Depressing Stuff
Anybody here pay their own health insurance premiums? I do. I received notice that my premium is going up 26% this year. And oh yeah: I have to pay a chunk of the same premium increase for my staff. * * * * * * * Great country, this USA. Perfect place to be middle class: you're forced to subsidize the poor and even people from other countries (how many times am I going to get behind a person at the store with food stamps who can't speak the language?), and you're forced to bailout millionaires on Wall Street. Meanwhile, the cost of tuition and health care skyrockets, with food prices just trailing barely behind. * * * * * * * The authorities say food prices are only ticking up a little (sample), but they're lying. Go to a restaurant, where the grotesquerie of miniscule portions and escalating prices is evident to anyone who dines out even occasionally. * * * * * * * Oh, and Obama wants to raise the minimum wage. That'll help the middle class afford things.
The Self-Rape Myth
Thing is, I actually think this is a great country, but it's a stupid country. Until it sees that the state and federal governments (especially the federal) is the enemy of our society, things will only get worse. We need to elect politicians who understand this adversarial relationship and want to fight against the attacker.
The adversarial relationship, incidentally, that goes all the way back to the earliest forms of political organization. It's always "the governors" against "the governed." We've just tricked ourselves (or let ourselves get tricked) into thinking that it's our government since it's comprised of elected officials. That myth might be the cornerstone of all our country's problems. We insist on thinking that we're raping ourselves (how, I don't know--I find the contortional mental imagery disturbing), instead of getting raped. Until we understand that there's an attacker, things will never change.
I'm painfully aware, however, that most (80%?) people in this country, thoroughly acquainted with how things are due to their high school civics, will read this and think it's the mental meanderings of a nut.
Something for Lent
"To live a gentle way, it is more important to respect ourselves, never growing irritated with ourselves or our imperfections. Although it is reasonable that we should be displeased and grieved at our own faults, we need to guard against being bitter, angry, or fretful about them. Many people fall into the error of being angry because they have been angry, or impatient because they have given way to impatience; this keeps them in a chronic state of irritation, strengthens the impressions made, and prepares one for a fresh fall on the first occasion. Moreover, all this anger and irritation against one's self fosters pride, springing as it does from self-love, which is disturbed and upset by its own imperfections." Francis de Sales
