Now is the time for our government to wage a war at home. For, whenever an entity has severely stunted America’s safety and soundness, our government has declared war. Wars of different scale and for different purposes have been declared on the behalf of the citizenry. At times our government has plunged into war early. Steeped in hesitance, America’s government eventually declared its participation in the world-wide war when, at last, it perceived a threat.
America has been threatened on a multitude of levels by a rogue financial system. Like the War on Drugs, today’s war must be fastidiously proclaimed. And, like the Civil War, this war must be won wholly. America’s leaders: Declare a war against a rogue financial system.
Financial systems are inherent in every society as a conduit for trade, and they are to be subject to the society – a servant to the masses. The American Civil War was based in a corrupt and intolerable financial system. The war was messy and complicated and divided citizens on the following lines and many more: agriculture v. industry; the nature of states’ rights (e.g., whether a state has the right to legalize slavery); the use of unpaid laborers for indefinite terms on harsh conditions – more commonly known as slavery; and the threat of a feudal system whereby a few landowners controlled the livelihoods of everyone else. The war divided loved ones and neighbors. Everyone had an opinion. Americans had both everything to gain and everything to lose rolled up into that one massive conflict. And it all really centered on the acceptance and rejection of a financial system.
The waves of history echo loudly in the ears of every American, though many may not recognize the noise. Take a moment with me to parse out the noise and consider an alternative.
The American financial system has grown increasingly inadequate over time so that it no longer serves anyone and has become an autoimmune disease to our country, debilitating it from the core. We have recycled economic policies and practices from every economic re-imagining forward (yes, I mean the New Deal but also others), and in so doing we have raised one generation after another to subsist on outmoded methods and mentalities.
As in pre-Civil War America, today’s financial system has divided many people on many lines, including: agriculture v. industry v. technology v. intellectual industry; the nature of states’ rights (e.g., whether a state has the right to file bankruptcy, pass its debt on to its population, or regulate financial entities more or less stringently); the use of unpaid or low-paid laborers for indefinite terms on harsh conditions (though we do not now refer to this as slavery); and the threat of a feudal system whereby a few entities own everything and control the finances of everyone else. Are you shocked? Or, worse, do you accept this as known and accepted truth?
Oversimplified storytelling has misled people to believe that the American Civil War was about black and white, slave and free. As anyone who has actually survived a civil war can attest, it is never that simple. Slavery was certainly the touchstone for civil war media attempts, and it was absolutely a factor that led to the long, entrenched fighting. I do not in any way discount the importance of the issue of slavery in the American Civil War. Slavery was the poster child for the entire movement against the financial system of the time.
Today, there is a very real form of slavery and indentured servitude taking place in America. It is not in the form of personal brutality, but it is every bit as humiliating, oppressive, stunting, and wrong. Today it is not about race, for every race is affected. It is not about individuals oppressing other individuals. It is not even about entities or governments oppressing individuals. Today’s slavery is about the cycle of servitude for governments, entities, and individuals to one another from which no one can find freedom.
Why do programs offer “financial freedom” or “financial independence”? Because the American society on every level is enslaved. I opine that no one really gains from this mass enslavement, and that, although tricky and fraught with complication, war will unite America and end this slavery. I do not write of a war with guns or bombs. I write of an intellectual war, which will have its own casualties, its own victories, and its own legacy.
The most basic and crucial task in building a wartime strategy is to understand unequivocally who is the enemy. You must study the enemy so that you can fight it where it lives and so that you can anticipate its adaptations. So, in this war, who is the enemy?
Let us first identify who is not the enemy. I am not the enemy. You are not the enemy. The banks are not the enemy. The government is not the enemy. The executives are not the enemy. Celebrities are not the enemy. Baby Boomers are not the enemy. Generation fill-in-the-blank is not the enemy. Your boss is not the enemy, nor is her boss the enemy. Your teacher/banker/retailer/doctor/lawyer/accountant/preacher/fill-in-the-blank professional is not the enemy. No industry or entity is the enemy. No nation is the enemy. No individual is the enemy.
The American Fiscal Ideology is the enemy.
Most of the “persons” (individuals and entities) in America are both debtors and creditors, so we cannot merely say creditors are bad and debtors are good. That is far too simplistic a view. The problem is partially owned by everyone. Every individual who has ever made a poor spending, saving, or lending decision. Every entity that has done the same.
Banks say that individuals spending more than they can repay is the source of the problem. Individuals say that the banks lending credit they knew could not be repaid is the problem. They are both correct, and they are both incorrect.
