| American Apartheid
by Great Orion Voyager � 2009 freyakorps Money segregates Americans: Money creates an American Class Apartheid that profoundly affects every aspect of life: To make sure your white suburban neighborhood stays wealthy and white, simply price all houses at over a half million dollars. You won�t see poor urban nonwhites in your hood. Problem solved! Money steers folks into neighborhoods �where they belong,� and drives them away from neighborhoods where they �don�t belong.� In poor urban ghettos, evil gangbangers take over public parks, belligerent bums take over bus shelters, shrieking psychotics stand in intersections, and police refuse to take any effective action. Security patrols are never in sight when gangbangers invade parks or bums take over bus stops or drunks smash bottles on sidewalks. Affluent suburban neighborhoods of 10,000 sq ft mansions are a wholly separate universe: When any bum steps onto the neighborhood park or walks down the sidewalk, police make him disappear within seconds, as a patrol car screeches to a halt in front of him. Two cops holding mace and nightsticks shout that he has no right to be here and has one minute to beat it or face arrest for trespassing. No bus shelters out here, since there is no public transit. Sidewalks and parks in rich suburbs are so silent, you can hear the wings of butterflies in the flowerbeds. Public libraries offering internet computers feel like prisons or insane asylums, flooded with belligerent bums, stinking drunks, shrieking psychotics and gangbanger parolees. A typical public library men�s restroom resembles some Hieronymus Bosch painting of Hell: Bums and drunks camp in every toilet stall, shave and shower at every sink, get into bum fights, as paranoid psychotics threaten to knife patrons over some perceived insult. Intolerable monkey-house stench nears Hobo-Power 10, a mix of bum stench, vomit, booze, cigarettes, puddles of urine, unflushed toilets, and crap smeared on walls vandalized with gang symbols in permanent marker. Many public libraries employ a platoon of security guards just to break up bum fights and kick out psychotics attempting to camp in the stacks. Internet use is limited to one or two hours per day, since there are never enough computers for the army of bums, drunks, psychotics and parolees waiting to play online video games and view online porn. At public libraries in several cities I complained about the slow internet speed, absurd rules, disrespectful staff, unmet need for more computers with longer time limits, and the need to chase away bums who play video games and view online porn. Library director shrugs: �What do you expect from a Public Library?� A library in a wealthy suburb tolerates no such misery: Internet computers out here are used mostly by adorable little school kids doing homework. Rather than a Hieronymus Bosch depiction of Hell, men�s restrooms out here more closely resemble an Andrew Wyeth painting of a clean empty beach house on the Cape. Bums are kicked out by cops arriving within seconds. Wealthy suburbanites pay fortunes to Comcast or Qwest or some other evil monopoly for internet at home, and bitterly resent paying property tax to support a public library they dismiss as a useless waste of tax funds. Wealthy suburbanites drive gas-guzzling SUV�s and recoil in horror at the thought of riding a bus or train. Suburban transit systems are pathetic, bankrupt and inadequate, with empty buses running barely once per hour, on routes that start nowhere and end nowhere, with no evening or weekend service. Voluntary Riders choose to ride buses and trains because public transit saves energy and is a key tenet of Deep Ecology. We sure do pay the price for living life with principles! Many buses and trains suffer belligerent bums, stinking drunks, drug addicts, shrieking psychotics and gangbanger parolees who take over the back as terrified riders scramble to the front. Lady complains and the obese bus driver dismisses her: �Look lady what you expect me ta do bout it? Dey�s jus how dem folk is!� American Class Apartheid dismisses all transit riders as Poor Folk who can be herded together shoulder to shoulder: Evil pickpockets, vomiting drunks, belligerent bums, shrieking psychotics, violent gangbangers, little schoolgirls, university students, men in Armani suits, women in Chanel suits, deep ecologists and the hardworking poor are dismissed as one and the same: If you are riding a bus, you must be Poor Folk, therefore you must be lazy and don�t care about your Quality of Life! Riding a dozen transit systems, I complained to transit agency directors about inadequate routes, inadequate schedules, slow ancient bus fleets packed to overcapacity, full of bums, drunks, psychotics and gangbangers committing violence against riders without consequences. Director stares: �You mean you want a FAST TOLERABLE ride, in COMFORT and PEACE and SAFETY? Then why are you riding our buses?� I explain: �I am a Voluntary Rider and want to get more folks to give up cars and ride transit to save the planet!� Transit director laughs hysterically: �Voluntary Rider! That�s a good one! Now I heard everything! AAAHAHAHA!� Spokane recently held mayoral elections, and both frontrunners called themselves �Progressive Democrats.� Candidate debates were broadcast live over Progressive Radio. Moderator asked: �Have you taken a Spokane Transit bus lately, and how would you improve service?� The first mayoral candidate replied instantly, without irony: �No I have never ridden a bus and have no plans to.� Moderator addressed the other candidate, and she replied without irony: �No I have never ridden a bus and have no plans to.