"Over the last thirty years, the United States has been taken over by an amoral financial oligarchy, and the American dream of opportunity, education, and upward mobility is now largely confined to the top few percent of the population. Federal policy is increasingly dictated by the wealthy, by the financial sector, and by powerful (though sometimes badly mismanaged) industries such as telecommunications, health care, automobiles, and energy. These policies are implemented and praised by these groups’ willing servants, namely the increasingly bought-and-paid-for leadership of America’s political parties, academia, [corporate media], and lobbying industry."
Charles Ferguson
The establishment media loves to play the red-blue game that has been set up by the corporate oligarchs. The left has their watering holes, and the right has their testosterone pits. And those who find comfort in black and white red-blue treatments of political and social issues will tend to migrate to one or the other, to find comfort among liars and hypocrites who 'say for pay.'
At the highest levels it is really not a red-blue game at all, except when it manifests as a power struggle between what may seem like competing crime families.
We are in a period of historically extreme economic inequality. And it is not some accident, or some act of God, or innocent mistake in economic theories by well intentioned philosopher kings.
Society has been divided into the have-little-or-nothings and the have-most-and-want-all-the-rests. This is both a side effect and a feature of a kleptocracy.
The leading figures of both sides of the aisle and their enablers in the press and the universities are also very aware of their positions in this great divide, where they wish to be, and whom they serve. And they guard their positions quite jealously. We are in a virtualized society managed around positions, connections, and credentials— it's all about access and license.
I get it. One can be led, slowly but surely, to the top of a very high mountain. And from there you are shown the vast material splendours of the world. And you are flattered, and congratulated on having 'made it.' You are special, and not like all the rest.
And you are subtly instructed on what you must do going forward to maintain your special status, your access to power, and your collection of toys, and hosts of flatterers and admirers. I am not speaking figuratively here, but in some cases literally. This happens.
And if you go forward they entangle you, and you come to believe that you deserve it, all of it. And they teach you to secretly despise the good and the innocent and the weak as being naive or bitter, and a drain on your resources— and you are theirs.
Each of us in our own way will have experience some such encounter between good and evil. Some moreso than others. But in every case, the presence of good and evil in this world are not imaginary, or the result of some stomach upset or poor choice in base case economic assumptions.
And the choice of whom to serve, generally made over time, is also real. Most of the time people make it but don't think about it. They find their comfort in illusions and distractions.
Only by the grace of God are we saved from the lion's mouth. I can work for free for the rest of my life, always falling in fear and trembling as a poor servant but always rising, to repay that tender mercy and never really be worthy, but obligated nonetheless.
We know what we must do. His yoke is easy and his burden light. Need little, want less, love more.