The financial system – that is, the infrastructure of finance – is holding individual and entity Americans hostage. Individuals are bankrupt, homeless, and jobless. Entities are bankrupt, adrift with the prospect of collecting money from those who have none, and concerned whether payroll will be met without interruption. Local, state, and federal governments face more debt then they can repay and have no lenders in sight. All of those named have a warped sense of value, cost, and appropriate trading practices. Each of those named are in peril, risking the further collapse of our infrastructure on every level – governmental, corporal, and personal.
You can no longer turn a deaf ear to the resonance of a corrupt and intolerable financial system. Consider yourself on notice: America must wage and must win a war against today’s financial system.
Now is the time for war. Yet, fighting an intellectual war differs from the wars we’ve read, seen, or known, requiring a new type of leader and a strong capability of reaching the masses. Blame has no place, nor do bandages. A debilitating national health care plan is a bandage to alleviate the toxic wounds of health care at the cost of risking financial security for our nation, our states, and ourselves. If the government can be so bold to impose national health care, can it not realign the rights of entities with the rights of individuals such that true health reform succeeds? What I mean is this: I need a medical test, and I have insurance; but the hospital must discount the service because of its contract with the insurance company, then I pay my part and the insurance company pays its part so that if you have insurance the cost of the service is lower than if you don’t have insurance. This is a blatant retaliatory scheme. Is it so hard to bring those forces back in line? I think not. But it takes leadership and determination to do so.
The same can be drawn from most types of debt. And, no one wins. Not the hospitals, not the insurance companies, not the individuals whether with insurance or not, not the state government, not the federal government. No one is winning. All are enslaved to a cruel and fault-ridden financial system.
Who will free us?
My Children, My Characters
August 7th, 2009I came to a breathlessly sudden realization recently: my children and my characters act very similarly. Both say the most peculiar things. Both are given to interrupting “important adult matters” with, at times, inappropriate comments. Both have been known to say and/or do brilliant or comical things when I haven’t the slightest way of recording the moment. Both are fun to be around. Both are enjoyable to learn about. Both are most willing to come to me at the height of emotion.
However, there are some notable differences. My children stay with me ever (they are young), while my characters come and go as they please until their stories are fully fleshed. My children provide a level of emotion, understanding, and wisdom that my characters never could but strive toward nonetheless.
Still, the most important similarities or links between my real children and my fictional characters, interestingly enough, are actually about me: I must allow them to live their own lives; I cannot control what they think, do, say, or become; I cannot manipulate them, though I can provide guidance and an outlet for them throughout their stories; and I cannot control extraneous events that happen to them.
Have you ever read or seen an interview of a famous writer who was asked “Why did you kill so-and-so in your book?” The question is asked as if the writer, in some murderous disposition, forced death on the character. In every good story, death is a necessary figure. You may not meet death directly on the pages, but you know on some level that death belongs to all of us. We may seek out stories of immortality, but most of them toy with death as a threat to everyone, even the immortal. I cannot imagine the deaths of my children, and, in fact, I have purposefully tried not to, but I know it is an eventuality whether I ever see it or not (and I hope not).
If I could ensure their health and utter happiness and a life lived long and well, I absolutely would. Yet, if I cannot make that happen for my real-life children whom I love and adore, how could I for those fictional figures whom I also love, even if the love is less patent and less satisfying? Some have tried and, in my opinion, failed, because no story feels authentic to a human unless some loss or change or struggle occurs as it does in real life.
And, when a character dies a good writer has not “made” it happen. The writer has simply recorded that character’s story for you and me and himself. You see, whether in real life or not, happy endings take as many forms as tragedies and each must decide for herself whether life’s episodic tendencies have a thread of narrative continuity running throughout the most episodic of lives, each must thresh out the meaning or vacancy of each event, word, and deed.
Happy threshing! I wish you every blessing in deciphering life’s riddles, and I plead with you to have pity on the poor writer whose job was to record the death of some fictional being you admired, for the riddles persist long after you’ve worked them out.
-Amanda Salisbury, writer, ShyJot Publications LLC
Tags: amanda salisbury, book, brilliant, comical, comment, control, death, emotion, episodic, famous, guidance, immortal, interview, kill, learn, manipulate, murderous, my characters, my children, narrative, outlet, parenting, question, recording, riddles, ShyJot Publications, threshing, understanding, wisdom, writer
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »