How does the compassion con being perpetrated now differ from “I feel your pain?” The political affiliations of the proponents are supposedly different, even though the only real difference between a democracy and a republic is that they have different linguistic roots.
Which is not to deny that Republicans have been at pains to define themselves as representatives or agents, whose selection at the ballot box hands them the citizenry’s power of attorney — i.e. empowers them to act instead of those who hired them and, like the unjust steward, even to their detriment.
Which is to suggest that the current compassion con is a culmination, not an aberration. Indeed, the con never came to a halt. The current iteration is just more blunt and lacks finesse. While the Dude in the White House is uncouth, his minions are just plain mean.
We, or at least I, have seen a variant of this agenda before. After World War II, the German people, who had allowed themselves to be lead into a disastrous series of aggressions against neighbors far and near, deserved to be punished for their prior cowardice, not to mention all the dead bodies strewn across the European continent. So, when the victorious military forces rationed the necessities of life and distributed them to those who had survived the final assault, it was an act of compassion to insure that children and women had access to vittles via free school lunches and ration cards. Indeed, the rationing was perceived as not only deserved, but more than just.
There is nothing just about the rationing that has been imposed on the people of the United States over the last four decades via the simple trick of rationing the currency. Indeed, making something that is in infinite supply artificially scarce is criminal. Using the currency, an accounting and record keeping tool, to deprive our innocent populace of the necessities of life is beyond criminal. But, quite frankly, I don’t have a word for it.
I do know where the agenda of deprivation comes from. It grows out of the lust for power. Which is, of course, the self-same obsession that drove the German nationalists to spread annihilation across the European continent.
The English speaking New World has been somewhat distracted by the exclusive association of lust with sexual gratification, even as greed has been associated with monetary wealth. As a result, not only has the association of lust with power been largely ignored, but the more Germanic meaning of “Lust” as pleasure or self-gratification has been overlooked. Lust is more than a yearning; it is an example of an obsession that, because it has no physical object, unlike gluttony, for example, is never satisfied.
Which is why what we are seeing now is a culmination, not an aberration. Well, one hopes it is a culmination. One hopes the citizenry will be prompted to rise up and announce “Enough. Forty years of degradation and deprivation is enough.”
It is time to call the compassionate con out. Or down. Because, though there may be subsidiaries elsewhere, the main con hideout is on Capitol Hill. Those are the dudes that control the currency and pull our invisible chains.
