In today’s world, ideological consistency is rarer than a 4-leaf clover. Even the Freemasons lost their salt for thinking foundations for whatever platforms built by degrees might carry more weight than those built by constitution.
Poor, poor Jamie Dimon, upset to be taken by anyone as being unpatriotic or villainous when even those descriptives are far, far too kind. Granted, having more labels than we frankly need only divides us all the more, like fast food franchises fighting to the death when everybody just wants to eat. But money directly or indirectly withheld from market economies limits both markets and economies. *Nobody* sees themselves as a villain, and in fact the more self-serving someone is, the more they ironically get rewarded with undue heroic status. Real heroes sacrifice themselves, not service themselves, although the proportion of Discordian popes striving to rock the metaphorical boat, so as to speed up the end, by all appearances seems to have reached global population levels. The issue is not a gotcha contest to see which televangelist seller of used cars is the least corrupt. The issue is that the entire system of governance here is designed for no other purpose.
The only thing keepers of wealth accomplish is con-artistry, conniving cattle into believing that cults of personality might ever possibly support anybody or anything outside its centerpiece. We laugh at the supremacy allowed in the diva, but ego before the world causes all that ails the world. If we don’t like weirdo cult leaders then we cannot in good faith like celebrities or captains of industry or political spokespersons, because one and all do they operate from the same needy ideology, being absolutely nothing without their supporters. For “normal” people living beneath them, co-dependence is usually frowned upon. In political terms, what’s most disconcerting about their supporters, is how they don’t want to see that Capitalists milking systemic controls are by no means bucking the system or draining any swamps. It’s worst case scenario for governance in full effect.
Wealth escapes ethical taxation, because it’s systemically cheaper for them to invest tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands into campaigns for multitudes of bipartisan politicians who in turn pass further deregulation while extending corporate grants, subsidies and tax breaks. Amazon all by itself regularly avoids billions in federal taxes because it makes numerous politicians richer than they were before elected. The millions pharma spends altogether on out of court settlements with built-in non-disclosure agreements and emolument-denying, lobbyist bribery are peanuts compared to the billions in profits those clear a path for. Which means the only way they are able to stockpile capital is explicitly because politicos tasked with representing their constituents are instead freely bought and sold. You cannot fight one without dramatically countering the other. Self-righteous asshats like Dimon and the rest affording to have their tax evasion schemes made legal actively destabilizes the economy for the greater whole who are not eager to eat out their assholes. By not spending the bulk of the pilfered wealth they pose a threat to national financial interests. If someone, anyone, can self-identify as a patriot in spite of openly crippling their own country, their reading list is itself limited to marketing.
But this society has allowed money to hold ultimate control. No alternative power will become the status quo unless its profits surpass oil’s own replacement of the gold standard. Fuck, when the USA government is willing and able to proactively kill foreigners to claim exclusive ownership of their goods and supplies, saving lives is clearly less important than finance. Maybe the hording of wealth is deprivation of the economy, and millionaires/billionaires deserve to face actual charges of sabotage and treason for doing so. We praise as philanthropists Bill Gates, Jamie Dimon, Jeff Bezos and their entitled ilk for giving .001% of their holdings to charity, always only in exchange for tax write-offs and publicity, without considering how the accumulation of the rest of their holdings is precisely what caused those problems in dire need of aid to begin with.
In his own administrations, Obama quietly cut funding for homeless relief programs nationwide. I spent time in shelters volunteering and homeless myself, and saw firsthand how many may no longer provide assistance unless you’re either fresh out of jail and/or require drug abuse counseling. There’s only marginal droplets of resources trickling down today, if any, and only towards services for felons and junkies, who comprise a small number of those in need. Many more are homeless because they’ve no desire left to play these reindeer games, but by far the largest number are victims of circumstances well beyond their control, shoved into pathways that were not of their own choosing and who desperately both want and need assistance. As with the most wealthy among us, the calamitous, self-possessed egos of junkies and repeat offenders are rewarded at the expense of all those around them. In more recent months 3 million domestic households have been booted from the food stamp program, over cost, when my own mom only got 15 per month anyway, which is closer to the actual average recipients might have seen. Maybe these difficult decisions would have been entirely unnecessary if your own elected officials were not enticed to prefer and to cultivate situations where the most self-centered may legally avoid earning their keep, and at the growing expense of the very future of human civilization.
Most can name more Kardashians than soup kitchen volunteers, because ego-centrism is rewarded everywhere. The only way to have anything in this society is to take it, to lie, cheat and steal for it, but I’d rather keep virtues in my corner even if there’s nothing else there. I have indeed been homeless before, and this primarily due to every single past employer paying late and/or less than contractually obligated, some even reneging on payment altogether with nary an excuse given. I’d say half of my work to date has been freelance and self-employment, and though I have never tasted profit in my life, perpetually breaking even means that I have never even smelled debt. Unlike those with means, I have never failed either to pay a bill or to pay a bill on time. So I do consider myself a villain, and I do consider myself unpatriotic, because what I am, my needs shelved eternally, is far, far from the norm. I never wanted to win, but I have managed a strict personal philosophy of learning to make implicitly impossible the circumstances where others might ever possibly take either credit or blame for anything I say or do, which guarantees interesting times all the same. This makes me extraordinarily helpful.
The pro-life movement gets heavy backing from forces only wanting more workers, more tax-payers and more customers for insurance/pharmaceutical companies. In reality the only people in our society with guaranteed rights to life, liberty and pursuits of happiness are the filthy rich. The pro-choice movement on the other hand is carjacked by persons wanting to conflate their own bad judgement with cases of those suffering circumstances actually beyond their control. The loudest of both sides masking self-interest for victimization. Each side to every argument permitted into the noosphere is pure bullshit, a Punch and Judy show with nobody ever wanting to seriously abolish the proverbial whip, only to wield it for themselves. We are made divided by those granting themselves authority and privilege. I think the true left/right paradigm boils down to ego averted vs ego exerted. Meaning there is nothing left in DC, if ever there was. Real leftists do not believe in such a thing as a good capitalism, but liberals and democrats do, which is why they must continue to blame Russia, rather than admit it was greedy assholes selling out their own countries to foreign greedy assholes happy to endanger their own. Rather than accept that ego can never be separated from finance, they’d have us believe that evil communism has sought to destabilize the west by empowering the biggest capitalists among us. This trash fire isn’t from Marx but from Capitalists unleashed. From egos unleashed and indulged. The god and country types anywhere in the world never actually believe in either one. They need them like mama’s skirts to hide behind because deep down they know their supremacy has no legs. They are helpless.
If wealth wasn’t so co-dependent, then maybe it wouldn’t need everyone to constantly do everything for it. We really need to look at it in those terms. The purpose of existence is not to make money, but the purpose of the ego is rationalizing the irrational.