Sunday, June 17, 2012

plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose

Inspired by yesterday's statistic that food stamp recipients in
El Paso have increased by 28% in the past year, I thought it
would be nice to run an occasional visual aid to illuminate
the (recurring) economy we are now enjoying.

(click to enlarge)

Obviously, with stressed citizens paying for 2-3 (soon to be 4-5?) losing wars and needing more and more help via increased public assistance just to maintain a basic level of subsistence (a cost our government can no longer afford), while war profiteers continue enriching themselves obscenely, something has to give. Let us cut public subsidies for food, housing, unemployment, public education, health care, Social Security, national infrastructure, etc. These are luxuries that we as a nation can no longer afford!

Let us tremble with fear at the threat of terrorists and their endless determination to bring the country to its knees while the real danger, the real terrorists to the nation continue to prosper, to walk freely among us disguised as pillars of our community. Folks like politicians, Wall Street financiers and speculators, bankers too big to fail, scientists manipulating your food supply, energy giants contaminating your air and water, decimating Nature on land and sea alike.

Perhaps we should not abandon hope, however, for this is an election year. Another chance for real change! Pay close attention to the candidates as they debate your reproductive rights, question your religious beliefs and explain how they will save you from the rest of the world as domestic security measures increasingly invade your vanishing privacy, be it with drones flying overhead or probes violating your cervix/rectum, seeking your lost Constitutional rights.

A kid on a beer run or man caught with a joint is thrown in the slammer as MF Global's Jon Corzine, who bilked his investors of billions, walks freely among us. Yes, plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose indeed!

But it's an election year, right? Giving us another chance for something we can really believe in -- change. "Yes we can!"

(* Dada finds it difficult to believe with soaring gas prices threatening to climb higher, adding more stress to an already overstressed population and reversing any real (or "imagined") progress toward an economic recovery, we are hell bent on war with Iran. (If we think gas is high now, just wait.) It's as if our government leaders don't really give a fuck. But I suspect this speaks to a greater basic human genetic flaw. A kind of built-in lunacy. While reigning supreme at the top of the food chain, we have proven ourselves survivors of the fittest -- against all. Except, that is of course, ourselves.)

2 comments:

Fran said...

Yes we can, expect the same old shit. Looks like the little people only have right of the center choices regardless of the ticket.
Choose one: Bad or worse!

Dada said...

Agree, Fran. I'm going to try real hard to NOT get into the middle of the debate twixt which absurdity I'll support (neither).

But I'm sure I'll be unable to contain occasional urges to sling mud from the sidelines.