� Moderator asked her to comment. She answered, without irony: �Well Spokane buses move too slow for me. I want to assure you that when you elect me as your Mayor of Spokane, you won�t catch me wasting time riding a slow bus, as I�ll spend all my time doing my duty!� Yet one of the mayor�s duties is to make sure buses run FAST! When the transit director of Atlanta�s MARTA rode on a MARTA bus, it made national headlines. Imagine: A real transit agency director, making $200,000 per year to manage the bus fleet, riding alongside a bunch of Poor Atlanta Colored Negro Black Folk! Can you believe it? Most transit agency directors and mayors don�t bother using the transit system they manage. When my Volk seize power, we�ll make sure every transit director and mayor gives up their SUV and commutes solely on public transit. Any transit director or mayor found driving to work will be beaten and hung upside down from a gas station like Mussolini. NO ONE IS OVERPAID Neocons spew their mythology: In a free market it is impossible for anyone to be overpaid or underpaid since salary is always the market price where supply meets demand. Some people get slave wages because they are slaves. Some people get millions because they are worth millions. This argument is absurd because this market inherently favors the rich and handicaps the poor. Workers have no bargaining power short of violent revolution, while the CEO has his salary set by golfing buddies on his board of directors. �No one is overpaid� becomes a sick joke. Chief Executive Officers today often earn over $10,000,000 per year, 500 times what their $20,000 workers make. PLANTATION SLAVERY: The one doing the work makes $10 per hour, while the one doing no work makes $5,000 per hour: CEO�S DO NOT RETURN VALUE: Anyone with an MBA degree can do their job just as well. CEO'S DO NOT ASSUME RISK: If they ruin their company, they still get a multimillion-dollar golden parachute, they still get several mansions, they still send their kids to Ivy League schools. People who assume all risks are workers who get downsized, who may no longer be able to afford rent or food, who cannot afford to send kids to college. Workers have their lives turned upside down by poor executive decisions, and often have to move to a new city penniless in a desperate attempt to find a new job. CEO�S NEVER ASSUME THAT KIND OF RISK. Supermodel shows up at a photo shoot and gets tens of thousands of dollars for one day of striking poses: For one day of standing around, she gets more money than you get in a year stuck in a tedious slave job in a windowless basement cubicle being yelled at by an abusive female supervisor. TV stars are given millions by sponsors who advertise products. Just one problem: ADVERTISING IS A SCAM. Advertising works only on gullible gits. Corporate advertisers steal millions in Surplus Value from minimum wage workers to hand to celebrities. This means morons such as the cast of FRIENDS make hundreds of millions. Jay Leno makes a million dollars per week. Does Jay Leno�s monologue make you buy nacho chips? What git would buy an SUV because he saw an SUV commercial? Everyone changes channels during commercial breaks. Shaq O�Neill and Tiger Woods get millions for a thirty-second Nike commercial, as Nike forces slaves to make shoes for pennies per day. Insane. �I make millions and I�m worth every penny!� Deserve millions for reading dialogue written by others? Imagine a celebrity fixing your car or painting your house then billing you for millions! Advertising deludes celebrities to think they deserve millions. How much would stars deserve if the system was sane? Stars would tell jokes for a few hundred thousand per year instead of tens of millions. Only then can they state, �No one is overpaid,� without it sounding like a sick joke. PROPERTY CLASS SOCIOPATHS Look at this new generation of Property Class Fratboys: Isolated in suburban McMansions on cul-de-sacs with no sidewalks, no parks, no libraries. Locked in their bedroom playing videogames on big-screen HDTV. Never visit the city, never walk any sidewalk, never participate in any community. Play no sports in public parks, hike no wilderness trails, talk to no one beyond a few fellow videogame addicts. Drive gas-guzzling monster SUV�s with locked doors, rolled up bullet-proof tinted windows, listening to AM radio Christian Cultist nutters spewing hate. Dittoheads brainwashed to fear and loathe the public. Blood Enemy of Healthy Sustainable Community. See this new generation of sociopaths on university campus, wearing opaque polarized sunglasses, IPOD earphones, cellphone glued to their head: See nothing, hear nothing, think nothing. If you constantly blather to cellphone peers about nothing at all, you will not develop a strong intellect. Intellectual development requires silent introspection. See fratboys and sorority sisters driving monster SUV�s holding cellphones to their heads, distracted by drivel, deadly nuisance to pedestrians: This is not a good generation. These are not good people. Tuned out disengaged disrespectful sociopath gits graduate college and become your landlords and employers, deaf dumb and blind to Public Interest. We remember a day when college students actually cared about the planet, believed in Public Stewardship of Public Resources, and worked hard to steward this planet toward Healthy Sustainable Community. We keep waiting for this new generation to wake up and evolve into Good People. Alas this new generation of SUV-driving, isolated suburbanite sociopath gits are good for nothing but Nuclear World War III cannon fodder. Blow it all to hell. Gotterdammerung. Good Riddance. �Black hole sun, won�t you come, and wash away the rain, Black hole sun, won�t you come, won�t you come.� Soundgarden |