THE RICH

Prejudice against rich people is the only prejudice I’ll cop to. It’s not that I want their money; I don’t. It’s just that I don’t like the mother fuckers; that’s all. It’s not just that they’re arrogant; many of them are downright EVIL. Their fortune is other people’s misfortune. But what I dislike most is the pretentiousness. People that wouldn’t be caught dead doing manual labor will put on their brightly colored exercise suits and dance the aerobic two-step while their personal trainer calls out the songs. These same people who would disdain to form a bead of sweat in public will sit in the sauna until their veins are ready to burst. Many of them are downright stingy. They might respond that that’s how they got rich in the first place. That’s part of it for sure, the ability to have money and not blow it. Another part of it is acumen, whether actual measurable talents or merely general ‘people skills’. Another part is pure dumb luck, just happening to be in the right place at the right time. Another part, probably the biggest part, is vision, the ability to see the future and its probable trends, and the ability to deliberately position your self in the right place at the right time. That’s probably my forte’, that and my fierce bottom line. My only true skill is linguistic, and that’s of limited importance in the age of Pidgin Shit. I have no problem with any of this. I am in business, after all. We have to be pragmatic. But somewhere free enterprise gets perverted into capitalism and society falls prey to modern robber barons like T. Boone Pickens, Michael Milken, Ivan Boesky, George Soros, and other infinitely forgettable millionaires who contribute nothing to society, but manipulate ‘the system’ for personal gain and to everyone else’s detriment. Top executives in Europe don’t make hundreds of millions of dollars a year like in America. This will be America’s downfall, and rightfully so.

CAPITALISM

Capitalism’s moment of glory barely lasted ten years. Without Communism to keep it honest, capitalism no longer is. The rip-roaring leveraged-buyout corporate-raiding inside-trading era of 1980’s American capitalism only subsided when the more creative Internet era of computing rose to dominance. But by then it was too late. The capitalists had shown their colors too often and made too many deals with too many devils. The colors were the black of oil and the green of money and the devils were too many corrupt leaders of too many corrupt regimes, increasingly those in control of major oil-producing countries. As with yin, so with yang, the seed of one is in the other, the universal law of retribution. The West’s refusal to embrace energy technologies other than oil has funneled money into the hands of Muslim fundamentalists with oil-derived wealth. Islamic fundamentalism is not likely to subside until their oil-derived wealth subsides. If they move us all back into the 14^th century in the process, well so be it. That was a golden age for Islam.

Fiel y Castro

Cuba’s good ol’ Faithful Reliable is looking a little beleaguered behind the whiskers these days, but what’s an old Communist to do?  Get capitalism after all these years?  Set up maquiladoras along the Florida Straits?  Vietnamese, except for Uncle Ho, were no-names.  East Germany, Romania, the Slav countries, even Russia itself, hardly a hero in the lot.  Castro is a NAME.  Cuba will probably have to await his funeral to make any political changes.  I’ll get there sooner or later.