The Cold War

          The cold war is over. We won, okay? We won big time. We got the largest, best equipped, most technologically advanced military force in the world. A military three times the size of the second military force in the world: Russia. We could easily cut military spending by three hundred billion dollars and still be twice Russia’s force. Three hundred billion dollars would galvanize public education, Medicare, social security, and leave enough money to repair our crumbling infrastructure. Understand that the militaries of the 20-21^st  centuries are an industrial complex; an employment opportunity for millions. Bring the troops home. Guarantee them jobs revamping the nation’s infrastructure, building free clinics, developing community services for drug offenders. And there is the drug tie in. There is something I never understood about the persecution of drug addicts. Now just hold on before getting all worked up over the previous statement. Read this out. I do not defend criminal activity. At least not anymore, to be completely honest, there are crimes that I consider to be absolutes and there are crimes that are variables. Driving a car is a variable crime. If you are not drunk you can lawfully drive. If you are drunk it is against the law to drive a motor vehicle. Killing somebody is an absolute crime. Whether you are high or straight it is against the law to kill someone. We already have laws in place that protect people and public/private property. If someone harasses you or hurts you or steals off of you or kills you while they are under the influence of mind altering substances, they will be arrested whether or not drugs are illegal. The main argument against this opinion that I can think of is that drug addiction creates a desperation that inspires an inclination towards criminal behavior. Maybe. But money has been doing this on a much larger scale for millennia and it is not only still legal, it is worshipped. American taxpayers have paid far too much in result of overzealous lawmakers trying to make a name for themselves. And like the military, the American prison construct has become a booming industry. Thanks to the war on drugs- first declared by Nixon, escalated by Reagan, and privatized by Clinton- private prisons are an industry that is showing no signs of slowing down. Are there bad people? Absolutely. Do we need prisons? Yes. We should not be trying so hard to fill them is all. New laws are being proposed everyday. And everyday we lose a little more freedom. The United States constitutes five percent of the population on earth and incarcerates twenty-five percent of  the world’s prisoners. We don’t need to crucify people who do drugs. We don’t need to know who is doing drugs. We need to start asking the right questions. We need to ask , “Why do so many people feel the need to depend on drugs obtained through medical prescriptions or illicit activity?”

          There is a public confusion over federalization. I believe we should serve autonomy as much as possible. But the notion that human beings know better is far too reaching in today’s world. I too want the government out of my life as much as possible. But that is it, “as much as possible”. We can’t privatize things like public education because of concentrations of wealth. An area should not have the quality of its education depend on the amount of money that has been aggregated there. This goes with the medical system. We need a system of medical professionals that provide oversight, not the government. The government funds the system; it doesn’t run the system. It doesn’t even fund the system since the funds come from taxes. Why not let the insurance companies privatize with a public option if needed? It’s the medical institution that has become bloated with corrupt bureaucracy. Yes, the entire insurance lobby needs reform. This reform could be achieved through the restructuring of management. The government sees that taxes are distributed evenly to social services. In this sense, the government is the bank management. And what do you do when aforementioned management becomes a cancerous corruption that eats away the very foundation of our financial institutions? You bail them out! Well yeah, but I was hoping to say that we flush the lot of them and get new management. And who are the managers? Why, the megalomaniacal aristocrats of course.

          The richest one percent of the world’s population owns forty percent of all the wealth in the world. They employ divide and conquer tactics on the lower classes. The upper class has too much too lose. They are doing just fine with the way things are. The middle class has too much hanging over its head. I’ve been watching videos of peaceful protest rallies that were violently broken up by the police and in some instances the National Guard. Some incidents were purely malicious in intent. But most incidents were just cops side by side marching and physically forcing the protestors to move on. Some of these guys knew what they were doing was bullshit. And I bet if you would of went down and asked some of the police officers why they were being such pricks, they would tell you that they were just doing their jobs. If they lose their job they can’t support their families. What if they lose their homes? It is safe to deduce from this that they got their balls in a vice.

          Now the poor… the poor are a different slice of life altogether. They already are living at ground zero. The two kinds of people that you do not want to fuck with are those with everything to lose and those with nothing to lose. Maybe the battle of Megiddo will be between the rich and the poor. A financial apocalypse. The one advantage that the poor would have over the rich in this scenario is the free exchange of information. Information is intelligence. Intelligence has been regulated by the governing class since the atomic age by a process referred to as compartmentalization. In this construct, only a privileged few know the entire scope of the operation around them, and the rest of the people only know what they need in order to survive or perform a specific duty. This creates a need to know basis. You will never be privy to the true objective; nor will you ever know how this objective will be achieved. A situation ripe for a communication breakdown. If information is not shared, confusion will eventually ensue. This can create mass disorientation in times of panic The way the ruling class overcomes this disadvantage is through fear and lies. First they try financial intimidation. If that doesn’t work there is always the fear of physical harm. But if people were ever to overcome this fear…