就算你不愿意听我说下去，你或许会从许多医生和流行病学家那里听说：他们最近在卫报的一个专栏中指出疾病防控中心已经对公共卫生撒手不管了。
他们的评论一针见血。
在文中，他们形容拜登政府的新政策： “十分花言巧语：当下，数十万生命不幸去世、群众持续遭受疫情威胁、尤其是新冠后遗症事件的发酵导致社会危机愈演愈烈 。但拜登政府却把这当作成功故事般大肆宣传。所有实事求是的专家都不赞成拜登政府这样“美化”新冠疫情的行为。
接下来是我最欣赏的部分。
有些人声称白宫和疾控中心只是在以“科学为本”，并在这个非常时期全力以赴……但准确来说，他们只是在“以钱为本”。他们把美国企业的私利凌驾于人民的需求之上，尤其是置于我们最脆弱的群体之上。
我多希望能说出“这届政府只在处理疫情上让我们失望了”这样的话，好像现在还不算差一样。
但是我做不到。
气候变化-政客置若罔闻
在乔拜登竞选和担任总统的第一年，气候变化出乎意料地成为了一项重要的政治议题。
这给了我们希望。
这份期望是举足轻重的。
但近日，希望幻灭了。环保人士比尔麦吉本在他的一篇论文中解释了民主党参议员乔•曼钦是如何让希望幻灭的，或许他就该这么做。当拜登正高喊着“重建更好未来”让我们对美国的未来重拾信心时，他却悄悄地签订了比特朗普在任时还多的石油和天然气的合同，甚至允许扩建大规模运输管道。所以拜登说了一句话来证明自己。
他做的事情非同寻常。
不管怎样，美国近日计划将数十亿吨的液态天然气运往欧洲，也就是说，所有的口号都是没有意义的。实际上，我们出口量达到了历年最高。听上去对我们有利，对吧？同时，欧洲突然开始向世界承诺要开始逐步淘汰化石燃料。他们的话听上去也很虚伪，因为这席话他们至少说了十年了。他们也知道能源不能只依赖普京那样的人。
但他们却行动照旧。
现今，美国当然是十分乐意从欧洲能源供应的缺口中分一杯羹，未来能源价格上涨已经板上钉钉。人民一点好处都拿不到，倒是肥了能源公司老总的钱包。这些所谓的公司一边推崇着绿色倡议，一边却暗中资助着各种贸易协会、游说团体和商会。他们在竭尽全力地抹杀掉自己为环保所做的努力。
简而言之，能源工业把我们耍得团团转。政客对此心知肚明。拜登更是心照不宣。
但是他就那样袖手旁观。
他甚至与企业家们联手将我们玩弄于股掌中。
放眼看看美国现在进行得热火朝天的“漂绿”产业，企业打着环保的旗号，私下里却做着最不环保的事情。“漂绿”企业整天吹嘘自己计划减少对化石燃料的依赖，但民众很难不怀疑他们不是在说空话。
用拜登的话总结一下...
