Greed Bleeds [All Over the Poor]

Greed Bleeds [All Over the Poor]

If you are  not voting for Donald Trump, then your overwhelming reaction is undoubtedly, “Why would anyone vote for this epitome of American greed and ugliness?” 

The answer is simple because it is deeply ingrained in our nation’s history: Millions of good, honest, law-abiding citizens will line up at the polling booths to cast their vote for this reality TV star, because they believe with all their hearts, the Horatio Alger myth.

This is the belief that only in America, the land of capitalism, could a person raise himself up by his bootstraps and become anything he (and eventually, she) wanted. 

Alger advocated that hard work, determination, courage and honesty, were all that was needed for a person to get rich. His novels were popular after the Civil War, painting a rosy picture of individuals striving to achieve middle class security, and making heroes out of those who were the best at it.

No one envisioned that greed would win out over lofty principles like freedom and equality and take over control of the soul of this country. 

45 million Americans now live below the poverty level despite dwelling in the richest country in the world. How many people, both kids and adults, go to sleep either hungry, or with stomachs filled with substance that solves their hunger but creates serious health issues down the line?

Believe me, to these people, greed bleeds.

I love my country but I have grown to hate my country’s government. The principles of those who fought to free the Thirteen Colonies from British tyranny, never envisioned a time when 1% of the population, would control 90% of the nation’s wealth.

This country's government has abandoned the precept that the existing government is “of the people, for the people and by the people.” No, that was the original idea and conceptually, it served as a beacon for the rest of the world for close to two hundred years.

Conflicting with this ray of hope, however, after the Industrial Revolution hit the New World, was another notion that reared its ugly head, that wealth was the new freedom and granted even more equality.

Names like John D. Rockefeller, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Andrew Carnegie, and Joe Pierpont Morgan became common in American household. These were men who were admired because they were able to achieve the “American Dream,” and they became heroes in our culture.

So much so, that instead of admiring the idea that if everyone had some loot we would all be good, Americans began to admire those who acquired enough loot to ratchet their lifestyle up another notch or two. 

After all, this is America.

But hoarding is a compulsive and ugly characteristic, invariably portrayed by old women with seventy-something cats living inside their homes, or old men with newspapers and plastic cartons piled up to the [non-existent] wainscot. 

Hoarding has been linked with mental afflictions such as bipolar disorder, social anxiety and depression, so why is it that people who hoard money are looked up to? Why does Forbes Magazine exist? 

I would ask, since when is it acceptable to worship greed, but I have already provided the answer: since that time in the nineteenth century, when excess wealth became a virtue, not a vice.

And, of course, the natural extension of individual wealth, to corporate wealth, is to have been expected. Nameless, faceless corporations still have CEO’s receiving exorbitant wages and bonuses. Exorbitant?

Perverted is more like it.

Do you realize how little of each billionaire’s pocketbook it would require, to remove the concept of poverty from our culture?

Try one percent. One percent of the $76 billion that Bill Gates earns annually is (simply remove two zeroes: 76,000,000,000 divided by .01 =  760,000,000) seven hundred and sixty million clams. You can feed a lot of hungry people if you infuse seven hundred and seventy million dollars into the economy.

And that is only one: one man and one percent of someone so wealthy that he could single-handedly put a dent in the hunger problem in this country. But no, Bill needs that money. All of it. Besides, don’t you think his tax lawyers insist that a certain amount be donated to “charity,” whatever that looks like?

It’s disgusting; my country’s government is disgusting and greed is the reason. I hate talking about politics because people get so angry and take it personally.

That being said, the chances are that if you are voting for Donald Trump, it is because you envision him as a modern-day Horatio Alger. I understand it but it still makes me sick.

Perversion has a tendency to create that reaction in me.