Neoliberalism’s mantra of “privatizing everything in sight” and elimination, or cutbacks of governmental programs, a.k.a, austerity, especially public healthcare, is a death warrant for millions, maybe more than millions!
Sure-fire, whenever private interests take control, or cut funding for public welfare programs, similar to what Democratic and Republican neoliberal advocates have consistently advocated ever since the 1980s, all hell breaks lose.
Daily, the job of a social worker is to inspire, to show the way, pave some sort of less bumpy path, enlighten, mentor, listen to, value, drive, serve, formulate, plan for, seek money with, engender kinship, provide case managing, and reflect upon the lives of some amazingly resilient survivors.
This is not for the faint of heart or weak in the head sort of person who believes in some magical Disney World of One-Day-I-Too-Will-Find-My-Fairy-Godmother story.
Two years ago, on June 23, 2014, Dallas resident Charles Robert Moore drove to his hometown of Grand Saline, Texas and parked his car in a Dollar General parking lot on East Garland Street. He lingered there momentarily and then placed a foam mat on the ground. He knelt down on the mat, poured gasoline over his head and lit a match. He immediately burst into flames.
As Moore stood up and began to scream, two men rushed over and extinguished the blaze. He was transported to Parkland Hospital, but succumbed to his burns later that day.
Life is a crap shoot whether walking down the street, driving on the highway and across the bridge, flying overhead, depending on other organizations (besides those that build cars, trucks, bridges and planes), or just plain living. We take our chances no matter how selective and careful we may be.
But the chances get riskier when dealing with any of the more risky organizations or any of the card-carrying corporate members of the Devil’s marriage, the unequal partnership between corporations and subservient government.
Summary: I show that the de facto police practice of constant random harassment by carding and other means, combined with less frequent unprovoked executions and prosecutions using false charges, in containing groups targeted for containment is exactly the most effective and efficient strategy for hierarchical containment developed by evolution and described by primate anthropologists. As such, the said practice should be understood to be an intrinsic feature of the societal dominance hierarchy.
CEOs of evil are hard to identify, due mainly to the fact that they clothe their style in masquerade. Take the current election fiasco in America, for instance, which goes from ugly to uglier, and one gets the impression that the mask of exceptionalism and faux patriotism projected into the public domain is little more than a joke extended to the 99% by the 1%. It’s just another way of saying, ‘we’re making America great again’, so, ‘shut the fuck up’. After all, capitalism is only for those who possess loads and loads of money!
Confucius is credited with saying “When we see men of a contrary character, we should turn inwards and examine ourselves.” Likely much was lost in translation, given the language difference and passage of 2500 years, but I think I catch the drift. For those of us who find ourselves constantly at odds with a vast majority of our contrary neighbors, it follows that our lives should be a never-ending series of self-examinations. Maybe I don’t do so often enough. In truth, it would be more accurate to say almost never.
In Regarding the Pain of Others (2003), Susan Sontag writes:
A painting or drawing is judged a fake when it turns out not to be by the artist to whom it had been attributed. A photograph—or a filmed document available on television or the internet—is judged a fake when it turns out to be deceiving the viewer about the scene it purports to depict.