这简直狗屁不通。
贫困问题—政府有意为之
如果你不想听我谈论关于经济或社会阶级的问题，或许你会想听听乔治·卡林，这位喜剧届的重量级人物是怎么说的：
中产阶级被穷人吓得胆战心惊，只好继续坚守在工作岗位上。
本质上，流浪汉和穷人是不会凭空出现的。他们不仅体现了社会的冷漠无情，还象征着政府“精心策划”的一场阴谋。
要解决我们的贫困危机根本不难。只需从军费挪一小部分，问题就能迎刃而解了。但是超级富豪们良心用苦，他们利用穷人的存在警示着社会上其他的普通人。这是在告诉我们，如果不好好努力，最终就会流落街头，并且没有人会对你伸出援手。
事实就是，超级富豪们根本没有雄心壮志去解决贫困、无家可归这些问题。他们允许媒体报道这些社会问题的主要原因有三个。首先，乔治·卡林说得没错。
我们真的吓坏了。
这让我们继续死心塌地为老板卖命。
其次，亿万富翁以救助穷人和流浪汉作为建立慈善基金会的借口，利用这些基金会对政府进行操控，帮助其他亿万富翁解决各种棘手的事情。
最后，这些非牟利性组织和慈善基金会的存在就是要我们相信，我们有义务帮上司收拾他们剩下的烂摊子。就算我们已经缴清税款，成了免费劳动力，他们仍要索取更多的钱，还要我们为没捐出自己收入的10%而感到内疚。
这场交易从来没有公平可言。
民众大跌眼镜：
一直以来，我们都以为乔·曼钦，柯尔丝滕·希尼玛这类民主党叛徒，只是为数不多的害群之马。我们一直自欺欺人，仿佛是这些叛徒一手否决了总统乔·拜登所有的重大议案一样。我们痴想只要多一些民主党议员，美国政府的僵局便会迎刃而解，政府就能回想起他们“为人民服务”的初心了。
不久前，我其实也还深信不疑的。
现在，深表质疑了。
乌克兰战争爆发后，我们的政客迅速从中抽水，以此作为他们无法兑现承诺的借口。他们许下的承诺全都化为泡影了，就连我们必不可少的防疫资金都没了。
“扑”，一下子，一切都如梦幻泡影。
当你清楚了大集团的“漂绿”、“慈善剧院”这些挂羊头卖狗肉的行径后，你便能明白葫芦里卖的是什么药了。乔·曼钦，柯尔丝滕·希尼玛这些政客轻而易举地就否决了更高的最低时薪，推翻了绿色新政方案。
他们只是在唱黑脸。
民主制度 正常“运作”
在我看来，整个世界都深陷于泥潭之中。
这个世界发生的坏事几乎都在计划之中，因为极大量的财富只掌握在少数人手上。
他们清楚知道自己在做什么，这样做会伤害到谁，但他们并不在乎。民众理所应当般揽下所有粗重活，缴清所有税款。我们理所当然般把银行卡里的余款全都捐给慈善组织、非牟利组织，个人时间也利用在志愿活动上。与此同时，我们为了世界能变得更美好所付出的种种努力，全都让企业巨头悄悄地毁掉了。
此外，他们还组建了一个所谓的党派，除了经常给普通民众画大饼外，什么正事都不干，却又常常能找到新的借口让我们觉得等待那所谓的大饼是值得的。
听到这里，你可能会很悲观。
我却不这样认为。
认清楚这一切能让我们看清事实，并广而告之。只有认清楚问题的本质后，我们才能找到有效的解决方案。因此，给民主党投票，等他们来处理我们的问题不是我们所要的解决办法。因此我们不能坐以待毙，相信亿万富翁那套诡辩，即使他们在背道而驰，却也还称自己在努力解决问题。
制度运作如常。
对你我来说则不然。
原文：
Everyone Relax, The System Works Exactly as Intended
It’s not built for us.
If you’re not going to listen to me, maybe you’ll listen to a dozen doctors and epidemiologists who recently published an op-ed in The Guardian, calling out The CDC for completely abandoning public health.
They don’t pull any punches.
They describe the Biden administration’s new policies as “a resort to rhetoric: an effort to craft a success story that would explain away hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths and the continued threat the virus poses,” especially the “rapidly growing crisis” of Long Covid. This is everything that honest experts have been trying to say.
Here’s my favorite part:
Some claim that the White House and the CDC are “following the science” and doing the best they can in these times… It’s more accurate to say they’re following the money. They’ve put the desires of corporate America above the needs of our people, and especially our most vulnerable.
I wish I could say this administration had only let us down on the pandemic, as if that weren’t bad enough.
I can’t.
Politicians fail on climate change on purpose
Climate change became a surprisingly relevant issue in Joe Biden’s campaign, and the first year of his presidency.
It gave us hope.
That was crucial.
That hope has crashed recently. Here’s a great essay by Bill McKibben explaining how Joe Manchin ruined it, and maybe he was supposed to. While Joe Biden was wowing us with Build Back Better, he was also quietly granting more oil and gas contracts than Donald Trump, while allowing the expansion of massive pipelines. So, Biden says one thing.
He does something different.
