The Big Club
Today, by accident, I discovered the wicked humor of the late George Carlin. I spent the afternoon listening to YouTube clips of his stand up act while working. For some reason I had always thought that his comedy was too safe, when in fact it is quite the opposite. He is cynical and outrageous, but he gets many things right. In particular I like this rant:
Because the owners of this country don’t want that. I’m talking about the real owners now, the big, wealthy, business interests that control all things and make the big decisions. Forget the politicians, they’re irrelevant.
Politicians are put there to give you that idea that you have freedom of choice. You don’t. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land, they own and control the corporations, and they’ve long since bought and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the State Houses, and the City Halls. They’ve got the judges in their back pockets. And they own all the big media companies so they control just about all the news and information you get to hear. They’ve got you by the balls.
They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying to get what they want. Well, we know what they want; they want more for themselves and less for everybody else. But I’ll tell you what they don’t want-they don’t want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don’t want well informed, well educated people capable of critical thinking. They’re not interested in that. That doesn’t help them. That’s against their interest. You know something, they don’t want people that are smart enough to sit around their kitchen table and figure out how badly they’re getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard 30 fucking years ago.
They don’t want that, you know what they want? They want obedient workers, obedient workers. People who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork and just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime and the vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it.
And now they’re coming for your social security money. They want your fucking retirement money; they want it back so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street. And you know something? They’ll get it. They’ll get it all from you sooner or later because they own this fucking place. It’s a big club and you ain’t in it! You and I are not in the Big Club.
Well said, George, well said. I would never vote for McCain or any of his McCronies because they represent just what George Carlin was railing against--the wealthy power players who seek to repress individual and worker rights and promote corporate power at all costs. Their answer to global warming and environmental destruction--the greatest threat to our continual survival as a species--is not to promote green technology. It is to drill in a national wildlife refuge for what amounts to a drop of our national consumption of oil. Drill Baby Drill. They chanted it at their convention.
What bothers me is how this corporate-centric, trickle down, flat earth philosophy has, over the years, mascaraded itself has co-opted Christianity. Jesus was progressive. Today's conservatives blame the poor for their problems, but the Jesus that they claim to emulate walked among the poor--the dregs of his society--with compassion and understanding. Jesus wasn't an apologist for the pharisees.
But conservates have convinced many Americans that workers and the unions that represent them should be suppressed, corporations should be allowed to do what they want without regard to economic or environmental consequences, gays are to be hated, Mexicans who sneak into the US to work low paying jobs to provide a better life for their families should be discriminated against and hunted down (ignoring the fact that we are descendents of poor immigrants who were also despised by the reactionary elements of this country), gays should be hated and discriminated against...the list goes on. Republicans like a small government, if by small you mean small on justice but big on surveillance.
So yeah, you could say that I'm angry. I guess I have been for a long time, but the economic heydays that I enjoyed as a kid seem to be diminishing. Like many people my age, I cared about the issues but thought that this was the best we could do, that it doesn't matter how we vote or who is in office. The events of the past eight years have made me a believer. Bush's margin of victory was small--something like nine votes in every precinct--making it clear that every vote does count. I read statistics about how the most wealthy people keep getting wealthier while average people--people like me and everyone else I know--lose our economic power year after year. Then you have these banks that convinced average people, who don't know much about all these fancy terms but trust a smooth-talking bank guy in a suit, to buy a home with an adjustable rate mortgage. It used to be that you could trust your banker. If you can't trust the institution that holds the money that you work so hard for, your life savings, then who can you trust??
And then you read about the people who die because they don't have access to medical care. Their cancer doesn't get detected early enough because they can't afford the screening, but by the time they roll into the emergency room complaining of chest pain, it's too late. Countless stores. Why is it that medical care, the ability to see a physician, is not a guaranteed right? Even for a child? Health insurance companies post healthy profits, yet we have young and old who can't get the care they need. Medical insurance companies have powerful lobbyists.
All of this stuff sickens me. Why can't we have a society in which we encourage economic growth while at the same time giving everyone a good education, a doctor, and a banker they can trust? Our society, threatened by Republican-sponsored degregulation, is starting to resemble a sports game in which the rule book has been thrown out and the most powerful players have free reign to do as they please. No blood, no foul.
