The divided society, the alienated man, the disappointed citizen, the deracinated individual, the partisan, the ideologue, the isolate. Sociologists spotted this person long ago. Without a doubt, the city contributed to the unfolding of a mass society composed of disconnected people. Our culture here in the U.S. still strikes fear into the hearts of immigrants who see their children becoming indifferent to the ties that bind: family, church, community, school, team, whatever mutual effort and connectedness binds us together. It is a fact of our lives, something we have to deal with. And how might we deal with it?
Notice the number of earnest prophets delivering the bad news about: our food, our medicine, our government, our education system, our justice system, our art…. our art!!!??? It seems every institution is out to get us. We are warned that our children are being lured to bad food by TV commercials and miseducated by a system captured by the Left or the Right take your pick. Beginning with our children, medicines undermine our health instead of bolstering it and preserving it while the government colludes with big Pharma, big Agriculture, and big Business to savage us for profit. One wonders just where these people think they are going to find customers (and voters) after they gut our finances, ruin our health, deprive us of our retirement, reduce our salaries, put college out of reach, and destroy our minds with computer games. There will be no one left to buy their products and services.
All of this is not far off the mark, though it may appear exaggerated. Insurance companies, banks, pharmaceutical companies, HMOs, and a multitude of government agencies stand indicted for misleading the public and outright fraud. We notice that criminal, fraudulent practices go unpunished. Yet the public is not yet outraged because they have been distracted by the great homosexual agenda, the undeserving poor receiving handouts, ungrateful foreigners eating up foreign aid, an invasion of Mexicans bent on voting in our elections, and a president who is a covert jihadist socialist devoted to an anti-colonial ideology learned at his Muslim father’s knees in the 10 days he got to spend with him. The public is assured that once they get these bogey-men under control, they can fix our economy by getting back all the White people’s tax money that been given to Blacks.
That little diatribe is not an exaggeration; it’s pretty much the platform of the Republican Party. Listen to their convention in a few days.
So what happened to the notion of being our brother’s keeper? Shouldn’t one American look out for another one? Shouldn’t we have each other’s back? Well, no, not if the imperative is to profit off our brother at all costs. Selling your brother into slavery is an old tradition. Making a profit has become a license for wholesale cheating and exploitation. Can you sell a powerful drug to children and make a mint? Sure, as long as you pack the panels that testify to the government to get schools to recommend heavy medication to control kids and then massively advertise to doctors and parent, making it seem as though not medicating a child is tantamount to abuse. Next to the destructive force of medication, chocolate covered cereal seems a mild threat….. but a highly powerful mild threat.
After all, it’s not like they are overmedicating, stuffing, brainwashing, and propagandizing their own kids. Their kids get access to the top medical care, best teachers, healthiest leisure activities, all because their parents can afford it…… from making obscene amounts of money off these other people. And the excuse, the palliative to souls with a tender conscience? The market place is ruled by caveat emptor. Anything goes. No, it is not governed by laws because it’s these people and their minions in Congress who make the law. As long as you make a profit, even by breaking the law, no one is going to touch you. You are too big to put away. And you make campaign contributions.
For a liberal like me, it is hard to admit, but the government plays a very big role in this. The government condones this, legitimizes it. Why? Because the people with money have pretty much bought the government. That could change overnight, in one election, if people would urge upright people they know to run and promote their candidacy with personal testimony; legislative and congressional districts are not so large that that couldn’t happen. But in the likelihood that such an effort will never take place, what else can we do?
We could take to enclaves, enclaves where by default and neglect, we run our own police and courts, our own schools, our own medical services, and even grow our own food. This is happening on a small scale around the country. It has begun to lose its hippy-dippy commune aura and looking more grass-roots all the time. Huge numbers of Blacks are moving back South, some two generations removed from the Old South. There they are finding Black communities that at least at the local level do not have to deal with Whites. This is a phenomenon I am reading about now. Slowly, I’m forming a picture; I don’t want to be pollyannaish about it, so I am watching the development with great interest and would appreciate any informed comments on it.
Why can’t other people, coalescing around common themes, do the same? Blacks have a history of oppression, Hispanics have a common language and culture, religious groups like the Mormons share a faith (and are pretty successful at this thing), and some people value institutional activities like art and other creative acts, while occupational groups like farmers, accountants, professors, musicians, teachers, and policemen can and often do form small, local groups. Community gardens, exercise groups, bikers, and so on really get into an identity that permits them a degree of autonomy within a supportive group; kind of a contradiction but worth observing. I recall getting to know neighbors who were realtors, doctors, and so on who were weekend bikers, complete with leather jackets and bandanas, and who enjoyed the heck out of the affiliation.
Not to mention athletics.