But... But... if everybody had equal access to quality goods and services...

... what fun would it be to be rich? How would they keep score? How would we all know our betters from the peasant classes?

None of that nonsense in our utopian meritocracy, where anybody can grow up to be a CEO or some other kind of corporate titan.

Or even a US president, if they have off-the-charts levels of megalomania combined with lack of self-esteem necessary to subject themselves to months and even years of the classic American political campaign for national office.

So they're helping you defend your right to sink or swim on your own merits, and since they created the game and made up all the rules, amazingly they nearly always win.

It's an easy game to win, apparently. Victory simply involves keeping another big lie under wraps for another few dozen generations – this one being the grand secret that the rich nearly always manage to avoid the forces that shape and often destroy the "less fortunate" among us. They've created their own impenetrable white boy closed circuit affirmative action societies serve as the greatest set of social promotion programs of all time.

So, despite their apparent unconcern about wingnut gun violence, even in churches (many are in the gun-manufacturing business, so why lobby against their own revenue stream?) the rich then tell you your sacred right to choose is on the line here. And if you don't insist on keeping the role of choice alive in all aspects of American society, you'd be sacrificing traditional American values like ...

... your right to choose which feces-stained, urine-soaked mattress on the fourth floor of which cold water walk-up where you’ll go to die because your so-called "health care" policy exceeded its lifetime benefits cap and your family couldn’t afford a hospital bed where you might get treatment, or even a hospice where you could at least die with dignity.

... or which of our prestigious, world-class universities you're locked out of not because the "less fortunate" are all idiots, but because eliminating nearly all federal subsidies -- whether directly to students or to the schools -- have put the Stanfords and Princetons and Yales and MITs and Hahh-vahhds out-of-reach of all but the filthiest of the filthy rich, thereby keeping the most prestigious degrees in the hands of those who've run the show down the generations.

All this based solely on the ability to pay, and so the system turns out cretins like our previous alleged president who slid through academic life with the usual "gentleman's C" as it's called when the idiot scions of the ruling class ride daddy's donations to a sham diploma.

... or waving good-bye to which old-grove redwood grove the Maxxams and Chuckie Hurwiches of the world would have had to keep their slimy hands off rather than taking Saint Raygun's maxim at face value – the one that goes "if you've seen one redwood tree, you've seen 'em all" – and shoving another few hundred million into various off-shore, tax-free accounts.

... or wasting countless hours sucking exhaust fumes in this planetary destruction derby called "the Commute." Urban sprawl and its hideous downsides were wired into American culture in part because of an old conspiracy suit won by the plaintiffs but which various federal courts decided was only worth a few bucks from the losers.

Consider the outcome of what's generally called The General Motors Conspiracy, which ran from 1927 to 1955, in which, Standard Oil, Phillips Petroleum, Firestone Rubber, Mack Manufacturing (trucks) and Greyhound Lines pooled money and set up front businesses to destroy the urban rail system of 100 American Cities.

Their punishment? They each had to pay $5,000 in fines and additional court costs of $4,220.78. Damn good investment in the American way of making a buck. They realized hundreds of billions of them that time round and may well be positioning themselves now for the big coup of the early 21st century: another few generations of building sprawl and car addiction (hybrids and electrics this time around) and ironically championed under the banner of solving the global warming problem.


It's not a tragedy; it's a script.


sf