya gotta pay the payments on those multiple dwellings you own and, you know, those high-end autos need a lot of maintenance, and jet fuel for the Lear, I mean, have you seen the cost of that stuff?

***

I just read an interesting article by Michael Moore: “The Rich Are Staging a Coup This Morning“. I think he may be on to something there. Hey, every despot who’s been forced out of office loots the treasury on the way out the door. Our despot is getting close to the end of his term. Sure looks like that’s what he’s doing here.

There was a time in my youth when Nixon was evil incarnate, a time when I honestly expected tanks to roll down the street and marshal law to be declared, a time when hair past your collar would be grounds for imprisonment or worse.

I am older now and supposedly wiser and I’d take old Tricky Dick back in a heartbeat. Jumpin’ Jackboots, Batman, there’s a plague loose across the land. Is this really America, the land of the free, home of the brave or have I, in my advancing addled state, fallen through some interdimensional crack into another reality?

First Dude? Are we seriously involved in an election where one side has picked a running mate who claims she’s proud to be a hockey mom and her husband refers to himself as First Dude? I swear, if I wrote a novel based around two such characters and circumstances, I’d be the laughing stock of every agent I sent it to. I could wallpaper a mansion with the rejection slips I’d garner. I mean, this scenario is beyond the pale of fiction. Stephen King couldn’t write this and get it published.

$750,000,000,000 to bail out a bunch of greedy, filthy rich, conscienceless, immoral assholes? People are losing their homes. The bridges in this country are falling apart. The roads are in severe disrepair. Our schools are hovels. Our children are being left way way way behind the rest of the world but lordy lordy can they take a test. We don’t have to jump on a plane and fly to Africa or South America to see a Third World country. All we need to do is walk out our door because that’s what we’re becoming. And I think those greedy, filthy rich, conscienceless, immoral assholes like that idea just fine.

$3,000,000,000,000 to blow up a country that was no threat to us just to kill a guy we supported when we thought we could use him. How many men and women, Iraqi and American, British and French and those from whatever other country foolish enough to involve themselves in Bush’s Folly, have died so Bush’s greedy, filthy rich, conscienceless, immoral asshole friends could line their pockets with weapon sales, reconstruction and oil money. And how many enemies have we made in the process. Bush’s Folly was perhaps the greatest incentive to join a terrorist organization ever inflicted on the world. We are going to be hated, HATED!, for a long, long time by people who have every right in the world to hate us. Way to go on winning those hearts and minds, W!

And where the fuck is the media when Johnny comes home in a body bag? Where is the media period? Bunch of fucking wimps. Freedom of the press my ass. We haven’t had freedom of the press since the Vietnam war. The powers that be learned a valuable lesson back then. Dumb down America, keep everyone scared and use the advertising dollar to effectively circumvent the First Amendment.

But there is a far bigger loss. Pogo said it, long ago, and it holds true today: We have met the enemy and he is us. Collectively we have more than enough anger and more than enough clout to bring these greedy, filthy rich, conscienceless, immoral assholes to their knees. But do we do anything about it? Do we take to the streets? Burn down the house? Refuse to buy their overpriced wares. Refuse to buy into lie after lie after bloody lie? No, we keep filling up our tanks and cheer when they scream ‘drill, baby, drill’ like that’s going to solve anything. Hate to break it to ya but if they started drilling today we wouldn’t see that crude make it to the pump for at least 10 years and by that time 4 bucks a gallon is going to seem really cheap. And here’s another little tid-bit for you to consider: We be running out of oil. Period. Gone. Nada. No more sticky goop.

We buy their genetically altered food, their hormone ridden milk, their overpriced goods and services, pay outrageous taxes and get nothing, NOTHING, in return. Our jobs are far from stable and if we get laid off we get squat, regardless of how conscientious we may have been. Some CEO totally screws a company, hundreds, thousands lose their jobs and he walks away with mega-millions in his pocket. We buy the politicos’ bullshit and vote for them only to be butt-fucked again and again and when the time comes round again for more lies, we buy into those all over again.

What the Fuck is wrong with this country and why is no one rising up to smite the greedy, filthy rich, conscienceless, immoral assholes that are running it into the ground.

This is definitely NOT my beautiful country.

Don’t piss off Wal-mart. Asda, a company owned by the giant conglomerate, persuaded Random House to pull the best-selling children’s book My Sister Jodie by Jacqueline Wilson after a reader found, oh my, a ‘dirty word’ in the story. Damn, being a writer and trying to write something that will please an agent, an editor and the publisher’s marketing department, not to mention Barnes & Nobel, is difficult enough. Now we have to make sure we don’t upset the delicate sensibilities of Wal-Mart.

Nor the sensibilities of anyone else, for that matter. In the same article linked above, it’s noted that Random House pulled a book about Mohammed for fear it would offend Muslims. If this keeps up, we’ll all be down to reading Dick and Jane books. No, wait, gender stereotypes. I’m sure that must offend someone so forget about Dick and Jane.

Man, the more I think about this, the more I see how far we could run with it. I say let’s don’t just pull them from the shelves, let’s have us a real ’save the world’s sensibilities’ book burning bonfire. We’ll be heroes!

We could start with all of Clive Cussler’s books cause I know for a fact they offend a friend of mine on Backspace. For myself, I would love to see all of James Patterson’s books burned because, really, they are all the same story over and over and I find his lack of creativity offensive. And I can’t be the only one who finds stories with long drawn out middles and no beginning or end offensive so pull Glimmer Train and other such post-modern literary mags off the shelf and toss them in the fire.

Might McCain supporters find Obama’s books offensive? Pull those puppies and burn em.

Ghosts, goblins, witches and warlocks, vampires even? We know these horribly satanic things offend some so off to the fire they go. Violence? Sex? Violence and Sex? Sex and Death? Death? Books about gays? Books about gays as normal, loving couples? OH MY! Burn baby burn and then superheat the ashes.

Mark Twain and Jon Clinch both used the *N* word in their respective books about Huckleberry Finn. I’m pretty sure that must offend someone so off to the bonfire with their work.

Richard Dawkins‘ book The God Delusion offended a whole lot of folks. Come to think of it, so does Dawkins himself, or so I’ve heard. Hell, throw em both on the fire.

I could go on and on but let’s face it, we already know it’s gonna be a tough job just as we know the job must be done. The really tough and important tasks in life are like that. And, as big and powerful as they are, it’s really too much and too important a job to leave to the likes of Wal-Mart and Random House alone. We’ve got lend our collective hand in this noble cause. We can start by burning down all the bookstores and public libraries, narrowing our objective to personal and private libraries once the larger objective is accomplished. We’ll remove all the people from harm first, of course. After all, these poor, misguided seekers of the written word know not what they do. We don’t want to hurt anyone. We’re just trying to save their delicate sensibilities.

Technorati Tags: Wal-mart, Random House, My Sister Jodie, Jacqueline Wilson, Barnes & Nobel, Mohammed, Muslims, Clive Cussler, James Patterson, Glimmer Train, McCain, Obama, Mark Twain, Jon Clinch, Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion