RULE OF THUMB

It's a brand new year and the big wheel is turning. It would be a whole lot better if it wasn't turning on us. It feels like time is growing shorter for those of us who believe in justice and equal rights to raise awareness. It was in thinking along those lines that a simple truth came to mind.

If we truly want freedom, if we really want to be self ruling and live in a country whose government respects the rights of the individual, we might do well to remember this rule of thumb:

Never take orders from rich people.

Rich people have nothing in common with us. Their concerns, goals and perspectives are in direct opposition to ours. Our problems are not problems in the lives of the rich, they aren't interested in helping us solve them. In fact the biggest problem of the rich is our insistence that they do something about our problems.

Unfortunately it is precisely our problems that make the rich rich, and the powerful powerful. They have no incentive to solve them. It is safe to say they never will.

History proves they've always done everything they can to avoid solving the basic, solvable problems the non rich of the world share.

There is enough for everyone to live a good life in this world. But those who control nations do not want to share. They want to dominate and control all wealth, all power, and all resources because only in this way are they able to continue dominating all others and unjustly keep for themselves the vast majority of the wealth and good living we all create and deserve our true share of.

Keeping themselves in control of our government lets them make and uphold the laws that let them do it, and get away with it, and not have to suffer answering to anyone for it.

This explains why there is more than enough food, housing and education to go around and yet ever increasing numbers of hungry, homeless and uneducated people.

If those in power shared our concerns and our values, the tremendous possibilities would long ago have been tapped and by now these basic eternal problems of the working class and the poor would have been solved. All it would take is education, guidance and a little ongoing support.

The cost of educating a nation into self-empowerment and successful individual-level free enterprise would be a fraction of the current yearly national expense, most of which lines the pockets of the wealthy owners of corporations and their shareholders who happen to also be our elected millionaire congress, the president, his cabinet and loyalists, the war profiteers, and the extra-governmental organizations who really run the world and this country.

We have paid a thousand times over for this government to solve every existing one of our problems. The problems are not solved, they continue to grow unabated. Where is all of our money going then? To the rich who promptly do nothing with it that could possibly solve any of those problems. They funnel the money to themselves and each other in a maze of noble sounding ways that are nothing but subterfuge. These tactics have worked exceptionally well for the last hundred years to further their own wealth and power at our ignorant expense.

Take for example the fact that there is enough money, ability and human talent out there to provide full health care to everyone. For all we pay, this should be the healthiest country in the world. But it is among the worst off for access to and quality of health care for the people. It is a lie that costs have anything to do with it. Costs are a tool of the rich that benefit the rich and deprive the non-rich from something that can save their lives.

The same is true for all opportunity. Every road to individual empowerment and individual independence could long ago have been paved if this government of by and for the rich, held that goal and intent. But it holds the opposite goal and intent.

It seeks always to prevent the true independence of the people. It's goal is to totally dominate all of the resources that are needed by all, and to silence, undermine and eliminate all fair competition and dissent against their total control. Monopolizing power and access to necessities and the means to a better life creates the means for them to decide who lives and who dies, who is rewarded and who is punished, who succeeds and who fails, who is imprisoned and who is free, and who may speak out and who may not.

So if the people of our country want to be dominated down to what we are allowed to think, then keep doing what we've been doing to bring the rich into power over us. Keep them there above us all and keep giving them our hard earned dollars to pay them for using us and to pay for and man the systems they've devised to stay in power over us. Keep voting for the provided rich people we are forced to choose from who share none of our concerns or values.

We would be infinitely better off in locating another person who grew up in a log cabin and was so poor they had no shoes and electing them into the office of the president. We should find the battle-weary honest representatives of the poorest, most downtrodden, most oppressed struggling people in our country and put them into all the positions in Congress and the Defense department and the State department and every other department. Then, and only then, would this country begin to show any care at all about the realities of the human beings that live in it and instead of using us for our money and labor, we would be using government to make our lives and this country, and this world a much better place than it ever was.

It is hardly impossible. It's just not likely because they will go to any steps to prevent the poor and the working class from obtaining the power they have always monopolized. That and because we still believe the charades of power and we still play the games at every election. We don't see the most obvious truth that rich people are not us, and until we figure out that obvious fact we will continue to watch the country systematically looted while embroiled in endless wars of aggression abroad, and we will continue to endure acts of terrorism within that convince us to go along with what the rich want. No matter which team you pick, it has been provided by the rich, and so we will all continue to lose.

We have to wake up to defend ourselves. But I'm afraid too many of us love our habits, day dreams and illusions of freedom and democracy more than our real personal rights, real freedom, real democracy or any of the endless possibilities for real change in our lives.

If we can't break through the mass hypnosis of the people to spread the urgent message, "It is time to get informed and wake up! We are under attack from within!", then we will all stand and watch as our own people, of noble intent but tricked into believing that wrong is right, put everything they've got into helping the rich take the last crumb and the last bit of freedom this country will ever see again.

If nothing else we can memorize the rule of thumb and spread it around: "Never take orders from rich people". Most folks can remember and believe that much, its message of truth is self evident and won't encounter much doubt. Perhaps it will even get people thinking and we'll all be much better off for that, immediately.

If the idea of putting the poor and downtrodden in control unnerves you, here is what you fear: that they will actively seek to improve their circumstances and that in the process you will be made to pay. If you know that the poor would automatically put their own predictable agenda at the top of our government's policy then you must have no doubt that the rich who are in power now are doing the same, and have been doing the same since before you were born. You are already being made to pay for an agenda that does not serve your needs or have anything in common with your goals. You are paying to support the rich.

Those in power now don't care about being fair to others, nor are they interested in being reasonable. They are only interested in cementing in their own permanent dominance and will break every rule to achieve that end. It is a struggle for total dominance of our political system that we find ourselves in, whether we are conscious of it or not.

At present there is only one voice in control, only one voice on the airwaves, and more frightening is a serious movement to make all other voices into terrorists. We are on the verge of losing everything friends.
We must demand fair representation and equal benefit of all policies to all our citizens or else accept the continued monopolizing of our great national wealth and power by the rich for the rich at our expense and increasing detriment.

Any upset that would put others in power would be an improvement for the vast majority of this country. But be careful who you choose during the next election. They will be dedicated to their own personal agenda, there is no other way they can proceed. Make sure you really understand who they are.

The rich and powerful are the smallest group among us. This is a group that has no wants or needs. Does it make sense that all policy decisions, wealth and power should be funneled directly to them? Does it make sense that we should have to pay for all their unfair advantages over us? Does it make sense that our laws put their desires above our own legal rights and that law protects their wrong doing, leaving us to deal with the damages they cause us all? Is that democratic? Is it even sane? Had enough yet?

In order to have just rule by the people we must stop taking orders from the rich. And judging by the lateness of the hour we had better get started on it right away.