The greed of the many (and extraordinary greed of a few) for power and money demands we try our best to comprehend what all the daily shouting and screaming around us actually means.
Because money and power are not that easy to obtain, fraud and outrageous lies are the standby strategies of the unscrupulous sociopaths who smile—while betraying us. Criminality and cupidity of all types flourishes in every niche of our country today, and the most successful and clever crooks and liars have a sad tendency to become our leaders. This is not a new phenomenon, unfortunately. Aesop, the ancient Greek storyteller who lived between 619 BC and 563 BC, observed “We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office.”
Of course, in our Constitutional Republic, we presume to elect our leaders, but they are, if we drill down a bit, often products of a not-so-subtle vetting process that takes place in the deeply-compromised mainstream media, the halls of our equally-compromised academic institutions, and the boardrooms of major corporations that want a reliable puppet in power when they need a tax break or bailout. Those in charge are typically beholden to themselves—not to us—and expect both our cash and compliance without either question or complaint.
Oddly enough, a great deal of the economic and cultural stress now crushing the hopes and dreams of many Americans is driven by a historically-anomalous confluence of interests between the Communist Left and the Capitalist Right. Big businesses need cheap labor, a cover story for their rapaciousness, and unending corporate welfare; the agenda of American Communists, who want a world without national boundaries, government censorship of dissenting viewpoints, and an all-encompassing welfare state, is surprisingly similar.
Wanting money from the government is as old as civilization; what is different today is that everyone expects endless cash on demand. What is truly eerie is the ideological divide between the Left and Right is so often bridged by bags of taxpayer money—and few seem to care whether the outcome is beneficial or not.
Look at the ongoing disasters of our government’s efforts to provide subsidized healthcare. Medicare and Medicaid are both wildly expensive and filled with fraud and bookkeeping chicanery of all types. Obamacare floats on massive government subsidies—yet provides shockingly little care that is accessible or affordable.
However, all these programs are immune to reform or revocation because both the Communists and the Capitalists have their own reasons for supporting them. The followers of Karl Marx are thrilled that the government is taking control of a large part of our economy and lives; the Adam Smith Capitalists are pleased because the government guarantees their profits while failing to protect Americans from being robbed blind by health insurance companies, Big Pharma, and suppliers of durable medical equipment. Everyone wins except patients who pay astronomical premiums, co-pays, and co-insurances while having to navigate a confusing maze of coverage limitations and caps when they have the misfortune to actually need affordable healthcare.
Housing is another example of the Left and the Right each declaring victory while the Americans who just want a home they can afford get screwed. The Left’s peculiar love affair with public housing, which is universally synonymous with rats and wreckage, is matched only by their desire to turn housing across all of America into another avenue for their beloved Big Government to control our lives and enact their dystopian social agenda.
Bankers are, of course, thrilled that government is slicing off the hi-risk, low-profit segment of the housing market for poor people while providing tax breaks and incentives that prop up the purchase of overpriced housing with absurd mortgages by increasingly overstretched working Americans. Meanwhile, local and state governments gladly cover the infrastructure expense associated with real estate development by inflicting higher and higher property taxes on homeowners to recoup those costs—with no charge whatsoever to the happy developers counting their profits.
Because the Left demands that government provide public housing for the poor, any pressure on developers to build smaller, affordable houses with thin profit margins magically evaporates. Voila! The diverging ideologies of the Communists and the Capitalists magically converge to lock the poor into lousy government-run housing while pumping up the profits of private real estate companies. Implacable foes end up working in a surprising symbiosis that screws the poor while emptying the pockets of the middle class and beleaguered taxpayers.
Today’s increasingly acrimonious Left/Right battles over deporting illegal immigrants actually mask a surprising mutuality of purpose. America’s loud and proud crop of Communists presume they are importing millions of future voters who will be beholden to them for their continued welfare payments and public housing. However, our nation’s Capitalists need millions of workers willing to work at any wage—and not needing any benefits because the government will be helpfully supplying these through Medicaid and other programs—to act as the hammer they will need to hold down wages for American workers.
Both the Left and the Right, in their own ways and for their own purposes, share a common desire to exploit those who raced over our porous borders when Donald Trump was not in office over the past decade, and each side does not want them deported for their own Machiavellian reasons—one side hoping for political power, the other angling for fatter profits.
This is our brutal national reality: The Communists and Capitalists that act like sworn enemies get to the same point by different paths and are often more connected than we might realize—while the majority of Americans stuck in the middle are the losers every time. Who would have imagined the Adam Smith Capitalists and Karl Marx Communists could agree, each for their own selfish reasons, that open borders are great, healthcare is a cash bonanza, and onerous taxation to support Big Government is wonderful? This is why policy reforms that help the average American don’t ever happen.