Capitalism in the U.S. and other European-colonized nations has a lot to answer for. Americans are seduced by all of the stuff they can buy, the perceived luxury they can obtain, the exotic (often out of season) foods they can eat, even if they spend themselves into an unstable personal financial quagmire to do it. They they're scared that if anything happens to rock that boat, they're personally sunk and will lose all of that stuff, let alone those luxuries. Could end up homeless. Houseless. Bush and his pals bank on that fear, along with terrorism threats, to keep those people in line.

But look at our extravagant lifestyle and at the "poor" in America. There are many who are, by comparison to the majority of Americans, very poor. There are many who will not get out of that situation alive. Yet compare these poor to the poor in the Sudan and other third world hot spots around the world and America's poor are rich by comparison. So what is happening here?

I think those neocons are fully aware of the bondage in which capitalism holds many Americans. And they strive to keep that control by literally buying votes--offering to let Americans have more of their own money, offering tax rebates (look at the child credit purposely sent months after tax season so people will remember receiving the gelt), less government oversight, blah blah blah. Look out for Number One. Mind the Main Chance.

The poor, schools, children, mentally ill, the elderly, fall through vast cracks that exist in that system. The liberal sides of the equation, and the moderate, see a need to support those who are not able to support themselves, see a need to slow consumption by the wealthy, and see the need to educate a nation, not just "my child," and to provide basic services for everyone, such as health care benefits. Along with this comes the realization that as long as the poor of this nation but in particular other nations feel the need to glean a living from the land in such a way to destroy the health of the land (thus the building blocks of clean air and clean water), they will not be able to reach a level where they can distribute the labor and the environmental impact differently (yeah, it works out more socialist, doesn't it? Too bad. It isn't a really a dirty word.) Pooling the resources to care for the greatest number of people isn't a crime and it isn't evil.

Capitalism again blinds those more prosperous Americans to the impact they theyselves have on the environment with their consumption of land, of fossil fuels (gasoline and plastic, in particular) and their generally wasteful ways. As long as they can go wherever they want whenever they want, they're truly "free." Not.

The subject of world-wide terror introduced above is part of this process to let the rich keep getting richer, let the poor and middle classes stay frightened. And let those who have oil make sweetheart deals with those in power in the U.S. and other european colonial powers. There are chinks in that plan, though. The oil folks who have lived so lavishly for years are seeing their system crumble at the edges. Look at the Saudis lately. Iraq is not just George W. Bush's Rubicon, it is the developed world's Rubicon. It has been crossed, and there is no going back.

SRS