I first noticed the greed in Oklahoma at the football games. My father was a coach and he taught me that when the other team was not so good that you shouldn't humiliate them but use the game to play your less accomplished players and give them experience. That the other team was bound to build their program and that you needed to build your future by playing your younger players. That this built both and accomplished one of the purposes for the sport in the first place.
But during my high school in the fifties there was a new spirit. A hunger for power and an incipient insecurity that made people want to win as much as 70 to 0. My father said: "What's the point?" Being an Indian in Oklahoma where the dominant population were still jerks It reminded him of the scourge of Wounded Knee, Sand Creek, the Trail of Tears when the elimination of another group was the goal down to the children for as General Sherman said famously: "Nits make lice" as he slaughtered pregnant women and children. They covered it up with the glory of the warrior and applied it to industry as mere managers were called "captains" and ex-military were coveted and retained their titles. At its roots it spoke of a pathological insecurity that could only be rescued through the guarantee of annihilation and genocide. Howard Fineman in the Huffington Post today said that the problem was that the Unions didn't allow the GOP the clean sweep of the governorships. Actually this all reminds me of the Arts where the hicks and trinkets and trash entertainers with little talent and even less hard work are given millions while the virtuosos who expand the aural world and must practice hours a day for no pay are paid peanuts and the NEA and public broadcasting is eliminated. It's the rise of the pathological and the barbaric whether in secular, church or synagogue. The hick and the lazy are here to stay and they are the end of a cycle. the meaning of the American industrial complex has come down to Coca Cola. That's the product of America and American culture. What's the point? The wealthy want everything for their children. All the money. All the complex culture and competence. The good schools. Good health. So many houses they forget how many they have, remember John McCain? The government has returned to the European model of Aristocracy. It's not capitalism or socialism. It's the wish to be Aristocrats and Democracy is the "Road to Serfdom." That's my opinion. REH From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Ed Weick Sent: Saturday, February 26, 2011 10:42 AM To: RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION Cc: [email protected] Subject: [Futurework] Whither the American dream? Interesting series of articles on the demise of American unions, the huge growth of income at the top of the American income pyramid, and the role of politics in all of this. Well worth a read. http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/02/income-inequality-labor-union-declin e Ed
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