Stilling The Voices
I’ve been getting mail from my regulars for the last week or so, and I haven’t been able to respond due to a change in the SMTP policies of my ISP. What this means in clear American language is that I can receive emails, I just can’t send them.
This has me a bit suspicious, in that the stated claim for the instigation of the tighter email transmission policies is to reduce the amount of spam being disseminated, and yet spam - for me at least - isn’t much of a problem. I got a few as we all have, but it hasn’t dominated my inbox.
Rest assured, dear Regulars, that I will - as soon as my real-world occupation ceases its monopoly on my time - make arrangements be become responsive again.
I just wish that was the limit of the communication problems I face. I fear there is more.
There is the timing of the email policy changes.
Shortly after Chertoff’s “gut feeling” concerning another terror attack, right as it’s clear that the Bush administration is losing the sync lock on the American media, right as we all await the admission that the Oil War is yet another Rovian failure, we who watch for subtle changes note that Trent Lott was quoted as telling Congresspersons not to be in the Capitol during Labor Day week. Clamping down on communication among Americans would certainly assist whatever machination is afoot, and play a role in keeping a lid on the reaction, whatever it happens to be.
I was reading in the Canadian media about the protests in Quebec concerning the conference of the continent’s leadership, and how some Agents provocateur were inhibited from creating an ugly incident there (sorry - no link available. My data file got erased by my employer’s IT department before I could save it and I’ve had no time to locate it again.)
I lived through the Democratic Convention of 1968, and I knew cops’ kids, who told me the most hair-raising tales of what their fathers were facing at the protests. I found these tales hard to believe, and based on the most recent incident in Quebec, maybe I was right to question authority back then. We would certainly be right to question it now, before that right is terminated.
As bad as these things are, it’s only the Fat Lady warming up. I saw another headline (again, no time for linking) that described how over 40,000 have lost their relatively well-paid jobs in the home mortgage field. This will have secondary effects on the economy, as stores begin laying off staff due to reduced sales. Wal-Mart’s president already mentioned this reality just last week, and sent the stock markets into decline.
As people realize that they have been had by the false Bush “booming economy”, they are going to be angry, and at that point the police will be released to perform their true purpose - protecting the wealthy from the rest of us. They will be no nicer than the recently late (and unlamented) Leona Helmsley, who infamously exposed how the wealthy truly feel about the rest of us and had to spend some time in the cooler for crimes far less serious than Ken Lay’s for not remembering her place.
The wealthy hate us, as anyone who has been paying attention since 1980 knows. We are merely toys for their amusement, and we are to be subjected to whatever their whims desire. It’s all OK, for their needs are far more important than our own, and if we don’t like it, their paid bully-boy graduates of The Asshole School (ask your police friends) see to it that we don’t get too close to bringing an end to that cushy arrangement.
History tells us that this situation cannot last. The problem is that when it goes, it takes everything with it. The America we knew and loved now belongs to the ages. That which is coming will be much uglier than we ever thought would happen. The best most of us can hope for is to get through it to experience calmer times again.
It will never be even this good again in our lifetimes.