Because the owners of this country don’t want that. I’m talking about the real owners now, the big, wealthy, business interests that control all things and make the big decisions. Forget the politicians, they’re irrelevant.
Politicians are put there to give you that idea that you have freedom of choice. You don’t. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land, they own and control the corporations, and they’ve long since bought and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the State Houses, and the City Halls. They’ve got the judges in their back pockets. And they own all the big media companies so they control just about all the news and information you get to hear. They’ve got you by the balls.
They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying to get what they want. Well, we know what they want; they want more for themselves and less for everybody else. But I’ll tell you what they don’t want-they don’t want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don’t want well informed, well educated people capable of critical thinking. They’re not interested in that. That doesn’t help them. That’s against their interest. You know something, they don’t want people that are smart enough to sit around their kitchen table and figure out how badly they’re getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard 30 fucking years ago.
They don’t want that, you know what they want? They want obedient workers, obedient workers. People who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork and just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime and the vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it.
And now they’re coming for your social security money. They want your fucking retirement money; they want it back so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street. And you know something? They’ll get it. They’ll get it all from you sooner or later because they own this fucking place. It’s a big club and you ain’t in it! You and I are not in the Big Club.
Well said, George, well said. I would never vote for McCain or any of his McCronies because they represent just what George Carlin was railing against--the wealthy power players who seek to repress individual and worker rights and promote corporate power at all costs. Their answer to global warming and environmental destruction--the greatest threat to our continual survival as a species--is not to promote green technology. It is to drill in a national wildlife refuge for what amounts to a drop of our national consumption of oil. Drill Baby Drill. They chanted it at their convention.
What bothers me is how this corporate-centric, trickle down, flat earth philosophy has, over the years, mascaraded itself has co-opted Christianity. Jesus was progressive. Today's conservatives blame the poor for their problems, but the Jesus that they claim to emulate walked among the poor--the dregs of his society--with compassion and understanding. Jesus wasn't an apologist for the pharisees.
But conservates have convinced many Americans that workers and the unions that represent them should be suppressed, corporations should be allowed to do what they want without regard to economic or environmental consequences, gays are to be hated, Mexicans who sneak into the US to work low paying jobs to provide a better life for their families should be discriminated against and hunted down (ignoring the fact that we are descendents of poor immigrants who were also despised by the reactionary elements of this country), gays should be hated and discriminated against...the list goes on. Republicans like a small government, if by small you mean small on justice but big on surveillance.
So yeah, you could say that I'm angry. I guess I have been for a long time, but the economic heydays that I enjoyed as a kid seem to be diminishing. Like many people my age, I cared about the issues but thought that this was the best we could do, that it doesn't matter how we vote or who is in office. The events of the past eight years have made me a believer. Bush's margin of victory was small--something like nine votes in every precinct--making it clear that every vote does count. I read statistics about how the most wealthy people keep getting wealthier while average people--people like me and everyone else I know--lose our economic power year after year. Then you have these banks that convinced average people, who don't know much about all these fancy terms but trust a smooth-talking bank guy in a suit, to buy a home with an adjustable rate mortgage. It used to be that you could trust your banker. If you can't trust the institution that holds the money that you work so hard for, your life savings, then who can you trust??
And then you read about the people who die because they don't have access to medical care. Their cancer doesn't get detected early enough because they can't afford the screening, but by the time they roll into the emergency room complaining of chest pain, it's too late. Countless stores. Why is it that medical care, the ability to see a physician, is not a guaranteed right? Even for a child? Health insurance companies post healthy profits, yet we have young and old who can't get the care they need. Medical insurance companies have powerful lobbyists.
All of this stuff sickens me. Why can't we have a society in which we encourage economic growth while at the same time giving everyone a good education, a doctor, and a banker they can trust? Our society, threatened by Republican-sponsored degregulation, is starting to resemble a sports game in which the rule book has been thrown out and the most powerful players have free reign to do as they please. No blood, no foul.