"We're sure not heading down a very happy road!" David Suzuki
On the left in the white van is the person who ran over the baby girl who wandered into the street in front of him. She didn’t dart. She didn’t sneak. She was moving slowly. And at about 3 or 4 miles an hour the van wasn’t moving much faster. The driver had plenty of time to stop. Even had plenty of room to swerve. Did neither. Not until the little girl was rolled over by the front, left wheel did the driver stop. For about 4 seconds before deciding to run her over with the REAR wheel as well and continue on with his business.
On the right the Tiananmen Square Tank Man. During demonstrations to encourage economic reform and liberalization in 1989 protesters were forcibly removed by the Chinese military. This one-man protest was an iconic photo of the event. The Great Firewall of China is so unbelievably effective that many Chinese people STILL have never seen this picture. I’m sure most of them haven’t seen the video of the baby being run over either. If you have seen the movie associated with this tank photo, the tank tries to avoid the man but he moves so that the tank must mow him down in order to move forward. The tank driver never does run him over.
Changing times in China and the world! The war is not about soldiers, bombs and tanks any more it’s about businessmen, buyouts and corporations. The soldier driving the tank doesn’t think the military’s purpose is important enough to sacrifice the man’s life. But the psychopath in the van thinks HIS time is much more important than the life of that little girl.
Before we get too hung up on the fact that these are both Chinese men and before we even think about putting the blame on Communism, don’t you think there are a LOT of businesspeople who would run this little girl down? Ever seen the movie Wall Street? I could just hear Gordon Gekko on the oversized cell phone now if it were HIM who was driving the white van. “Okay, yeah the little girl thing. My time is just too valuable for this! Get one of my aids to find out how much the parents will settle for out of court. If it’s more than a mil. we'll take them to court. I don’t think I need to tell you this but, please, don’t START at a million. Try to lowball them if you can.” Beep “Now, young, pre-meltdown Charlie Sheen, tell me more about your father and this airline…” But Gordon Gekko is just a fictional character, right? Back to these real men.
Which of these men will be encouraged and which will be corrected? As a more general question, which behaviour is encouraged and which corrected?
If these two men were applying for a job, (a high paying job where you make REAL money and aren’t living paycheck to paycheck like most of the schmucks in the world), in China or practically any country, and had these photos as the first pages of their respective resumes, who do you suppose would be hired?
What will happen to the baby killer if his company sees the video of him driving over a helpless baby in order to deliver the product on time or arrive at a meeting on time or pick up an important client at the airport on time? Will he be fired and turned over to the police? Or will this video be played at the next shareholder’s meeting and used as inspiration for employees to let nothing get in their way of doing a good job? Will this guy who treats a baby human being worse than most people treat a skunk get a RAISE? A promotion? Will he become a highly sought after employee who never has to worry about unemployment again? And will he look back at the incident and someday think it was the BEST thing he ever did?
I think you know what I think are the answers to these questions. I also think you know what the RIGHT answers to these questions are. But in this world where we are marching backwards and calling it progress the WRONG answers are where we are ALL headed. David Suzuki calls it a road that's not very happy. In true Chinese fashion, they have just arrived there ahead of most of us. But then again they have the perfect situation to promote corporate thinking. Huge population and terrible, dollar a day jobs that are at a PREMIUM. People are desperate to do anything to get or to keep a job. Sound familiar?
George Carlin calls the heads of corporations, the rich, the banks and the governments they control our “owners.” The owners know we could all have nice houses, new cars and money in the bank but then they think we wouldn’t have the hungry, go-get-‘em, greed-is-good, profit-at-all-cost, turn-a-baby-into-roadkill corporate attitudes. So they keep us all about one really rainy day away from the poor house. It’s like Roberto Luongo. He’s a millionaire goalie who is good but not great. Some say back in the days when he was young and had the drive to keep his NHL job he was much better. Now most Canuck fans are wondering if we should give Luongo’s job to this kid in the minor leagues called Eddie Lack. He’s young and not rich and playing great because of it. Get the best for the least. This is corporate thinking and we all do it sometimes. But it’s gotten WAAAYYY out of hand!
