I feel as if I live in an Ayn Rand novel, and cannot shake this impression no matter how hard I try. The news time and time again reads like alternating chapters out of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead. It is madness that we are living in someone's science fiction novel.
For over a month now, Greece has been descending steadily towards anarchy. Even the IMF may not be able to save it. It's only a matter of time before nations like Germany and England, embattled with their own troubles may try to cut the rope to keep from being dragged down into this financial disaster themselves. We ourselves are teetering financially as a nation and probably cannot avoid what has befallen Greece. As a matter of fact, the entire world will probably not avoid that fate at this point. Not even China.
An now the 'Entitlement Riots' have begun. Basic services that had been viewed as rights for decades and spending on social services long out of control have finally gone over the cliff. Currently forward momentum from the leap off the cliff is keeping things going, but with the support gone, and no one really able to 'catch' the nation now entering freefall with the reversion of their bonds to Junk status... the plummet is assured. In desperation, there is talk about privatizing the Greek state run medical service. That at least is a positive sign, but I wouldn't hold my breath.
But... why do those who had been collecting government checks and services believe that they should be immune from the same troubles and financial destruction as those long burdened with their support who now are also suffering? The social services safety net has it's limits. Too many strings of the net have been cut by the failing economy, and then became overloaded with too many demanding what they think is there inherent right.
So why the label of Greed on the poor? Simple, because they act as if their need, which is genuine supersedes the needs of those who can no longer provide for them. They are inured in a culture that has told them it was all right to be a ward of the state because there were enough people to support their indigent lifestyle. Of course, there were/are those who need that type of financial help, but I doubt they are the ones rioting. The ones rioting are the ones who should be working to support those in need, but instead have found it easy to keep voting themselves a lifestyle off the taxpayer.
This is why I call them greedy. They have no right to manipulate the charity of others to demand their life of 'lotus eating' and oddly pathetic luxury. Why work? Someone from the government pays me to just vote for them. And now, the checks are stopping, and by damn I'm going to do something about it! I'll get out there and be obnoxious and call people who suffered under my yoke of entitlement names and kill bank workers who are the embodiment of who is to blame because politicians that gave me checks are telling me so.
This is coming here. Fast. It is being orchestrated by those with vested interests in using those who are used to living off the system for potentially generations now. They have come to believe that life revolves around government check, apathy and voting for the politicians that say they deserve more because it's not their fault they're in the situation they're in. This pandering has gone on under the guise of charity, when it's only enslavement. It is not kindness when you enable laziness, indecency, criminal behavior, promiscuity and crime while eschewing positive social values like industry, charity, community pride and chastity. They have nothing of value to them invested in their neighborhoods, cities, states and sometimes even their own homes. They just demand for themselves.
But now, the butcher's bill is here and it is long and expensive. These people long used to being taken care of by Uncle Sugar will soon be bereft of support. And they will protest, and then, agitated by our activist in chief and agitprop artists like Sharpton and La Raza, they will eventually riot for what is 'owed them'. Sure as God made little green apples. But this is because they have been lied to for so long, the concept of a different way of life is alien to them. Work? that's for suckers! I can get me a gubmint check and sit at home smoking pot or playing xbox, or going to the bar getting drunk and pregnant. Personal responsibility is face down in a greasy puddle on some side street, robbed of his wallet shoes and jacket.
The worst part is, this is how Napoleon, Lenin, Hitler, Mussolini, Mao and every other tin pot dictator came to power. First the trouble happens and those at the bottom are stirred up in righteous indignation over losing what is 'rightfully theirs'. Sometimes this is true, other times... MOST other times, no. Then when the government is in suitable anarchy and overwhelmed, a new reformer sweeps in and promises the moon for nothing. Paints the overwhelmed regime rightly or wrongly as having lied to the people and easy solutions are just around the corner. All they have to do is trust him and give him unchecked power. And the anguished people do. Again and again... they do.
But at least we are not all ignorant of Santayana's warning. We are educated enough to know that history has shown us this before, and with this forewarning, we are forearmed. We know that those who desire to destroy the foundation of this nation are in power right now and are fomenting the means to solidify their own power permanently first by quasi legal methods, and then overtly after they've been given temporary authority to do so. Then it will be too late. Our worst nightmares of 1984, A Handmaid's Tale, Brave New World and many other Utopia to Dystopia tales will become reality.
The problem ultimately is for those of us who see what's coming is convincing those blinded by 'enlightened self interest' and are unaware, as well as those who are greedy and do not care about the consequences of what they are doing to change course. The means of what they are doing must be exposed to all, for they are not justified by the ends. Their desired conclusion is an illusion that cannot happen in this world, only the next. To try and force it on those who do not desire it is one of the worst atrocities that can be committed from one man on another. To do so out of ignorance is potentially forgivable with proper penance. To do so willingly and with knowledge is reprehensible.
Why rail about this, screaming at it like a lost soul at the moon? Because it's not too late to stop the opportunists, but it will take the convincing of many weak minded neighbors, long raised on the TV half hour solution and no pain penalties... a cost free discipline society.... that there will have to be pain, and hard work and it will probably have to last a long time more than a single TV season. They will, like their grandparents or great grandparents, do without the luxuries we have become addicted to culturally. They will have to support themselves or come together as a community, as we have done since Jamestown and Plymouth, and help each other survive, stabilize and then grow again.
The world is on the bring of either a new Dark Age, or a rekindling of western capitalist culture after a horrific battle for it's very soul has been waged. We have lost our spirit to materialism. Hopefully this time of cataclysmic trial will bring us back to things that are important. Family, Friends, Neighbors, Nation, God.
If it doesn't...
...God save us from ourselves, for we could not do it without you.
Here endeth the lesson.
