The World In Protest, Revolution or Civil War? Part 2

This article was first published in late 2011.

From North Africa stretching into the Middle East, protest movements have developed to change the societies in the various nations in these regions. Many of the countries have been ruled by autocratic dynasties or dictators, and much of the wealth has been concentrated in the upper strata of those societies. The protest movements seem not only to want to change the governing style of their nations, but to also make their nations fairer in terms of income distribution. Underlying everything is the desire to have more control of how they are governed. "Freedom" in and of itself does NOT guarantee success, and we will have to see how events develop in these countries over time. Remember, being able to vote in free elections is great, but it does not mean a substantial part of the voting public won't vote for religious radicals, or some other dictator to replace the one they have just ousted. Freedom also does not guarantee economic success. The United States and some other parts of the world are still mired in an economic mess created by too little government regulation, not too much. The prevailing economic/political philosophy of the last thirty some years has been "get government out of the way; government isn't the solution to the problem, government IS the problem; turn people loose to do whatever they want." You are, and have been, witnessing the result of that philosophy.

Part of this "less government" philosophy has been about less power in the federal government, with the desire to see power shifted to the individual states. The overall discussion is worthy, but let's not forget, the Civil War was fought over states' rights, more specifically in those times, a desire to permit slavery to continue. You know, slavery...the owning of one human being by another. Is this God's will? Is this Christian? Is this Judeo-Christian? Is this religious? One of the major points of my series, "The German Question," was, "You can't have a true nation without a strong national government." Again, how strong that government should be is a valid question, but some of the notions proposed by people like nutty Ron Paul is to essentially dismantle the federal government. On the other hand, I also tried to show in that series how a super strong national government (the Nazi era) can be disastrous.

America is moving more and more toward a society totally dominated by the wealthy, a plutocracy. They aren't elected, but they have such huge sums of money, they can convince Eskimos to by ice cream cones. As president, Obama has done little to really take them on. The little he did, or tried to do, brought an immense backlash from the wealthy reactionaries of this country, and their minions in the GOP. If you're going to get lambasted, you may as well go for the whole hog, and not just the curly little tail. He chose not to do that. Instead, he let a discredited (momentarily) group get back up off the floor, and he's been paying the price, and so has the country, ever since.

Make no mistake about it, the wealthy interests run the country. Look at profits. Many companies are doing better than EVER! And we just dodged a depression, and we have yet to really climb out of a damaging recession. Why? Look at prices. For a country with 9% unemployment,* prices are way above what is healthy for the country, but they are sure healthy for rich company owners and investors. They are doing just fine. The price of most things are really controlled by the wealthy. They buy stock and DEMAND that those companies they've invested in make more money, so they'll make more money. They buy futures in things like oil and gasoline, driving up prices, making money there, and forcing prices on EVERYTHING, products and services, higher. They sell products overseas, EVEN OIL AND GASOLINE,** to make big bucks, but prices here rise further due to what they can then claim are "tight markets." The oil companies tell us all the time how they employ people, but they don't say that its the high prices that are strangling many Americans who are paying for this. They put money into some pockets with one hand, and take money out of those same pockets with the other hand. Don't be fooled by all of the nonsense talk and ad campaigns (well, I just said "nonsense talk"). Food prices have always had price swings, but now, with money managing companies and hedge funds, 24/7 monitoring of prices minute by minute, the wealthy can cause prices on certain items to soar almost instantaneously. Once they make a bundle, they get out, and move on to the next victim, like the scavengers many of them are. And they are feeding off of YOU!***

If you consider yourself a Republican, you'd better head to the nearest mirror, look into that mirror, and ask yourself some VERY serious questions. Taking your party back from some of these bizarre nutcases will help the country, trust me.

* I know unemployment just fell to 8.6%, but unless things really pick up, and I seriously doubt that will happen quickly, the rate will go back up, probably to about 8.8%. Of course that's just my guess, but we'll see.

** If you are aware of the big argument over the proposed oil pipeline from Canada through much of the central U.S., no matter what your basic beliefs on the issue, this oil is destined for sale in China, not in the U.S. Of course, the big boys are saying (with some truth) it will help employ some Americans.

*** Weather can certainly affect food prices. This year, some parts of the country had too much rain, while other parts had some of the worst drought conditions on record. Okay, we get it, but with the scenario I described above, prices soar on many items, way above what once happened, and the on top of that, some companies then sell "supposedly scare products" overseas!!! Why? Mo' money, mo' money, mo' money!

WORD HISTORY:
Ride-This word "seems" to go back to a possible Indo European "reidh," which meant "to ride, to travel," but please note, besides Germanic, there are connections to Celtic (also with connotations of travel/transport), another branch of Indo European, but that is it, and that is a bit odd for such an important word. Celtic and Germanic had lots of contact in ancient times, and one could have borrowed a form of the word from a non-Indo European source, with the other then borrowing it from them. Of course, both could have borrowed it separately from the same source. What ever the case, Old Germanic had "ridan(an)," with the meaning "to move forward, to travel." This gave Anglo-Saxon (Old English) "ridan," meaning "to ride," and this later became "riden," before the modern spelling. Forms are common in the other Germanic languages, except modern Frisian, although Old Frisian had "rida," which has now died out. German has "reiten," Low German Saxon has "rieden," other Low German dialects have "riede," Dutch has "rijden" Icelandic has "ríða," Swedish has "rida," Danish has "ride," and Norwegian has "ri."