This is what I see when I drive

As I drive along, I notice the landscape is ever changing. Walmarts and dollar stores sprout from the empty lots, sparked in earlier times by the incessant want of a bargain. We consumed the inexpensive at the expense of well-paying jobs and a decimated economy.

Ninety-nine cent T-shirts as a pathway to poverty. Low-priced televisions to dull our minds to the impending disaster, a nightly fix of propaganda. The corner convenience store where low-wage faceless drones labor under the incessant glare of a fluorescent-lit security camera. But whose security do these cameras look out for? The only credit given here is on a card. No neighbor behind the counter who is a proprietor, willing to wait till Friday for payment on goods needed today.

The inconvenient truth of convenience stores, no grace period, every penny counts and if you don’t have every penny then walk away empty handed. No milk for the children, formula for the baby. Starvation is preferable to a short cash register. Corporate does not see hunger, just the bottom line.

I’ve driven into the new world where money is god, quarterly profit the new charity. A system devised to benefit the very few with a loyalty to the wealthiest only. The vile narcissism of greed, enforced by corruption and enshrined by propaganda. The untouchables, with a sociopathic awareness of the daily bottom line, always looking for a bargain in the halls of congress, the regulatory agencies and the courts. They stand in the ever shifting sands of their definition of patriotism.

We strangle on their greed.

We die without health care to feed their gluttony.
Children go hungry to feed their farm subsidies.
The air is fouled, the water poisoned for their luxury.
The prisons are filled with their slave labor.
The airways filled with their lies.
They fuel the tension of hate with weapons.
Gracie ran a neighborhood store by my grandmother’s house, always willing to extend credit to those in need, add a few extra pieces of penny candy to a young boys bag of candy, to share her bounty with others.
Say goodnight Gracie, your humanity is a bad business model.

Photo: AP