Us Against Greed

Comments?

paul@UsAgainstGreed.org

Link to:

Rapping History

Paul's Articles

May, 2013	A Capitalist Inferno Parts 1-3: To the First Circle A winding path and gentle dusk invited me to ease myself upon a sylvan pleasantry, to seek my hearth and haven in the sunny white celestial peaks before the ravages of night. But woe of woes -- commotion on the path behind disrupted my advancement and my reverie, invoking wonder: was it beast or humankind impinging indiscreetly on my destiny? A moment later were identities revealed: a warrior, a governor, a financier -- the first with gold accoutrement upon his shield, the second predisposed to speechify and sneer, the third an architect of some complicity that couldn't be surmised amidst the secrecy: and in a frightful moment they were after me, so I discarded thoughts of intrepidity, withdrawing quickly to a sanctuarial retreat, where stood a ghostly shape that seemed inclined to spirit me beyond the adversarial triumvirate that loomed forebodingly behind. "Identify yourself," I cried, "and don't forsake a kindred spirit. Have you come to be my guide?" The specter talked to me in soothing tones: "We'll take another path to journey to the mountainside, but pray beware! We'll travel through the deadly fires and poisoned banks of Satan's isle before we reach your lovely Zina, who invoked seraphic choirs in voices liberal and lustrous to beseech a messenger to shepherd you. The speaker's name was Virgil, man or spirit never manifest, with this and nothing else revealed to me: he came because of Zina and her friends, at their behest. The journey to the mountain started with descent to entranceways of netherworlds that surely meant we'd pass the lobbies, walls, and streets and fires of hell and risk our trembling spirits to the deadly spell of sin and deviltry, abandoning all hope to malefactor, miscreant, and misanthrope. We entered first the ante-Hell, where hapless souls ran aimlessly in scalding air as worms chewed holes in rotting flesh and blackish swarms of hornets chased them -- these, said Virgil, were the lords of ignorance, forever blind to all the treachery and waste of wealthy men, and living with indifference to good and evil. Then, appearing at the shore of Acheron (a river on the edge of hell), was Charon, ferryman, to take me to explore the Circle First of Hell, whose vaunted clientele included Homer, Horace, Ovid -- poets all, and pagans; and another group who worshiped gods from gilded ages -- flailing in a folderol of egomania in businesslike facades.
April, 2013	A Capitalist Inferno, Parts I and II A winding path and gentle dusk invited me to ease myself upon a sylvan pleasantry, to seek my hearth and haven in the sunny white celestial peaks before the ravages of night. But woe of woes -- commotion on the path behind disrupted my advancement and my reverie, invoking wonder: was it beast or humankind impinging indiscreetly on my destiny? A moment later were identities revealed: a warrior, a governor, a financier -- the first with gold accoutrement upon his shield, the second predisposed to speechify and sneer, the third an architect of some complicity that couldn't be surmised amidst the secrecy. and in a frightful moment they were after me, so I discarded thoughts of intrepidity, withdrawing quickly to a sanctuarial retreat, where stood a ghostly shape that seemed inclined to spirit me beyond the adversarial triumvirate that loomed forebodingly behind. "Identify yourself," I cried, "and don't forsake a kindred spirit. Have you come to be my guide?" The specter talked to me in soothing tones: "We'll take another path to journey to the mountainside, but pray beware! We'll travel through the deadly fires and poisoned banks of Satan's isle before we reach your lovely Zina, who invoked seraphic choirs in voices liberal and lustrous to beseech a messenger to shepherd you. The speaker's name was Virgil, man or spirit never manifest, with this and nothing else revealed to me: he came because of Zina and her friends, at their behest.
March, 2013	A Capitalist Inferno, Part I A winding path and gentle dusk invited me to ease myself upon a sylvan pleasantry, to seek my hearth and haven in the sunny white celestial peaks before the ravages of night. But woe of woes -- commotion on the path behind disrupted my advancement and my reverie, invoking wonder: was it beast or humankind impinging indiscreetly on my destiny? A moment later were identities revealed: a warrior, a governor, a financier -- the first with gold accoutrement upon his shield, the second predisposed to speechify and sneer, the third an architect of some complicity that couldn't be surmised amidst the secrecy.
February, 2013	Proteios As I embarked upon my catechismal quest for noble humankind, I quickly came upon a trader of securities, who would invest, contended he, in any upper echelon negotiation, regulation-free, of course. While dallying between his yacht and his chateau I felt I had identified a welcome source of meritorious veracity, and so I asked him what's important to society. With little hesitation came his firm response: "Without a doubt the marital fidelity of our revered celebrities -- the nonchalance with which they scandalize the public is a crime! And while you ponder this, defer the moribund economy to me -- it takes a little time to prestidigitate a weak retirement fund." Continuing my search, I quickly came upon a seller of converted hedged derivatives (if jargon of the sort is in the lexicon), and with financial stress reduction expletives he offered his opinion, at a modest price. I asked him what's important to society. With little hesitation followed words concise and Constitutional: "the right to weaponry, of course, for all injustice can be overcome without the intervention of