Light, Shadow, Tea Party

Hey Barry:

It's time to think a bit about light and shadow, good and evil.

We are smack in the middle of a continuing struggle between two extremes of human society. It's been that way for a long time, but now it's becoming very pronounced.

Ever since before Rome, humans have organized into large groups to manage our lives. Roman civilization was based on violence and slavery - Roman legions scoured new territories for healthy slaves to sell and murdered many of the rest of the people they conquered. It's fair to say that Rome was a shadow society, regardless of how many incredible engineering feats they accomplished. Rome is a classic model of highly unequal, slave based society; it may have been preceded by Egyptian and earlier societies as well. However, there are some studies which show that some earlier societies used paid labor for large construction projects as opposed to slave labor.

Fast forward to today..............what do we see? We see a number of shadow societies where wealth and power accumulates toward the top and the rulers keep order with force and violence. Societies like Syria and Libya are models of shadow societies today.

Well, most of the people who live in shadow repressive societies are trying to change things so they can have a decent life free from fear and violence. We call it the Arab Spring, but it's a universal longing to be free from the shadows.

The good ol U S of A came from the same desire. We rebelled from England to throw off the repressive society and create a world where ordinary folks are free from state sponsored theft, fear and violence. We are an imperfect society, but we have made some progress from our beginnings.

It has taken - and will continue to take - extraordinarily gifted people to illuminate the shadows. The Founding Fathers, Abraham Lincoln, FDR are some of the people we thank for our American experiment. We hope that you, Barry Obama, will join that illustrious group. If you do, then we will be safer.

Shadow powers in the USA have been working diligently to reduce the average person's freedom from want and fear for hundreds of years. Those powers were upset by FDR's creation of Social Security and the other protections from want he installed in the 1930's. They scored a big victory with the repeal of Glass-Stegall in 1999. Now, they are looking for even more such victories.

See the report on ALEC - a group of state legislators and corporate executives which approves laws that are then presented to state legislatures: http://www.slate.com/blogs/weigel/2011/08/05/the_alec_wars_escalate.html

I am ashamed to say that my discipline of economics is used regularly by some economists to provide a justification for national policies that reduce the levels of protection from want and fear for the general population. The economists who practice that version of the discipline should be ashamed. Not only is it destructive of society, it is bad economics. That's a discussion for another day, but there are some implications for today.

People of wealth and power will always have sycophants near them who will further their accumulations of both. It has always been that way and it always will be. Even studying apes shows social interactions reminiscent of some Shakespeare plays.

Perhaps well-intentioned, the Tea Party has been usurped by shadow forces. Tea Partiers are not terrorists; they are worse, for they seek to impose state sponsored fear and want on all of us.

It is charitable to think that they are not aware of the implications of their policies, but rather blinded by economic gobboldy gook.

Tea Partiers may be abusers - at least they are behaving that way. Here's Julie Driscoll explaining how to combat the personality type: "It's interesting, but the one thing abusers respond to is the prospect of being harmed themselves. When faced with a threat, they back down."

See it here: http://www.examiner.com/liberal-in-chicago/republicans-fit-the-profile-of-a-classic-abuser

So, Barry, here's the deal: We gotta threaten and fight them and we gotta threaten big and fight hard. Today we are fighting with politics. It's better than fighting with violence.

Make no mistake, it is a fight and the shadow are well armed.

We are with you Barry, stand up for us.

Your pal,