I’ve realized the walls in the United States exist between sexists and feminists and between racists and minorities.

The outcome of our current political shift will require parties interested in segregation, discrimination and erecting ACTUAL Berlin-stlye walls along the Mexian-American border to recognize the inevitability of equilibrium. It doesn’t have to be painful for the sexists and the racists to concede their fall from power.

There will be no “takeover”. There doesn’t have to be bloody revolution. Just let the meek have a piece of your pie.

Put down your guns. We won’t tell God what you’ve done to the poor and to women and minorites. We’ll let all of that go. We’re peaceful people just trying to take part in what you’ve left us of the American Dream.

White people are so scared of black people.
They bulldoze out to the country, and put up houses on little loop-d-loop streets.
And while America gets its heart cut right out of its chest
the Berlin wall still runs down main street separating east side from west.
And nothing is stirring, not even a mouse, in the boarded up stores
and the broken down houses
So they hang colorful banners off all the street lamps
just to prove they got no manners, no mercy, and no sense.
And I wonder then what it will take for my city to rise.
First we admit our mistakes and then we open our eyes.
The ghosts of old buildings are haunting parking lots
in the city of good neighbors that history forgot.
I remember the first time I saw someone lying on the cold street
I thought, “I can’t just walk past you, this can’t just be true.”
But I learned by example to just keep moving my feet.
It’s amazing the things that we all learn to do.
So we’re led by denial like lambs to the slaughter
serving empires of style and carbonated sugar water
And the old farmroad’s a four-lane
that leads to the mall and my dreams are all guillotines waiting to fall
And I wonder then what it will take for my country to rise.
First we admit our mistakes and then we open our eyes.
‘til nation’s last taker succumbs to one last dumb decision
And America the beautiful is just one big subdivision.

–Ani Difranco

Michael Moore hit the nail on the head in this interview with Larry King about the auto industry bailout:

And I mean those guys that were testifying today, one of — the Ford chairman is making something like $22 million a year and his company lost $2 billion last year. The G.M. chairman is making $15 million a year. His company lost $39 billion last year. And he’s rewarded with a $15 million payout.

I mean this is — this is just absolutely insane.

But I’ll tell you what it really has proven to me, Larry, is that these guys, after all of that stuff they’ve been telling us all these years about go capitalism, free market, free enterprise, they don’t believe in any of that.

They don’t believe in free enterprise or a free market. They want — they want socialism for themselves. They want a handout…

KING: Yes.

MOORE: …and a net for themselves. To hell with everybody else, but give it to them.

KING: As…

MOORE: And I think, really, what we’re seeing here right now with them, with the banks, we’re seeing the end of capitalism — the end of capitalism as we know it.

KING: Has…

MOORE: And I say good riddance.

KING: As Mel Brooks…

MOORE: It hasn’t helped the people or the planet.

KING: As Mel Brooks once classically said, where did we go right?

The rich have this view of poor people as a disease, and not knowing their take on disease, I can only assume their strategy is to ignore them and maybe they will go away. The homeless don’t make it on our census sheets. They’re not counted among the current unemployed. Their story has been untold for decades. Unfortunately that is nothing new.

Our “Free Market” social contract has been to agree on poverty as a casualty of a system skewed to protect corporations over individuals. The agreement gave the Middle class ammunition in their inevitable confrontation with poverty in their communities (assuming most Middle-classers can’t afford the upgrade to a gated community); the justification for dismissing the poor and homeless as lazy, drunk, or worse.

America’s Upper class now has more capital than any of us can even begin to wrap our heads around (Bernie Madoff just walked away from having to account for the $1,000,000, disguised as jewelry, he laundered to his family). What do they know about working for a living? What do they know about keeping a budget, making ends meet, or being self-made? It really is just easier to understand their economy in terms of an elite socialist niche, carved out for about 5% of Americans, under the guise of a “Free Market”.

Only the Middle class offers a realistic study on Capitalism as it’s been exalted. It’s the last group to walk the Capitalist line, follow the Capitalist rules, and prop up the Capitalist banks. This army marched long enough to spin their neighbor’s decline in the same way they spun poverty: to apply labels of laziness, drunkenness, and insanity in order not to empathize and potentially fall down with them. The Middle Class’s race to the bottom is marked by broken families, rising substance abuse, suicide, and a nice, stucco exterior.

Earth to Middle Class: Stop pretending you ever had an invitation to the American Capito-socialist orgy. Such an invitation comes with a shining, super-socialist safety net should you decide to run your own little Ponzi scheme. I don’t know about you guys, but my safety net is currently my Dad. What’s his?

Everyone knows how it feels to commit small or even large sins: we know what we’re doing. We evaluate risk vs. reward. We consider the damage that could arise from our actions. And based on whatever decision we make, we are either corrupt or not. It’s that simple.

Problems in our lives arise from corruption from EVERYONE, in EVERY action taken EVERY day. Everything from cheating on our homework to cheating on our taxes to stealing our elections. I don’t need to list any here, and I say this without smirk; we all know what those things are.

Our politicians’ sins are more “sticky” than than the sins of most in that whatever they do directly impacts our lives. With the exception of insanity, there is no explanation other than corruption to account for any decision made against the public interest by our representatives. They are tasked with the very duty of weighing our interests. So, even if those poor decisions are the result of poor judgment, simply, we MUST hold them accountable. That is OUR duty, even if our lives aren’t directly impacted in corruption’s fallout, to account for the lives of our fellow citizens whose lives ARE impacted.

I urge everyone to join me in putting aside the blanket assessment of our government as corrupt long enough to examine every official we elected. We have every resource at our disposal to do so. There is no excuse for our silence in these matters.

We mustn’t simply accept what we’re told by any talking head. Watch your officials on C-Span, uncut. Some of them may not be lying when they plead with us to trust them.

No one is untarnished by corruption. Let’s examine first our own corruption, inherent in ignoring and distracting the corruption in our government.