Chamber of Commerce knew this was coming. [View All]

[The Backlash Cometh]

All this attack on the middle class, coming from the rich, it was foreseen.

A friend of mine use to work in the Chamber of Commerce. We lost touch with each other shortly after 9/11 when her views became too right-wing. But I remember something she told me a few years before she changed, which was prescient for the times we were about to experience. Especially today where programs for the needy are being cut to accommodate tax-cuts for the rich.

She said there was an organization that was invited by the Chamber every year for awareness training. It was a sort of social experiment that they had been conducting over a period of several years. An instructor would come in and divide everyone who attended the session into one of three groups. A, B, C.

The "A" group were given the characteristics of the rich. They were the ones with the resources.

The "B" group represented the health and services group.

And the "C" group were labeled, poor.

The instructor said that through-out the day they would follow a schedule where the three groups would meet with their fellow group-mates and discuss future planning. They were only limited by their group's assigned characteristics. Then, after the ten to fifteen minute period, they would congregate back in the main room and each group would report their progress.

The first major decision was made by the "C" group when they went to their assigned room and found it bare. There was nothing. Not even a chair to sit on. So they came back to the main table and "stole" the chairs from the main meeting room.

When they came back to the main meeting room to discuss what they talked about, the "A" group said they wanted to set rules to penalize conduct they found inappropriate. Eventually, they began to control the "B" group to limit the help they gave the "C" group.

To add to the conflict, the instructor set up scenarios, like creating an emergency like a plague. They even suggested that the "A" group had the power to improve the situation for the other two groups by releasing money for social programs. In short, what happened is that the "A" group kept making the worst of every possible decision, inflicting the most hardship on the "C" group until they wiped them out, and then they started on the "B" group.

When it was over, only the members of the "A" group survived.

The instructor stated that in all the years they administered the test, this was the absolute worst that they had seen. This happened in the late nineties.

I think it's obvious that the test is a direct reflection of the mentality that we're seeing in Wisconsin and every other state where we have Republican governors making the most inhumane decisions. Except, when you play with people's lives like that, there are real consequences to deal with. In the end, nobody is going to be happy with the results.