Guillotine.....

  I've had it with that "Let them eat cake" routine from King George II. He could at least pretend to care about us, and we'll pretend to believe him. It would be only window dressing, of course, but I'll take it. A little lip-service to the great unwashed masses. A friendly wink, maybe. Any type of connect. But it won't happen. Because, you see, these Texans seem to be hard-wired for greed and arrogance, members of an exclusive private club for wealthy captains of commerce, more often resembling 18th century European aristocracy than 21st century American representative government. I'm not asking for Abraham Lincoln here, but don't give us Leonna Helmsly. The man campaigned for president as a moderate candidate, but governs with the contempt, imperviousness and self-interest of a monarch. That's not what we intended.

     I would assume the president has noticed events beginning to sour on his watch. Serious events. Everything from economics to warfare. Will he turn to his much touted faith for answers? If so, then he should come away transformed by the realization that he's on the wrong path for someone who is president of all Americans, people who feel that their interests should also be his interests. But I don't suspect they are, and I don't think he'll turn to his faith. Not his spiritual faith anyway. He'll turn, instead, to what got him here: wealth, power, inside information and manipulation. He'll use the single most powerful position on the planet to proclaim, unabashedly and unapologetically, that there are some people like himself, and then there are the rest of us. A King for our time. Did this guy ever have to sweat a rent payment, or build a doghouse? It doesn't seem like it. George has soft hands and a cold heart, and I can't relate. The wealthy power-brokers seem to be morally myopic and sensitivity challenged, and the odor of elitism and corruption follows in their wake. Patronizing attitudes of opulence makes it obvious that we're the little people who (except at election time) really don't matter at all, the nuts and bolts in the machine that can simply be discarded and replaced. Old spark plugs. Used batteries. The noble, though dispensable, proletariat. Which wouldn't be so bad, really, if it wasn't shoved in our faces so often. But it's an ongoing pattern. The few benefit while the many suffer. Insider selling. Corporate mismanagement. Accounting fraud. Golden parachutes. Power access. It never seems to end, and the Elites never seem to have to answer for actions undertaken to embellish their own net worth, no matter how unethical or illegal. It's a question of fairness, and it's the kind of activity that King George will condone at his own risk, lest "the people", come November, 2004, employ the political equivalent of what befell the fortunes of another disconnected practitioner of social and cultural arrogance...George's historical soul-mate, Marie Antoinette.\line REDISTRIBUTE THE WEALTH...