L A TIMES You say you want a revolution ...
AL MARTINEZ
February 6, 2006
HISTORY teaches that the poor aren't always happy being that way.
Periodically, they topple kings, behead the courtesans, sell the jewels, establish a people's form of government and then, masters of their own fate, elect someone who favors the rich to lead them. And it starts all over again.
But what they gain, meanwhile, is the opportunity to someday be among those with the power to determine precisely who will abuse the subjugated masses. It might even be one of them.
I mention this due to a disquieting trend in this country to veer away from what we started a couple of hundred years ago and segue into a form of democratic aristocracy. Everyone wants to be free and everyone wants to be rich.
This works quite well if you've managed to earn, inherit or steal a good deal of money, thereby achieving a standard of living far above that of the lumpenproletariat, which is to say those in the crowds at the foot of the castle.
If you're not among the aristocrats, life becomes a little harder. The costs of housing, food, transportation and medical care edge increasingly upward. The gap between you and the chairman of the board of Exxon Mobil grows wider.
We see General Motors and Ford sinking slowly into an iceberg-infested ocean as a band plays "Nearer My God to Thee," taking with them about 50,000 jobs, even as our leader, beset by similarly sinking polls, promises that things are getting better.
Well, they are. In a way.
They're getting better for Exxon, which just a few days ago announced a 2005 profit of $36.1 billion — more earned by any company, any year, ever. Of that, $10.7 billion was a fourth-quarter profit. That's about $116 million a day for three months.
Running second, there was the $14.1 billion earned by the Chevron Corp. last year, $4.1 billon in its fourth quarter — the most it has ever made in any three-month period since its founding in 1879.
And in third place among the giants, there's the $13.53 billion brought in by ConocoPhillips during 2005, about a 60% increase over the previous year's $8.13 billion.
So what? I hear you say. A billion dollars isn't worth what it once was, and earning money is the good old American way. That makes one wonder what it has done for good old Americans like … well … you.
If you're in the lower percentages of the working classes, your income has decreased 1% in the past years. But if you're among the richest 20% of the nation, hallelujah, it's up almost 4%! Even more if you own oil company stock.
Meanwhile, we've spent $251 billion so far fighting a war we can't possibly win, and the prez wants billions more. But, hey, look on the bright side: We'll probably be saving money by cutting off relief efforts to the Palestinians because the free election we've been encouraging for years didn't turn out the way we'd planned.
But I stray from the point, which continues to be the rising cost of gasoline. The oil barons, drooling like Saint Bernards over their astronomical profits, want more. And why do they want more? To make our lives better, silly, by exploring new sources of fuel. Air, maybe. Or chemically treated water. Or solar or lunar energy. Or nuclear power. Or twisted rubber bands.
And if they should tap into a new and wonderful source, who do you suppose will end up owning the source and charging exorbitant prices for use of that source? Right. Them. And who will end up paying? Us.
But then, you say, what do I know? Not much. I just figure that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer and it has something to do with greed and the increased costs of just about everything.
I'm not sure where all of this might be going, but when the downtrodden get damned tired of watching a class of economic royalists living high on the hog while they starve, well: "When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another…. "
That's the start of the Declaration of Independence, if you're wondering; the chains we threw off when our situation became intolerable, when we had no representation in the court of King George, when oppression was a sword that pinned us to the ground.
As a ruling class of the moneyed emerges in a country beset by the woes of the poor, one wonders if the impoverished will rise up against economic disparity, at last weary of bearing the burden of aristocratic affluence, tired of scratching for food, of barely making it, when others are making it big.
Listen closely and you can almost hear the drums beating.
-- Jim Devine "The price one pays for pursuing any profession or calling is an intimate knowledge of its ugly side." -- James Baldwin