Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Sheep and Goats....

Forbes Magazine tell us that social security can not go bankrupt and gives us a convincing argument of why that is so.

So why, then, are billionaires and the plutocrats in mainstream politics forever telling us we are doomed?

Because, they have a Randian alternative to social security, one where THEY benefit from all that money being exchanged.

See, billionaires want to kill social security so they can make trillions off us poor working folks when they set up mandated privatised retirement accounts. With those accounts set up, the billionaires and their brokers can make big bucks speculating with our money, with little risk to them but BIG risk to us if their betting and wheeling and dealing doesn't pay off. Like a casino, it's house rules, and the game is set up so that the house wins.

Charlie Sheen has been blasted far and wide for his crazier-than-fuck behavior at his one-man shows he's doing around the country, but more and more I see it as a cleverly-crafted social critique of the highest order. When people in the audience complain about his performance, he says, "I've already got your money!"

Bill Maher, I think susses out the critique too, by comparing Sheen to Wall Street:



Wall Street billionaires are giving big bucks to mainstream politicians -- and effectively framing the message -- to make sure social security goes away, because in the end they know it doesn't matter if OUR privatised retirement accounts get zeroed out by THEIR speculation -- either way, they already have our money.

To these militant objectivists, they are Ayn Rand's John Galt, and what happens to us if they lose our money isn't even of secondary concern to them. It is survival of the fittest, and so long as they have our money -- or at the very least skim the trillions to be made off the top of our money if they have their way -- that is their primary, Randian concern, and if we are to work til we're 85 because we can't live on the crumbs left by their bad decisions, so be it, because, they already have our money.

In their world, there is no safety net, because the existence of poor folks is anathema to THEIR progress to Galtian perfection. Ayn Rand is their god, and her solution is now being pushed by the GOP.

Being publicly agnostic with a shading of atheism, it's perhaps odd I would turn to the Christian Bible for insight and guidance, but to me, there are very radical, very militant, very progressive lessons to be learned, and the GOP's march away from the Bible is warned against in the lesson of Matthew 31-40:
The Lord did say in so many words to the sheep -- "what you did for the most poor, destitute, old and sick of my brothers and sisters, you did the same for me," and the sheep were led into Heaven.

And the Lord did then turn to the goats, and in so many words said to them -- "what you did NOT do for the most poor, destitute, old and sick of my brothers and sisters, you did NOT do for me as well," and the goats were cast into Hell.
I ain't one to say who here are the sheep and who here are the goats, but I'll just close by asking the more religiously-minded of my Randian brothers and sisters, which path are you going to follow?