ain’t your parents america anymore...

there are a few neighborhoods in the capital that have a crime problem (a little thing that tends to happen when you keep people in disgusting poverty while the areas around them are lavishly decorated with useless largesse). there was a time when this would have been tackled with community outreach programs, beat cops walking the streets and neighborhoods banding together. but in the new and improved america of my generation - it is handled like the gaza strip. military-style checkpoints surround these neighborhoods (oddly enough filled with minorities that are not uber-rich). imagine leaving work and trying to get home IN THE CAPITAL OF THE "FREE" WORLD and being surrounded by badges and guns and forced to show proof of residence before you are allowed into your own neighborhood. wake the fuck up people...they are stealing the soul of the nation from us, little bit by little bit. welcome to the new america - gates communities for the haves and martial law for the rest.

and with that in mind, the wall street journal runs an op-ed by another of the moronic "I worship at the alter of milton friendman and would be his lover if he were alive today" democrats entitled "confessions of a pro-trade democrat." although the more appropriate title would be "propoganda for making you poor because I can't actually think for myself, but these are good talking points, even if they only tell a tiny portion of the real story." al from used the opportunity to tell us all that we need to re-embrace "free" market fundamentalist ideology (because we all know how well fundamentalist ideology usually works out) if we want to create "growth." it is the same old bullshit story that anyone that ever bothered to pay attention already knows is dead wrong - "globalization is here to stay...we need to open up markets...poor people around the world will be better off...yadda yadda yadda." only here's the problem - globalization is not here to stay and all one has to do is look to south america. a once booming regional economy of actual strength was crushed thanks to friedman-ites idiocy...and it is finally coming back - when it again embraced socialistic democracy. go figure, it is the same way europe rebuilt itself...the same way germany and japan rebuilt themselves...the same way the fucking united states built itself. globalization is not inevitable and unstoppable - they just really want you to believe the lie so that you don't see who is really to blame..."free" market ideologues that see no problem with "growth" that pushes half the population into less-than-subsistance living. there is a reason that the wealthy need to put up higher and higher gates around their communities...to keep the growing percentages of the population left behind out of view...out of sight, out of mind.

and with that comes the crackdown on immigrants coming over the borders. and they tell us that mexicans coming over here looking for a way to eat are stealing jobs from middle class americans. despite the notion obviously be ludicrous, they use it, and we buy it. the factory in town closed down and you lost your job, your pension, your health care, your home...it was the mexican's fault because he was willing to pick apples for peanuts. only it skips the middle step - the factory shut down because "pro-trade democrats" gave companies incentives to move it to nations without worker protections...and when it got there it paid those workers as if they were expendable, not enough to survive. and so those humans have to go somewhere to try and find a job that will pay them at least enough to eat for the night. and so they come here with the hope that they can build a better future for themselves and their families. only the jokes on them - because this place is headed in the same direction. and so they tell us we need to build more prisons to house people looking for work...because prisons are big business and nothing says america like locking up brown folks for profit.

I was born in the suburbs, never crossed my mind I would not attend college, have a professional degree, work a white collar job...and I have more in common with the guy crossing the river than anyone in the gated community. and so do you...but until we realize this they are going to continue stealing our humanity from us, continue to put profits above all else.

or we could all just move to south america in a decade when their standard of living is head and shoulders above ours...and when we are picking fruit south of the equator maybe we will finally understand.

I'm too tired to smile, or to know that I'm right...