Is #OccupyWallStreet Class Warfare or something worse?

I woke up this morning at 2:00 with a case of indigestion in both mind and body. Don't ask me why, but laying in bed with a roiling gut, my mind was consumed with thoughts of Attorney General Eric Holder's Fast and Furious fiasco, the Solyndra debacle, the bank bailout and a laundry list of other crimes committed under the auspices of government and I had a flash of sobering insight:

Class warfare is what you call it when peasants and slaves fight back against a system designed to legalize oppressive behavior by a tiny segment of the population.

I've spent the last year laughing at the Italian legal system, knowing that Prime Minister Berlusconi isn't going to take any heat for his laughable governance simply because he controls the public perception in the country. He owns the major media and is passing laws to restrict free speech on the internet (Wikipedia Press Release).

I felt so smug because I live in a country where something like that could NEVER happen... except that it has. Corruption in America is so widespread that our government doesn't even apologize for it anymore. In fact, the federal government seems to use corruption as a means of taxation. When a corporation commits TREASON, the Federal Government hits them with a fine and then continues to do business with them. Federal Contractor Misconduct Database. Our military contractors sell our technology to our "enemies" in China and we just pay them to develop new technology (and expect them NOT to do the same thing over again?!)

This isn't a partisan issue. It's so ingrained in the system I rather suspect you can't get anything done in American government without participating at least a little bit.

I remember nearly 25 years ago coming home at a young age to discover Ollie North had taken over television news in the middle of the day. I was dismayed... why was congress interrupting regular programming to ask this guy questions? I was aghast. How ridiculous was it to believe a member of our armed forces was selling weapons to Iran in order to free hostages? I mean... he was all suave and uniformed and it made no sense. Worse... he was using the proceeds from selling guns to buy drugs from terrorists in South America which were then sold in America to fund the purchase of more weapons. Who in their right mind would do something that idiotic?!

Apparently, our federal government would.

North was convicted of three felonies, but deals for his testimony kept him out of trouble. Later, North ran for Congress... and almost won. Then he got a job with Fox News as a military commentator. Who says you can't get ahead in this country with a little hard work?

Now here we are, 30 years after the fact, and we have a different party occupying the White House. Attorney General Eric Holder is embroiled with Operation Fast and Furious where automatic weapons were sold to suspected gun runners as part of a sting operation against Mexican drug cartels. Some of these same guns were used to murder U.S. Border Patrol Agents.

Then there is the whole Solyndra issue. An Obama campaign contributor got more than 1/2 a billion dollars from the government to start a solar panel manufacturing plant and then mishandled the funds so badly that they went under in less than 2 years. George Kaiser is a multi-billionaire, but his project got federal help, while tons of smaller businesses were struggling.

Its disturbing that as you read through the accounts of government misconduct, you see patterns of names occurring over and over. Eric Holder worked for Covington and Burling, an attorney's office that represented Blackwater, Halliburton and Phillip-Morris... and Guantanamo Bay inmates?!

Michael Chertoff, Secretary of Homeland Security under George W. Bush and author of The Patriot Act worked for the same law firm.

George H.W. Bush Vice President when the Iran-Contra drug running plot was dreamed up. The drugs from South America came through a little town in Arkansas named Mena. Bill Clinton was governor of Arkansas at the time.

When you read things like "War is a Racket"  by Smedley Butler or "Confessions of an Economic Hitman"  by John Perkins... or if you know what happened with Bechtel in Bolivia, it gets harder and harder to believe in the idea of government of, for and by the people.

It makes me think a little differently about the fight between the 1% and the 99%. We're paying for them to play games with peoples lives and that's all it is to them... a game to see who can garner the most power and influence while we scramble for the scraps. Politicians are not statesmen. Democracy is not incorruptible. It's time to flood the swamps of D.C. and flush out the garbage.

I could go on and on, but the bottom line is this: A highly complex set of laws and exemptions from laws and taxes has been put in place by those in the uppermost reaches of the U.S. financial system. It allows them to protect and increase their wealth and significantly affect the U.S. political and legislative processes. They have real power and real wealth. Ordinary citizens in the bottom 99.9% are largely not aware of these systems, do not understand how they work, are unlikely to participate in them, and have little likelihood of entering the top 0.5%, much less the top 0.1%. Moreover, those at the very top have no incentive whatsoever for revealing or changing the rules. I am not optimistic.

Who Rules America

#OccupyWallStreet might be our only chance to gain real control over the policies that are killing millions of innocent people. Policies enacted by men so embroiled in corrupt behavior they have the gall to legislate it. So please... #OccupyWallStreet and #OccupyDC.
Save yourself and find REAL liberty.
We can't let the bastards keep us down.