Today, I'm glad I'm alive...
We all know that this country is on the cusp of disaster at any moment: horribly divided politically, racial and religious animus out the wazoo, electoral shenanigans which make the old days look like amateur hour, celebration of ignorance including wholesale rejection of science and the scientific method, corruption and greed as the norm, the list goes on and on and includes, but is not limited to the replacement of icon Jon Stewart with a gentleman who, shall we say, is strangely abusive in his attempts at humor.
But in these perilous times, I never thought I would pen these words: the nightmare in Indiana almost makes me believe in Capitalism as a form of Rescue Breathing to a dying country. We know, because we've dealt with corporations our entire lives, "that the reason, the REASON" (as Philip Roth would write) that these creeps are backing down is that it is going to cost them too much money to stick to what they strangely call "their principles". The potential loss of tens and tens of billions of dollars is too much for these CEO's, CFO's, and ordinary stockholders to bear.
I understand full well that these legislators, these tinhorn Mussolini-types live in a right-wing, Fox-induced bubble, but is there no one among their advisory group who might have posited that this was a BAD ECONOMIC IDEA to disenfranchise not only, say ten percent of the populus to begin with, but to not factor in those who were intimately connected to these individuals, to wit: their parents, their siblings, their aunts and uncles and cousins, their heterosexual friends, neighbors, and co-workers, who don't want to hear this kind of, and pardon me for it is the only word that adequately describes it, shit? I mean, even if you don't give a damn about gay marriage one way or the other, do you want to come home and hear from the guy across the street whose partner helps you shovel out your driveway after a snowstorm, that the bakery wouldn't sell them a birthday cake for their adopted son or daughter because this owner does not approve of gay marriage, gay sex, or gay-anything-else? You don't want to hear this...you want this guy to say to you, "how about them Colts, eh?" Or, "cold day in April, isn't it?"
So...to paraphrase H.G. Wells' ending to War of the Worlds: it wasn't the morality, or the ethics, or the true religiosity which saved Man in this instance, it was the Almighty dollar. All I can say is "Wow". We have descended to a level of head-shaking reality which I had no idea existed. But I do now. I have only one further concern: we are not finished in our fall into the Great Well. We can only guess at what numbingly destructive paradigm devolves next...
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It was Beauty killed the Beast.
Most importantly: Thank you for an outstanding essay, PCIntern. The truth is we need to get past what we already KNOW -- that all people are equal under the law. What confuses people is money -- they are willing to harm others if needed to get as much as they can, as quickly as they can, and through the least personal effort and responsibility possible.
Have you heard about Jacques Fresco? The great DUer TBF talks about him, too.
