Capital Violence

I was planning on writing a humorous entry today, about the irony-filled 112th Congress.  I really really needed a laugh.

But the news from Arkansas got here first.  I almost said, "shot that down".  How violent this country has become -- again.  We're told it is because of emotions raw because of the economy, but it is not people who have lost jobs and homes that are taking guns to streets and rallies.  It is those who still have health care, retirement, a roof over their heads.

Yet they have been filled with the fear and helplessness of seeing others facing catastrophic loss.  Helpless because it could happen to them.  They need to know that it can't happen to them.  They need to know that it was the fault of the homeless, the uninsured, the unemployed.  They need to have something to do to protect themselves.  They need to know that their security isn't going to be taken away from them.

Enter the Michele Bachmanns, the Glenn Becks, the Sarah Palins, the Jan Brewers to fill in the blanks.  The government is your enemy.  The government, President Obama, Nancy Pelosi, are going to take your health care away from you, will take your job, your home.  The words, the ideas, are stupid, and reek of paranoia, but they echo the fears in the souls of those who have, but not too much.  Those who also could lose everything.

And meanwhile, the corporations are feeding the flame of those fears with their anonymous, patriotic sounding websites, tour buses and rallies.  The government is fascist, socialist, communist, atheist.  The hispanics  -- no, the illegals -- will cross the border, carrying drugs, take your jobs, and kill you.  Health care for all really means death panels.  Are you going to let them get away with it?  Are you???

And people who are stupid, but shrewd, greedy, power hungry, use words and phrases about gun sights and the right to bear arms.  Voters approve idiotic amendments to state constitutions that insure that their guns won't be taken away.  And while they are making sure they have the right to shoot, they also want to make sure none of those illegal aliens vote, so they'll add a new amendment to the US Constitution, and waste resources on voter id's that will deny the most powerless in our country their right to vote.


Why?


Follow the money.  Watch those mouthpieces on t.v. and in Congress get rich.  And see whose pockets they are in.  Their allegiances are to the largest corporations, the wealthiest of the wealthy.  Who know that the problem with this country is not hispanics, or health care.  But as long as we are fighting to take our rights away from each other, they are free to continue to run our country and its citizens into the ground.


And in Arizona, yesterday, that happened literally.