Just another Reality-based bubble in the foam of the multiverse.

Thursday, July 30, 2009

The Real Issue

Gore Vidal writes about the police state of Amerika:

...It would be nice if the media realized how dangerous they when they begin to falsify motives which, to be blunt, they have no authority to do. If a black person is in any way in a jam of any kind, it is because he is responding to racism or if a white person goes berserk over anything with anybody, racism drove him to it. This is a great, great red herring like some giant whale gliding across the pages of police dockets.

So let me mention the real issue. The real issue is class. We have the greatest divide between the very rich and the very poor of any country on Earth, surpassing even France. And this division gets wider and wider as financial disasters overwhelm us. We were already in pretty bad shape before things began to fall apart a year or two ago. We must acknowledge that our character, never much good in these matters, is now reprehensible, and the police seem to have taken it upon themselves to exact revenge for a full professor and his—plainly, in their view—insulting income, which they figure must be considerable. The days of greed through which we all lived now have not done us much good, nor have they taught us any lessons, but you cannot live long with such divisions, which in my view as an outsider overlooking the scene seems to be a nation of total liars. Everybody is lying. Television lies, candidates lie. And everyone says, “Oh they always have.” I love that excuse. Well they haven’t always done that. Sometimes lying to the people is a great mistake. And it is well-known that the rich will tell almost any lie to avoid paying taxes...


Vidal is correct. The national $ecurity state has clout for one reason only: to enforce the Golden Rule. Those that have the gold make the rules.

2 comments:

Wiglaf said...

He's correct, but god that essay has some serious ramblage and incoherent sentences. I fear the good man won't be with us much longer.

kelley b. said...

Alas, we are all mortal. Words begin to fail him. Still, failing eyes see with facile wit.