Tioga Herald

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In my 20s, I viewed the Monty Python movie, The Holy Grail. It was very humorous and, as a 20-something and with much less knowledge and wisdom than what I have today, I thought it was absolutely hilarious.

The time period is the age of supply-side economics of the Medieval period. We often call this economics, feudalism, too. Nevertheless, the aristocracy ran a top-down economic system with trickle-down economics and draining the lower classes of their resources and never considering that money could be spread around for the success of many.

One scene in that Monty Python movie was about the pandemics / epidemics which spread across the land. You see many people placing dead bodies in wagons and so forth. One person, perhaps a town crier, is yelling out, “bring out your dead… bring out your dead… bring out your dead.” At one point, a younger man is carrying out an old man over his shoulders as the old man is yelling out, “but I ain’t dead yet.” The old man repeats these words several times. Then one man takes a paddle and wacks the old man over the head and says, “there, you’re dead now.”

That is how, as a senior citizen in the USA today, with supply-side dictatorial business people who have come in to take over since the Bush Recession of 2008 and helped create supply-side economics on the scale which existed in Medieval times. They were inspired by the lousy man named Ronald Reagan who purported that “government is the problem.” That insulted me then and insults me now, for its lashing of Uncle Sam and the wonderful legacy we have with it. Over the course of the years since Reagan and the 2008 recession, I have been dismayed at those who take the side of the mentally sicko people who propose something that is reminiscent of the Medieval days.

Sad to say, that I am beginning to think that we senior citizens in today’s world are being carried out, saying, “I ain’t dead yet” and getting banged over the head by younger bastards who love the idea of individualism and a love of money, helping to create a lousy supply-side economics and helped along by the SOB Scalia and other justices and a Citizens United Decision which should be called “Corporate Monopoly and Supply-siders United.” As in the days following Adam Smith’s pronouncement that humans are not perfect so need guidelines for business morality and those who wished to maintain a status quo of supply-side economics, we have justices on the Supreme Court, too stupid with their law degrees, to recognize true justice associated with “we the people.” As in the Drew Scott Decision of the 1850s, these justices wish to do the same thing as they did with that decision and appease the white supremacists with all the power and money, with status quo, except this time around, they are not Southern plantation owners, but a class of people who model themselves after plantation owners and could be called the “plantation-owning class of people.”

This “plantation-owning class” works to bypass anyone like me who keeps trying to plead for people to recognize that our Founding Fathers and Adam Smith, from the Enlightenment Period of the late 1700s forward, tried to define common sense, rational judgment, and the idea of checks and balances in politics, economics, and justice. The Founding Fathers put words regarding checks and balances in politics and justice in the U.S. Constitution, but not the words of their contemporary, theologian and economist, Adam Smith, with regard to checks and balances in economics.

In the early 20th Century, a man like Teddy Roosevelt worked with a goal of incorporating ideas of checks and balances in economics by busting the idea of huge trusts controlling all the business in America. TR was known as the “trust buster” due to his work to establish rules of regulation which means a government could provide checks and balances within business. With TR’s ideas, America thrived, in spite of the destruction of a Depression and Prohibition on the economy. However, big fat pigs like J.P. Morgan and others really trashed TR and his cousin, FDR.

Checks and balances in justice were exemplified by a statue called Lady Justice who, while blindfolded, carried a balanced scale with two evenly distributed empty plates. Today, people poke fun at this idea in a sarcastic manner by showing a statue of a Lady Justice and a “scale” with two die dangling from it. Where are the checks and balances today?

A little “night history lesson” to go along, after what I have just mentioned. Along came capitalism in the late 1800s and Adam Smith defined capitalism as a checks and balances means of economics, based on supply AND demand. Then Karl Marx came along, shot holes in what he THOUGHT was capitalism when it actually was still the remnants of monarchical royalty aristocratic Medieval supply-side economics. Marx ruined the understanding of the intent of Adam Smith, with his publications of Wealth of Nations and The Theory of Moral Sentiment. After all, to protect the status quo, the wealth fat cats (the name given to the Americans aristocracy following the American Civil War) worked to protect their supply-side economics by re-defining capitalism to their idea of status quo, for the sake of the industrial revolution.