THIS is what the marches on Wall Street, (MWS), and all over the world are trying to wake us up to. Don’t think we are quite so bad yet? Okay, ask yourself if you were a couple hours late for work would you get in trouble? Maybe get fired? Ask yourself if your boss would accept any excuse, even, “I stopped to help a baby who had been run over by TWO cars.” Okay, maybe your work situation isn’t so bad. Maybe the answers to these questions were both NO. I think they are for ME too. But now ask yourself if one of these wouldn’t be a niggling concern while you came to the aid of that baby. If you waited an hour or two for the ambulance would you check your watch? Would you phone in and tell the boss you will be late before or after the baby was as stabilized as she could be? And then if you WERE fired at some later date, you absolutely KNOW your boss would say, "And then there was that time you were two hours late!" It is courageous, selfless and heroic to help out a baby that has been hit by a car, but it could be held against you at work. Even in Canada. And we know this.
We are preconditioned and socialized, mostly by our owners, to think of money before people. Community and Society are people but Capital is money. Why are Communism and Socialism weighed down in our minds with such heavy negativity? It’s training. Sure Socialist and Communist regimes have committed terrible atrocities but you really should blame the “ists” before the “isms.” And there are two overlooked, but elephant-in-the-room obvious facts here: 1. Capitalism has been the political ideology of a LOT of people who committed a lot of atrocities too. And 2. Good old fashioned, apolitical GREED is the cause of most of the atrocities regardless of which government regime committed them.
How long before Canada will get to the point where we are so concerned about business, keeping our jobs and filthy lucre that 18 people would pass by a dying baby before she gets some help? In Canada we have social programs available that give enough money to ANYone so they can at least have a home and food. For now. Until those are cut to maximize corporate profit. See, a corporation sees “Profit” and “loss” in a very different way than a normal person. If I make 40,000 dollars 10 years in a row I feel like I have had 10 fantastic years. I wish I could just have ONE year like that! A corporation that profits the same two years in a row doesn’t see it as sustained success. They actually see it as LOSS! They MUST profit MORE! And believe it or not if in year two your profit is 10% more than year one, then in year three your profit was 9% more than year two, a corporation will even see THAT as a loss! But it’s important to recognize the corporation NEVER actually loses. They pass all the loss on to the customer and the low level workers. No corporation big wigs EVER take a pay cut. Even in a depression they give themselves healthy raises.
It is also important to note that most governments nowadays are run exactly like corporations. Probably because they are run BY them. That includes Canada. If you think that's not true, when did we vote for the cancellation of corporate capital taxes? It happened federally in 2006 and provincially just last year. The corporations in Canada pay 1/3 of the taxes that regular people pay. And even what they DO pay, that's right, the cost is passed on to the little guy.
Our government has learned from the corporations. When we have a bad year the government raises taxes or government mark-up on food items or inflation or adds another excise tax "for our own good." When will they just axe social programs like welfare or old age pensions? It could happen. If it ever did, in a Canada where possible homelessness and starvation are one mistake at work away, would 18 people walk by a dying baby THEN? I hope we never find out! This is what they’re up against in China. There but for the grace of the Canadian social net could go you and I. And if we continue the way we are indelibly stamped by our owners to proceed, we’re not too far behind the Chinese.
