Where, if anywhere, do our current dilemmas over swiftly rising gas prices and the wave of illegal immigrants converge? They converge at Corporate America.
In Europe, in centuries past, there were two irresistible powers to be reckoned with; The Monarchies and The Church, and not neccessarily in that order. The Monarchy and its minions, lords, barons and the like ruled over territories and the poor subjects who lived there. The former were wealthy, privileged; the latter were simple laborers who eked out meager livings while trying to stay out from under the heavy boots of the Monarchy's tax collector, and avoiding the searing thunderbolts of The Church.
Today, The Church holds much less sway and has been replaced by The Corporation, a legal entity with great powers and influence, often impacting our daily lives far more than today's version of The Monarchy - "The Government." The Corporation skates over thin legal ice with the help of its legion of Harvard-trained business and legal minions. In the process, you and I and the rest of modern "serfdom" are held captive to its greed. On the one hand, many of us, during our working years, serve The Corporation as worker bees. But top management of The Corporation, today's lords and barons, serves with great privilege. I know, because though I entered The Corporate World a serf, I was one of a lucky few who was dubbed a baron and enjoyed those very privileges. The lords and other barons around me made it clear that the serfs I now ruled were only to get the scraps.
At the very same time serfs receive their daily bread from The Corporation, barons and serfs alike serve other Corporations by consuming their products and services in a never ending recycling of monetary resources. But no matter how juicy the scraps serfs get, it's never quite enough to advance their circumstances because The Corporation raises the price of its products accordingly. Corporations, after all, know just how much serfs have in their bank accounts because The Bank is one of them.
The Government, too, serves The Corporation by governing in its favor at every opportunity as a quid pro quo for Corporate financial support for those in The Government who must run for election. This is very similar to how the old Monarchies and The Church worked in collusion to dominate the masses.
Now, in America, many serfs have accumulated enough wealth and threaten to disrupt International Corporate stability in ways they do not like. So the Corporate World uses The Government to bring balance back to The System. This is accomplished in any number of ways, but since this treatise is asking how illegal immigration and the high price of gasoline converge, let's just focus on these. Raising the price of fuel drains billions of dollars yearly from the serfdom's wallet and enriches The Biggest Corporation even more, while serfdom's ever-increasing debt brings it back into what The Corporate Web feels is the ideal financial balance: serfs in irredeemable debt to The Corporation. And secondly, by allowing an invasion of low-wage workers to come across our borders, The Corporation stands to gain even more. The old serfs, seduced by this illusion of "good times", find themselves increasingly in debt. And the new, even-lower-paid serfs begin to dig themselves into debt, insuring new generations of profits for The Corporate Web. At the same time the new illegal serf is a less-demanding and less-aware subject, thereby insuring the endless re-election of the same corrupt Government officials we have had in America for as long as we can remember.
Your Government serves not you, but The World Corporate Web. Do not be deluded by Corporate "good manners." All the "thank you's" and "please's" are the drivel of zombies, put out there to maintain the illusion that they care. But you already know this, don't you? The only difference between serfdom in The Middle Ages and now is that, strangers though we may be to one another, we are able through this internet to talk openly and widely about it.
Can we do anything to stop this? I think perhaps a better question is, SHOULD we even try to stop it? For even if we could, something will have to replace what we have. And while it might be new, odds are it won't be better. All suffering is relative. While we may not be suffering in the same ways that poor serfs did in The Middle Ages, they might look at us and think, "Oh my God, how do they put up with that kind of life?" For myself, I would be satisfied to end the tenure of those in The Government, male and female alike; those whose insufferable bullshit we have been unable to endure for what seems like forever. We need to rid ourselves of these leprous bastards any way we can. The new officials won't be any better, but at least they will be looking over their shoulders, wondering if we've got our cross-hairs on their brain stems next.
