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A NATION DEFINED BY GREED
04/02/2008
The only thing that matters to a great many people in this country is money, as much as they can get, and as easily as they can get it.
I don't mean making enough to live, and having to spend up to 20 hours a day working in order to buy groceries and pay the rent.
I'm talking about greed, and greed combined with the lack of decency or conscience.
A lot of people and businesses fit into this category:
Common car thieves who make other people's lives miserable by taking their car and stripping it just so they can have some extra spending money – for what? For dope perhaps, for hookers, for fun?
Telemarketing companies who bother you with a phone call at dinner time, or bed time, or any time for that matter, and put you in the position of having to say "no" over and over again before you finally get frustrated with their annoying persistence and refusal to hear you, and hang up.
Telemarketing companies that scam your elderly mother or grandmother with the promise of something that will make her life better, or give her some investment income to help pay for the care of her disabled spouse, and then rob her of all her money.
The owners of Wal Mart, who fought and won a lawsuit against a permanently disabled former employee so that they could get their hands on the $400,000 she won in a lawsuit against the trucking company that caused her disability, money that was being used to pay for her care. They say this was fair because of a clause in her health insurance policy that allowed them to recover money that was paid out by her health insurance through Wal Mart. The woman will need care for the rest of her life, and nursing home care can easily cost up to and beyond $100,000 a year. (Just yesterday, Wal Mart, only after unprecedented pressure from the media, agreed not to demand the $400,000 they won in the lawsuit.)
The owners of Wal Mart who claim they are helping bring low prices to ordinary Americans, when they do that by strong arming their suppliers into selling to them for absurd prices, and importing Chinese goods made by workers who are paid slave wages.
The owners of Wal Mart who get towns to give them tax breaks and cheap land, with the promise of good jobs for the residents of the town, causing local businesses to be unable to compete and have to close their doors, and in many cases closing the Wal Mart store after a few years because the store is not profitable, which then devastates the town.
Mortgage brokers who lure lower middle class and poor potential home buyers into buying a home with a sub prime loan, knowing full well the buyer will be unable to make payments after a few years when the interest rate goes up, and not caring how many families end up on the street as a result of this.
Oil companies that make obscene profits and benefit from tax cuts, even as their main product, gasoline, becomes prohibitively expensive for many drivers and for increasing numbers of independent truckers who do not make enough money to cover the cost of diesel for their trucks.
Pan handlers at the supermarket who hold up home made signs and wear ridiculous looking uniforms, supposedly collecting for one charity or another, the legitimacy of which cannot be verified, and nearly assaulting shoppers as they enter and exit the store.
Over the past few months, as I have been spending much time with my ill and elderly parents, I have removed myself from the consumer culture that defines this country. I have focused on nurturing the things that really matter: my relationship to my parents, improving the quality of their life as they cope with debilitating illnesses, and getting them to their doctors and to their needed medical treatments. I have spent much time talking with them about their lives and their wishes, crying with them, laughing with them, and making their lives as comfortable as I can in their remaining time.
I no longer have the distraction of shopping for frivolous items for myself or my home. In fact, I have very little time for any kind of distraction, with the exception of writing, observing the political scene, and checking my email for messages from friends and family.
And so, when the phone rings, and I answer because it could be a call from my mother telling me her lab tests are bad, or that she needs a transfusion, or that my father has fallen again, and I hear a telemarketer on the other end of the phone, I feel a rage I cannot adequately express. Of course, I am annoyed that I had to get out of my chair (when perhaps it is the first opportunity I have had to sit down all day) but I am further enraged by someone who not only wants to sell me something I don't need, but wants to argue with me when I say I am not interested. A few weeks ago I started simply interrupting the voice on the phone by saying "I am not interested," and immediately hanging up so I don't have to hear the voice argue with me. Now, the minute I realize it is a telemarketer I don't even say anything, I simply hang up. (I have an unlisted number. I can't imagine how many calls people get who cannot afford to have an unlisted number.)
What also irritates me are the dozens of spam emails I get daily, mostly for pharmaceuticals, especially Viagra and the like. I also get poorly worded and grammatically flawed emails from fake foreigners offering me a chance to make millions of dollars in some poorly disguised scam. I don't know how I get on all these email lists, but I suspect it has something to do with the online purchases I have made with Amazon or clothing stores over the years. These online stores probably sell their email lists, their greed not limited to the excess profit they make from selling you something you don't really need.
I have tried a variety of ways to screen for these types of emails, but no matter what I do, my computer allows the offending emails in and deletes legitmate ones from friends, family, and professionals. My only resort at this point is to change my email address and stop making online purchases, although I'm not even sure this will work. Those who are insistent on taking money from their fellow citizens will stop at nothing.
A final irritation is the gauntlet of pan handlers I have to run past every time I go to the grocery store. I suspect most of these men are not collecting money for legitimate charities but all I have to go on are what the store managers tell me when I complain. They say they have tried to chase them off and have called the police who say there is nothing they can do. Freedom of speech, blah, blah. I have also been told these men are newly released from prison, are driven from a major city 30 miles away, and paid to collect money outside local markets. This doesn't give me great confidence that the charity is a legitimate one, nor does the fact that they fight with the store managers when they are asked to leave. My way to fight back, besides never giving them a dime and never even acknowledging them as I walk past (to which they sarcastically wish me a "good day") is to stop going to the stores outside of which they have taken up occupancy.
But while all of these examples of people greedily going after my money have always annoyed me, they are even more offensive to me now when issues of life and death and health and sickness have become the focus of my life. I have no time or energy to deal with greed or scams, with telemarketers, or with shopping for frivolous items that were probably imported from China where children and adults work in intolerable conditions just so Americans can buy cheap goods they don't need.
When I am going shopping for my parents, to provide them with the food and medicine they need, I should not have to dread walking past a sarcastic ex-con who is running a scam. When I am resting after a day going to doctor's offices and hospitals, I should not have to get up to answer the call of someone who wants me to buy a newspaper, or purchase an insurance policy, or vote for a certain candidate.
And when I am fixing dinner on a Friday night I should not have to learn from my 26 year old son, who just spent his meager savings to repair his car, that his car has been stolen by thugs who believe they have a right to take whatever they want, regardless of who it hurts and how much it upsets the people who are just trying to live their lives.
Do I sound angry? I am more than angry. If I could meet the jerks who stole my son's car, I think I could do great physical damage to them. And I am no longer capable of politeness when I get unsolicited phone calls or when I see scam artists trying to take money from people who can barely afford increasingly expensive groceries.
Perhaps the stress I am going through right now makes me less tolerant, but my words are no less true. We live in a society defined by greed, a society where the few who are rich are getting increasingly rich and the many who are struggling are struggling even more. We live in a society where all that matters is the bottom line, whether you are a pan handler, a pharmaceutical company, a weapons contractor, or a multibillion dollar discount store.
We are a nation that lives for money, a nation that defines everything by money, a nation that will do anything for money. We are a nation that has gone down a terrible path where we love things - and the money to buy things - and use people, rather than love people and use things.
We are a society that has lost its humanity.
All content © 2005 outragedcitizen.com
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