America is now led by people who have power because they do not follow the ethical and moral concepts that I once thought inviolate. We are experiencing the exact opposite of what I was taught, what I taught students, and what I believe. I am being forced to re-examine the values that have guided me for over 77 years, and to try to understand those in power.
I am searching to know how those in power construct their belief systems. This first of three blogs is based on what I have learned about the roots of their understanding.
They believe:
That we have an expanding population and a limited economic system that is unable to provide for the masses. There are over 340 million people who are Americans. Our population is growing at an exponential rate. This generates increasing numbers of people to be employed, maintained, and useful. At the same time, automation of manufacturing and marketplace competition have lowered the opportunities for jobs. To them, this means that the economy does not generate enough demand for workers except temporarily in the aging infrastructure area. Projecting infrastructure repair and expansion jobs out ten years or so they assume that most jobs end and we can no longer sustain these higher employment levels. They conclude that these expenditures create a bump in employment, but end up leaving people unemployed, unproductive, and burdens on the state.
They believe that as our current economy is barely providing adequate work for millions of people. Good-paying jobs are shrinking, while service sector low-paying jobs are barely keeping people employed at wages – based on their worth – that do not sustain workers and their families. As citizens, cannot work to generate adequate income for food and shelter, they cannot pay for their welfare, medical, or educational wants. They conclude that even investing a trillion dollars in creating infrastructure jobs, leaves us no better off in the future than we are today. Therefore, programs like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and The Affordable Care Act, cannot be maintained because the workforce cannot generate the funds to continue them.
They argue that the money people need to survive in this economy has to come from somewhere and that the Fed cannot print more money and increase the national debt. They observe that citizens are looking toward government for solutions, but government must protect the wealth of those who will determine the future. America, as a state focused on the good of all, is not viable. The super wealthy (top 3%) must be allowed to scrape wealth off the table and into their own wallets. All of this at a time when hundreds of billions of new dollars each year are demanded for social services like medical care and public schools. Programs for people who cannot pay their costs, like medical care and social security programs must be privatized and ended. As education does not make economic sense, we must kill public schools by privatizing education.
Over the last three decades they have designed systems to deal with the projected calamity of excess population and failing economies. They have put in place economic policies that encourage the removal of wealth from the U.S. to protect it. They say that as students of history, they are able to project that disease, atomic war, starvation, or other population reducing means will reduce the population of the planet to manageable levels.
They observe that planet Earth has a limited carrying capacity. Destructive, inefficient practices in agriculture and industry, caused by an experimental economic system, have almost used up the nation’s resources. Wrong thinking about human rights created a mismanaged political and economic power structure which encouraged overpopulation, polluted the oceans, polluted potable water, and created atmospheric problems that may have sped up the warming of the planet. The governments they control take the stand that this is “bad-science” so that citizens do not demand changes in our policies that will only waste wealth on things we cannot change.
Those in power, claiming to understand reality, believe that agricultural expansion, driven by population explosion, has almost reached its limit. To harvest the last dollars for those who will design the new systems, the key elements of the eco system must be stripped, burned, plowed under, and polluted with chemicals designed to temporarily increase production regardless of the cost to lifeforms.
They have taken over governments (Federal and State) to facilitate the final extraction of wealth for the 3%. In positions of power within the government, their companies like Exxon-Mobil have encouraged destructive practices like fracking, arctic and ocean drilling, and unnecessary dirty energy production while attempting to limit what is spent on alternative energy sources like solar, wind and nonpolluting sources of energy which they believe will only prolong the dying economies. They brag that leading companies like Nestle are gaining control of potable water and will sell it to extract more wealth for their benefactors. They know that this process of wealth accumulation will allow their masters to determine the future of humankind.
As Daniel Quinn has said (Ishmael, 1992), the takers have almost defeated the users.
This ‘taker’ mindset is what I believe drives the current thinking of the billionaires who now control the puppet politicians they have placed over the last thirty years.
Continued in Blog II…
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