Power Asses

I can't travel freely, I cannot live where I choose, I have to get a job where there are jobs and pay rent where there are jobs.  I can't grow my own food because I don't own property.  I don't "own" property because I don't have enough money and it takes quite a lot to own.  If you do own property, regardless of how you came to own it, even if you were born into it, you can make money purely from that ownership.  I will never have that much money because I'm not at the top of society.  Rents and property 'values' increase but wages do not.  And most Americans live within some form of serfdom.  


Historically, there's almost always been a group of folks circulating within the same power pool.  "Power" is power over other people.  But how do these Power Asses keep their thrones?

1. Make people think they're just like you.
Because the "terms" have changed over time and "anyone" can be king.  No longer are there serfs, required to work the lord's land, mines and roads in return for protection and the ability to grow food, there are free workers, able to move between jobs and climb metaphorical ladders!

There's a huge difference between modern workers and serfs.  Having a job is no longer required - modern workers should be grateful to have jobs - thank you so much for giving me a job in your factory/business/house/restaurant/field!  And no longer is there a "lord of the manor", there are several to choose from!  And because those lords made decisions to cheat, swindle and steal from the public, there are now fewer jobs then there are people that 'need' them.

Workers do not have job choices, but they don't fully realize that.  If they don't get a job, if they don't pay to rent property, they will be sent to jail (for 'tax evasion' at the very least) and have their natural rights taken from them, just for choosing to not be a part of the system.  So, again, especially with the top-earner-induced recession (it wasn't the fault of the poor), the workers will be grateful to have whatever shit job is thrown at them.

The American Dream is still alive in the hearts of the masses and therefore people don't admit they've been swindled.  Oh yes, The American Dream!  People still believe that they no longer have to officially be "born" into a class to be in that class and that it's still technically possible to move between classes!  In practice, however, class immobility is the norm, especially if you are born into a poor family.

And education, as a method to improve social status, is becoming more and more prohibitive.  Costs of education are increasing drastically, in private and public institutions.  Student loan debt, which has topped a trillion dollars and cannot be discharged in bankruptcy, has become a shiny new form of indentured servitude.

2. Make people too broke to care.
If wages are kept low, many people have to take extra jobs or work longer hours to keep up with increases in rent and goods.  Productivity has been increasing steadily in recent decades which means that more money is being made with the same amount of labor and virtually lower wages.  But if people are scared into believing that there will be fewer jobs if wages are increased by those who 'create' jobs, more and more workers will be forced to take on more jobs while more and more money goes to 'them'.

In addition, people are forced to incur debt for necessary things like medical bills.  America is the only industrialized, wealthy country with no national health care.  And over half of all bankruptcies in America are due to medial bills or illness.  So, if you're poor, you can't afford health care and you're therefore more likely to have outrageous debt if something does go wrong.  And that debt will be made more outrageous by the fact that insurance companies can negotiate for substantially lower costs on medical bills than an individual can.  So you uninsured poor person are likely picking up whatever slack the insurance companies are negotiating - additionally, non-profit hospitals aren't in your area, sorry.

3. Distract people with shiny things.
Scandals!  Sports!  Reality TV!  Encourage "voting" along lines of religion or social issues that have nothing to do with what politicians actually do once they're in power!

4. Make people scared for their lives.
Jail is little more than a holding tank for government threats.  If not, why are there so many drug possessors and angry, disenfranchised young men in jail and very, very few bankers?  Why else would America, with 5% of the worlds population, incarcerates 25% of the world's prisoners?  Why else would squatters, who are otherwise homeless, be sent to jail?

As a very literal holding tank for angry young men, Gitmo holds prisoners that aren't charged or confessed to charges under torture.  But these people cannot be released because of the security threat they pose, among other freedom-loving reasons.  Anyone perceived as anti-American can be classified as a security threat.

When I was growing up, I naively believed that people were born with certain rights, inalienable rights even.  These included the right to not be shot in the back by an unmanned aerial vehicle because the vehicle operator's government secretly determined that a person is a threat to them.  But if enough people are killed, including American citizens who are expressly protected from such extrajudicial killings by one of the few explicit social agreements in American society, the population will be too scared to rebel.

And so the world turns around the Asses of Power.