"Necessity hath no law." Oliver Cromwell

[The Big Vetolski]

Some of my ancestors(they were either French or Mickimac, BTW) were already in North America when Cromwell said those words in the 1640's.

Oliver Cromwell did not start off as a revolutionary. He was driven there by the excesses of the PTB at the time. He was, by the standards of the time, upper middle class. For the sake of argument, let's leave religion out of this. The King of England, Charles I, thought that he had the right to rule by the Will of God. The Divine Right of Kings. Or just because he felt entitled to do so. Like that.

Whoops. Whose head fell to the executioner? Hint: It wasn't Cromwell's.

I see parallels right here, right now, in the United States of America. A small group of people, which I define as the top 2% of income-earners, seem to feel that they have the right to tell the rest of us what the hell to do. Most of them earned their wealth and their power the old-fashioned way. They inherited it. The rest got there by luck. That's right. Luck.

They were in the right place at the right time with the necessary resources and were lucky enough to make the right decisions at the right times. For most of them, it wasn't hard work that got them where they are. It was luck. Pure and simple. Of course, there are exceptions, but those are few and far between.

Don't believe me? Take a good, hard look at yourself. If you are living comfortably, what did YOU do to earn that? Really? Or did your parents or grandparents work their asses off so you could be there today? Or, were your parents and grandparents lucky enough so that they COULD work their asses off so you could be where you are today? So you could be sitting in a chair looking at the computer monitor your parents paid for feeling all outraged at what you are reading right now?

Of course, there are exceptions. But if you who are reading this are thinking, quite accurately, that you worked your own personal butt off so that you could be sitting on your ass reading these words, did you not get a break, somewhere, at some time? Were you not given the opportunity to make something of yourself by being at the right place at the right time? Were you not...come on, admit it...lucky?

If so, there are a LOT of your fellow countrymen, your fellow Americans, who are NOT lucky enough to have inherited money, or been at the right place at the right time to be able to earn enough money, to even be able to afford to purchase the technological device upon which I write. I freely admit that, compared to millions, I'm freakin' lucky. I was lucky to be able to get a BA in a time and a place where tuition AND fees were ten dollars per semester hour. No shit. It happened. University of Texas. Hook 'em Horns, baby! Long ago and far away.

But that shouldn't be luck. It should be something that all of us have within our reach if we have enough energy to put down the pipe and the beer, get off the couch, and go to freakin' class if we so choose! (Never mind that you can pick up the pipe and the beer AFTER going to class and still get a degree if you have more than a few brain cells to rub together). :toast:

OK. IF all of my above efforts to break through the normal paradigms in which most Americans wrap themselves(yeah, dude, that's what all of the hopefully well-written hyperbole above was about)was successful(ahem!), here's the point.

All of us, each and every one of us, has been bombarded since birth with a Really Big Lie, that if we just work hard enough or are creative enough or are smart enough then we, too, can Be A Success. It's not true. It's a lie. A lie designed to keep those who already have the power in power. While they, when they so deign, sit back and watch us scurry about like rats in a maze. Maybe they even place bets amongst themselves on which ones of us will be admitted to the Winning Club.

If any of us DO make it to that exalted level, it's because of one of two things. Either we inherited it, or we lucked out. Maybe we worked really, really hard to get into a position in which we had a chance of lucking out, but, in the end, we lucked out.

And if we don't inherit or luck into success, as the ruling class defines it, then we are "losers."

That ain't right, dude. That's just wrong. That's not what I think America should be, though it is what my country has become. My ancestors spin in their graves. I'm bummed. This situation cannot, and will not, endure.

[rpannier]

1. The goal post has been moved

If you can pick the correct numbers in the lottery you too can be a millionaire

[The Big Vetolski]

2. Nice to see somebody gets it. Thanks. nt

[aquart]

3. The difference between winning and losing, say I,

holding up pinched fingers, is only this much...or you aren't running in the right race or fighting at the right weight.

Competitions are between equals or they aren't competitions, they're slaughters.

And that's what you need to remember when you say, "loser." You're saying it to the pool you draw your winner from.

[jwirr]

4. Your comparison is apt but I really do not like being compared to

Cromwell. They had a revolution but you cannot leave religion out of it. IMO they were the rw of the 1640s. That does not excuse Charles I because he and many of his successors wanted as much power as they could get in the hands of the few. I do not see that Cromwell did much to change that.

I would rather thank Simon De Montfort and those who followed him for that.

[The Big Vetolski]

6. I picked Cromwell because I liked the quote. I could just as easily

picked something from the French Revolution. For example, when a nobleman who had supported reforms and a constitutional monarchy before the Jacobins took over was on his way to the guillotine, he asked one of his executioners, "What have I done to deserve this?"

"You were born," the executioner replied. Of course, that happened in the Reign of Terror.

Americans like to think that a revolution can't happen here, that a Reign of Terror can't happen here, that we can never have a dictatorship. But they're wrong. The thing is, successful popular revolutions usually take only a few weeks or months at most to overthrow the government. It's what happens afterwards that can be really scary.

That is why so many Syrians are NOT joining in the demonstrations to overthrow Assad, even though they really don't like him or his dictatorial government. They are afraid of the probable civil war that would come afterwards, and are sticking with the devil they know. For now.

What worries me is that the increasing inequality of wealth in America, and the increasing iron-fisted arrogance of the rich in demanding more and more from everyone else is precisely the sort of behavior by a governing class that can trigger a revolution. It used to be that the Democrats would always stop things from going too far. This time, the Democratic leadership is helping it along in the name of "compromise" and "bipartisanship". I find their actions, and inactions, dangerous.

[blindpig]

7. The religion follows the economic.

Calvinism was, if not taylor made for the rising bourgeoisie then certainly an example of Marx's "The ruling ideas of any age are those of the ruling class." While the English bourgeoisie was not ruling yet it was ascendant and about to succeed at the first bourgeoisie revolution. Once that revolution took place, even after it was reversed, the power of nobility was on the ebb.

[WinkyDink]

5. Hint: They don't call it the "Inter-Regnum" for nothing. Hint: You wouldn't want to be Cromwell's

head, either:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Cromwell's_head