Anyway, all of that feels moot lately as the U.S. plans to send billions of tons of liquefied natural gas to Europe. In fact, we’re exporting more of the stuff than ever. Good for us, right? Europe has suddenly started promising the world it’s finally going to get serious about weaning itself off fossil fuels. That also sounds disingenuous, because it’s what they’ve been saying for a solid ten years now. They knew it was a bad idea to grow dependent on someone like Putin for their energy needs.
They did it anyway.
Now the U.S. is more than happy to step in and fill Europe’s supply gap, which assures higher energy prices in general for the foreseeable future. It’s bad for us, good for CEOs. These are the same companies who tout their green initiatives, while secretly funding trade associations, lobbies, and chambers of commerce to effectively kill their own efforts.
In short, the energy industry is playing a massive trick on the public. Every politician knows this. Biden knows this.
He’s not doing anything to stop it.
He’s helping them.
Given the green-washing industry at work in the U.S., it’s really hard not to suspect that all of these great, bold plans to reduce our use of fossil fuels aren’t just a bunch of hollow rhetoric. To use Biden’s own words…
It sounds like malarkey.
Governments maintain poverty on purpose
If you’re not going to listen to me about economic or social class issues, maybe you’ll listen to George Carlin:
The poor are there just to scare the shit out of the middle class. Keep ’em showin’ up at those jobs.
Basically, homelessness and poverty aren’t accidents. They’re not just products of apathy or neglect. It’s engineered.
It wouldn’t be hard to solve our poverty crisis. We could do it with a tiny fraction of what we spend on our military. There’s a very intentional effort by the super rich to maintain poverty as a living threat against the rest of us. The message is that if we don’t work hard enough, we’ll wind up on the street, and nobody will be there to help us.
The truth is, the super rich have no ambition to solve poverty or homelessness. They allow reporting on these problems for three main reasons: First, George Carlin was right.
It scares the hell out of us.
It keeps us working.
Second, billionaires can use poverty and homelessness as a pretense to set up charitable foundations, which they use to control governments and enforce solutions that serve their billionaire friends.
Third, these nonprofits and charitable foundations do a great job of convincing us we’re the ones who need to clean up the messes our bosses make. They’re constantly asking for more money, making us feel guilty for not donating 10 percent of our income, in addition to all the taxes we pay and the free work we already do.
It’s a raw deal.
Democrats will be Democrats
Here’s the real kicker: We’ve been operating under the assumption that turncoat politicians like Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema are bizarre anomalies. We’ve been acting like these two have somehow single-handedly blocked all of Joe Biden’s wonderful bills. We think adding more Democrats will break the stalemate in D.C., and then finally they’ll start working for the people.
Until very recently, I believed this.
I don’t anymore.
Our politicians leapt so fast at the war in Ukraine as an excuse to fall back on all of their promises. They’ve taken almost everything off the table, including the pandemic funding we badly need.
Everything just went poof.
When you read up on corporate green-washing and philanthropy theater, it’s not hard to see the pattern here. Politicians like Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema aren’t doing anything unusual when they tank the minimum wage or knock the wind out of green new deals.
They’re playing the bad cop.
The system works just fine
So I think we’re in a big mess.
Almost everything that’s wrong with the world is planned. It’s the result of vast wealth generation for a handful of people. They know exactly what they’re doing, and who it hurts. They don’t care. We’re supposed to do all the hard labor and pay all the taxes. We’re supposed to donate the rest of our money to charities and nonprofits, and volunteer our personal time. Meanwhile, the corporate overlords are secretly undermining everything we do to make the world a better place.
On top of that, they’ve created an entire party that does nothing but constantly dangle hope in front of us, while always coming up with a new excuse for why we have to wait a little longer.
You might find this pessimistic.
I don’t.
I find all this highly enlightening, and worth sharing widely. We can’t organize effectively or tackle our problems until we have an accurate grasp of what they actually are. In this case, voting for Democrats and waiting for them to solve our problems isn’t the answer. It’s also not okay to sit back and believe billionaires when they say they’re working very hard on our problems, when they’re doing the opposite.
This system works fine. Just not for us.
Comentarios