I'll tell you who is right behind China: The U.S. I think the best analogy I’ve ever heard to explain the situation, and the best characters ever created to illustrate it are: the Hershey’s Kiss experiment and the South Park boys. An American teacher, let's say Mr. Mackey, (though he's just the guidance counselor), did an experiment in his classroom. He put 100 Hershey's Kisses in a jar, lined up 20 students and explained that they could take as many Kisses for themselves as they wanted before passing the jar to the next student, mmmkay? When the jar reached the end of the line the Kisses would be doubled and the jar would be passed again as many times as it takes until it's empty, mmmkay? So Kenny takes a few, Stan takes a couple, Kyle takes a few Timmy takes one, Jimmy Vulmer takes a couple and then the jar gets to Eric Cartman with 89 Kisses still left. The other students are pleading with him to only take 2 or 3 so that at the end of the line there are 50 left and the jar will start at 100 again and everybody will have an endless supply of FREE chocolate. But Cartman just can't understand it. He takes the 89 Kisses for himself. And feels just fine about it. The kids say, "But Cartman, we all could have had chocolate for life!" He says, "Yeah but then I wouldn't have been able to do THIS," he shoves all 89 Kisses into his mouth and says, "Nyah nyah, I ha mo oc lit an yeeuu!"
This was an actual experiment done in the States and aparently there are Cartmans in every classroom there. I've done it in some of my classrooms in Korea and even though they are all about money over there I was proud of my students! They caught on and nobody Cartmaned the whole jar. I guess they are a bit behind the States in their corporate training. But which of the South Park kids would you bet your money on becoming the most "successful" in America?
Here's Cartman eating the skin off the KFC him and the gang were going to share. Kyle, Stan and Kenny are helping bring in the rest of the groceries. Cartman doesn't help bring in the groceries, eats the best part off everybody's KFC then goes home. There you have it, the model citizen in modern society. He will be CEO of a huge corporation some day.
My point is we have to stop encouraging antisocial, corporate behaviour in our government and in our societies. And if people refuse to stop thinking of themselves and their money before anything else, they must be corrected. And how about a little bit more reward and encouragement for people who think of other people?
How can we correct a government that has gone corporate? I'm glad I asked that question. The one part of the David Suzuki interview I didn't like was when he was asked for some concrete suggestions and out came that dusty old political panacea, "VOTE!" Well, he's a biologist, give him a break. But I find it really strange how even the smartest people seem to think we have no power in the situation we're in. The media continues to feign confusion or misunderstanding about the concrete issues the MWS protests are about. Well Suzuki nails the issues perfectly in the interview but the act of voting is actually just enabling the corrupted, corporatized system that is messing everything up. What can we dooo? Superman save us!
I think I'm going to draw a cartoon. It'll be a huge, money-eating monster ravaging the cities of Canada and a couple of Canadians saying to each other, "How can we stop this monster?!?" "I don't know, help me feed it this dump truck full of income tax cash, will ya?" Again, it's all about the training. Almost 100 years ago the government incorporated income tax to help in the war effort during WWI. It was a TEMPORARY tax. They have been collecting this tax from us for almost 100 years since the war ended. And that makes up a reported 40% of our government's revenue every year! But we are all well trained to pay our income tax every year. We even pay money to H&R Block to have them figure it out FOR the government. That's like digging our own grave, (or paying the grave digger bill), before being murdered. If we were thinking straight we would realize that our government owes the people of Canada TRILLIONS of dollars in illegally collected backtaxes. Or they should at least be thrown in jail. But it's pretty hard to put all the politicians from the past 100 years in jail.
Now flip that around. If we stopped paying income tax, (like we should have YEARS ago), they couldn't put us all in jail. Of course the government would complain that the 40% cut in their revenue would make their jobs so much more difficult. But would a single MP cancel a vacation, postpone a purchase or go without his/her regular raise? Of course not! They would pass the burden on to... who? Now you're catching on, US. So we would have to kindly request that the government reinstate the corporate taxes they cancelled not so long ago. And then request politely that they add some more taxes on top of them. There are THREE concrete suggestions about what we can do in Canada.
And when they don't work, which they likely won't, THAT'S when things are gonna get REAL all up in this bitch. There are lots of things we can do to take down the corruption at the top. They're soft and we are the workers. There is no way they should be able to bully us. I'm looking forward to kicking this bully's ass.
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