Re: Or poorer -- clarification please!

[Ray Evans Harrell]

Steve, you said: Your characterization of winners in this game as evil or base in character is a prejudice which is not new. Scapegoats have been sought throughout history when times got tough. The Jews in particular were targeted. Meanwhile there are billions ready to consume every morsel that others don't. Water and oil wars are current, as are famine and epidemic. Dogmas/creeds are merely a convenient excuse for war in many cases. Face it, there ain't enough to go around, and the self-cull is natural, although highly unpleasant. The characterization of 1/2 of 1% with unbelievable wealth, seven castles in different countries,   arrogant children in the best schools, etc.   while the composers of America go hungry until they die, and then the wealthy and the country takes credit, is evil.    Jews and Gypsies were targeted in Europe because they were seen as non-local.    The same is true here.   Local populations consider four generations still an immigrant.   That is what confuses me about Jews who are politically conservative here in the US.    Political conservatives are "for" small local governments with traditional connections with the greatest power while large international governments are considered the enemy.    Jews constitute the smallest of the small groups in the country that, like Indian people, 1. have their own land and 2. are percieved of getting something that no one else has as a result of group membership and cohesion.   You should hear what I have heard in Canada about Indians with their own land.    On the other hand it is the strong "secular" National governments doing business with other large International governments that protect  populations  that are "International"  in cultural character.     And yet conservative Jewish organizations here push "faith based" programs that will ultimately aggrivate the majority that is not secular and doesn't approve of secular policies that equalize religious practice and protect the outsider and the ethnic minorities, like Jews.      You don't want to know what the local populations in areas that I have worked, have to say about Jews and Gypsies.     Catholics come in second and Moslems don't exist.    That is conservatism as I have experienced it.    And yet none catch the trash that is handed to Indian people around Sovereign Indian land.    It is so bad here that the Secretary of the Interior has been called up on contempt changes for the theft of the private companies (for the past 150 years)  on Indian land with the collaboration of their government.       As for culling, I think the point here is value and how one defines it.    In the Darwinian process I would consider Bach to be of greater importance to the West than Warren Buffet even though I like a lot of what Buffet says.    So if we cull then I would cull for that which creates a great spirit in the future of mankind much more than someone who simply took everything they could and refused to pay rent to the culture and community where they grazed.     Buffet speaks of Meritocracy.   I would agree.    Sorry Steve, but I've just listened to so much external motivation that it has begun to eat at my soul.    I have to get back to work and make some art.    This has begun to make me just constantly angry and that stops me practicing and doing my work.    If I look at the Free Riders then I won't accomplish anything.     Love to Edith,   Ray