Am I ranting and raving? Really? Is that how it is interpreted? Or is it a lesson in economics and history which should be humbly considered?

Is ranting and raving, like the old man portrayed in the Monty Python movie, to be considered a mental problem? Was that man being carried over a shoulder mentally ill as he ranted and raved about his impending death, while he was still quite alive? Is that humorous? If you think it is, then YOU are the sicko one, not the man exemplified in the movie. I always felt bad for that man, but all the other 20-somethings at the time were laughing their heads off. Probably many of them have taken up the white person’s gauntlet within the Proud Boys today.

Ranting and raving has accomplished far more than carrying guns and weapons. I was told by a Filipino customer service person for an American company, after two months of complaining about my experiences with really lousy delivery of a morning newspaper, that I was ranting and raving. Of course, I was ranting and raving. Figuratively, I am feeling as if I have been pushed against a wall with a chokehold for two months now. I have not been wacked over the head like the old man in the movie. But today, apparently, dictatorial business people, like law enforcement, wish to use chokeholds instead. Again, I speak in a figurative manner, with all due respect for what George Floyd and his family has suffered with regard to the Minneapolis chokehold. I have not suffered by losing my life. Yet. And one hopes I won’t.

Rants and raves have given success in several areas and have done so without guns and the 2nd Amendment. Ironically, the Proud Boys, Qanon, and MAG crappers are opposed to most of the successful rants and raves which have led to freedom for many people, although remnants of the systemic racism are still with us today and the George Floyd incident exemplifies this. Black people have ranted and raved to attain liberty, justice, and the pursuit of happiness. People like Billie Holiday have sung songs expressing their ranting and raving about what was done to black people. This ultimately led to two forces: violent Black Panthers and non-violent Martin Luther King. In that case, the non-violent ones helped push forward, with a collective voice with words, not guns, civil rights legislation and voting rights legislation. This notion really stuns the 2nd Amendment-supporting jackasses of white people in America, including the NRA, so this is how they respond with Trumpicans, Proud Boys, Qanon, and sicko MAG SOBs?

It took 70 years of ranting, raving and protesting by women seeking voting rights in order to attain such rights. It was not instant gratification and “me, me, me” first individualism which did it. It did not take guns to attain the vote for women. Even then, black women were not able to gain the right to vote until it was defined for all black people. What a shameful thing about America’s past which needs to be buried and stopped in its tracks as we move forward. The Trumpican folks despise NOW and other more radical groups which stand up for the rights of women.

Another group which used ranting and raving to attain its freedoms and come out of its segregated closet were those of the LGBTQ community. Even today, the freaking lousy DeSantis of Florida is trying to use a hatchet against this group of people. Maybe he wants to send the NRA-lovers after this group, as well? In 1969, a bunch of gay men said, enough is enough and we ain’t going to take it anymore. Without guns, they started a riot in New York City. Sure. They destroyed property and police cars in the process, but there were no guns. They continued their efforts to attain life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all the LGBTQ by ranting and raving, as well as showing off half-naked bodies in “pride,” sad to say, because of not being treated with dignity in the past. A group of gay men threw a pie in the face of Anita Bryant, the homophobic bitch who, as the Florida orange juice lady, was speaking out against gay men in a homophobic manner. The freedoms for the LGBTQ still need defending as their are lousy southern states of Dixie (and elsewhere) which are trashing gay people with their laws. So I rant and rave about the fact that freaking Tennessee wants to stop adoption by LGBTQ couples. Often these couples can define a family and keep functional (not dysfunctional ones) families better than in many heterosexual heads of households. There are plenty of examples to back up what I am saying, too. I send out my rant and rave to those in states like Florida, Tennessee and elsewhere who are nothing but lousy scumbags in the treatment of fellow human beings.

There are many other examples of how much better ranting and raving and the resulting collective voices which support the ranting and raving with words, not guns, can correct problems in our land. They can work, as it is said, “it takes a village” and find solutions which can work for more people and solutions which encompass more people in the process, than Trumpican one-sided jackasses with white skin and a penchant for a dictatorship of the white supremacists and any “Uncle Tom’s” or money-loving Jews with no concern for their fellow group of humans whom they can recruit to their sides.

I am a SOB in saying this in a ranting and raving mode. But I don’t care. Somebody has to say it.