Illustration by Mirek Pieprzyk, djc Features.
Step Right Up
for release 02-23-06
Washington D.C.
We hear a lot of talk coming from our president about an 'ownership society.' I've always found this piece of Newspeak to be quaint. While it suggests that there should be a chicken in every pot and your mortgage should be excused and that there should be two cars in your garage, what it really means is that someone else owns you.
America was once an ownership society. Only white males who owned property could vote and you could own as many negroes as you could keep busy. Ah, those were the golden days of ownership society.
Today we live in a Corprocracy. The big payers are the big players. You have exactly as much representation in government as you can afford. Witness the UAE deal to manage the major US ports. Besides the obvious metaphor of letting the foxes manage the hen house, this outrageous maneuver by the Bush administration points up the fact that America is a business. We should call it AmeriCo.
While talking out of one side of it's mouth with respect to security, this administration is, in good corporate style, outsourcing our major international trade ports to Arab owned interests. How cozy. And not only that, they have the arrogance to ignore the expressed wishes of the Congress and the American public and threaten a veto if anybody pitches a bitch about their little insider trading scam.
Oh, maybe it's not so bad. Maybe the Arabs can manage our ports better than we can. We should probably just outsource everything. We could be a nation of pure consumers. We could outsource our border patrol to the Mexicans and outsource all our computer work to India for pennies on the dollar and outsource all manufacturing to the Chinese with their nimble little fingers and no pension plans.
Let's see, we could import some of the thousands of Iraqi police that we are supposedly training, and that way none of our domestic cops would have to work. And how about the military? We could lease our aircraft carriers from Greece or Russia. We could let Somalia handle our voting machines. I'm sure they could do it much cheaper than we can. And while we're at it, we could outsource our television press to Al Jazeera. They could make us a sweetheart deal and take over management of all the networks but Fox. In an ownership society we don't quibble about who the owners happen to be.
And why stop there? We could hire the North Koreans to run NASA and let Iran supervise our nuclear power plants. And homeland security? It's far too vital to trust to Americans, let's get Hamas or the IRA to protect us against terrorism. That's their business, after all. Ain't globalization wonderful? Real Americans would never have to work again.
The only trouble with this picture is that eventually the general American public will be reduced to the equivalent of a third world nation. Unless you own stock in AmeriCo, you won't reap the benefits of globalization and outsourcing. You will be the victims of them.
The Poet's Eye notices that we could save a lot on the bottom line if we outsourced our government. We could get the Swiss or the Belgians to do it.
Everything must go
going out of business
going out of business
Going out of business sale
Fifty percent off original retail price
skip the middle man
Don't settle for less
How do we do it?
how do we do it?
volume, volume, turn up the volume
Now you've heard it advertised, don't hesitate
Don't be caught with your drawers down
Don't be caught with your drawers down
You can step right up, step right up
--Tom Waits
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