Don't Tread on Your Fellow Citizens

On Wednesday, June 22, as I was driving the recently completed hwy 100 from I-44 to Washington, a big red pickup truck was belching out billows of heavy black smoke behind me. I saw the smoke in the rear view mirror and thought maybe a vehicle had caught on fire. Then the truck speeded up and wove in and out of traffic trying to pass those of us who were obeying the 60 mph speed limit. Every time the driver shifted gears, another cloud of black smoke spewed out of his tail pipe in the faces of other drivers. It was so thick, we had to slow down in order to be able to see the cars ahead of us.

As the driver passed me, I noticed two bumper stickers and have to say I wasn't surprised. One was a Nieves campaign sticker. The other was the snake with the "Don't tread on me" slogan. My impression of the people who display those stickers is that they don't care what happens to the rest of their fellow citizens, and this guy confirmed that for me. I asked an acquaintance of mine who attends tea party rallies about working class families suffering from the economic collapse caused by Wall Street greed. His answer for people who lost good paying jobs and who can't afford basics like health care was that they should depend on their families and their churches, not the government. Besides being incredibly unrealistic, that attitude is so selfish it defies comprehension.

We are at the most important juncture in our history as a nation since the Civil War. We literally have to decide whether to continue as a society based on strength in numbers and a social compact that respects the common good or not. If we choose to go back to the days of feudal dynasties and powerless serfs, 99% of us will be in the latter category. The shift of wealth and power to the top 1% of our population over the last 20 years has come at the expense of the rest of us. The "anti-government" message coming at us daily via talk radio and corporate TV is really an "anti-neighbor" message because we are all in this together.

Now that we've ceded our power as citizens to a handful of multi-national corporations, I'm not sure we'll ever get it back. There won't be a middle class anymore. Wages for workers relative to the rest of the economy have been on a downhill spiral for years. We are on our way to being a dog-eat-dog society where selfish individuals and corporations don't give a damn about anyone else and feel free to pollute the air we all breathe with their filthy smoke.