a referee." Intrigued, but stubbornly unwilling to succumb to such opinions till a sense of certainty infused my spirit, I proceeded with my search -- and though in virtue's quest at best a hobbyist, I felt in awe within the inner circle's church and sanctuary, temple of the Lobbyist, whose expertise would certainly reveal the Truth. I asked him what's important to society. In tones peremptory he answered me: "Uncouth are those who tolerate the impropriety of compromise! The left, the right, the gay, the straight, devoted Socialist or Libertarian, we must continue argument. To demonstrate neutrality destroys the whole contrarian foundation of our Founding Fathers. Put aside concerns about impending economic woes -- free enterprise without restrictions will provide prosperity for all. Of course, we won't impose our will on you -- continue with your arguments, and don't give in!" Enlightened now, but ill-at-ease, I turned away, acknowledging these testaments to Truth with the conviction of Diogenes.
January, 2013	Of the Street A monolith, this stoic warrior, his shield erect against the stinging sleet that pours from apathy, a barrier of battle-weary blurred and bittersweet tomorrow's end that girds a brittle reed in bloodied earth and stigma and the stench of violated humanness, as greed perspires from condescending eyes to drench his tattered coat of mail in solitude, and pocked and teary fields of battle pull him closer to a blessed interlude with roots once promising, once prodigal. The righteous rise in virtuous refrain, as frigid sidewalks darken in disdain.
December, 2012	Kubla Khan, 2012 Of pleasure crafts and vintage wine shall those ensconced in gilt milieu partake with auspices divine, decreed the men of Xanadu. Around them sylvan medleys rise, and fertile gardens, amber green, and fauna's prurient reprise on sacred waters, cold, pristine. But piecing the tranquility, disrupting cadence and rapport, come bellowings of blasphemy as men are prophesying war. Their words evoke the dulcet note of lusting reed and dulcimer as Cyrenaic maids devote to innocents their overture: "To you, our friends, a toast we raise, to beg your future be foretold: to serve your flesh on silver trays, your blood in goblets made of gold."
November, 2012	Ozymandias II A young explorer from a distant land embarked upon our shores. "A visage bold yet peaceful greeted me," said he. "Her hand held high, she bore a flaming torch that told of liberty and progress, and a script evoking justice, and a hopeful word to wretched peoples, tired and poor and stripped of dignity in other worlds." And stirred to dreams and passion by this moment rare, the visitor advanced beyond the shore, then suddenly fell back in stark despair: Before him, like the aftermath of war, were landscapes scarred with toxins and debris, and barrenness as far as he could see.
October, 2012	Inequality I look out upon a weary land scarred with beggars and urchins and harlots, sinewy with bullet-pocked walls, shocking with children not yet human bearing deadly toys, and crutchless wretches flopping like newborn turtles in the sand, babbling into the broken pavement that obstructs their way. A bowl of millet sustains a sticklike man as fire-breathing iron skeletons suck nourishment from the ground behind his hut. A young girl dreams of pink lace and princesses in the shuttered mounds of salty mortar crumbling and parting with the wind, home to orphans waiting to kill or die, and to infants sucking at shriveled teats, their undersized bodies knotted with dysentery and cholera and long-conquered diseases. A mother ravaged by fistula, discarded like a bauble in a belching gutter, hides the shame and stench under blood-matted sheets. Resignation is the parasite that eats at her mind. I turn away, seeking comfort. Carpets of greenery soothe me back to canopied rose gardens and pleading violins and gentle percussions, to leafy patterns on crystal and flaunty glimmers of burgundy and gold, to properly disdainful lips smacking the warm blood of their still-twitching prize, to rare stones and the fabrics woven of others' fantasies, to the retreating sunlight dancing in the flaming purple of nectars sipped in congratulatory silence.
September, 2012	Rich and Poor The vulgar throb and throes of hunger lash the man from deep inside: an anguished beast obeys a primal call to wail and slash till fading pleas for clemency have ceased. A terse and natty lord of commerce flares his bully nostrils in polite disdain, all prig and peacock are the patron's airs as fussed and flaunting windows entertain, and puppy-eyed the urchins sniggering in tribute to the unexpected sport. With soundless shooing and admonishing the man his herded masters do exhort, as blurring shreds of his humanity are swept into the city street's debris.
August, 2012	Protectors of Freedom A child awaits the rite of dawn, his frightened eyes beholding steely gray intoxicated air that shatters into flaming ribbons in the skies outside his door, a roaring orangeish spectral glare, like smirking demons gathering to celebrate. And far away in savage heat that swirls around a dusty pit are children forced to extricate elusive flecks of precious glimmer from the ground, with fingers raw and swollen. And the dying sigh of smoking rubble hovers thick and dark and still above a mother crying out to justify the bloodied infant in her arms, and lacking will to carry on. And men and women back from war exult in recognition as a frantic crowd applauds each shining knight and gallant matador, protector of their freedoms in a nation proud to navigate a steely and sublime machine, to brandish gadgetry in glimmering display, to choose a pathway bright and splendid and serene while laying waste to any threats along the way.
July, 2012	Hegemony (A play with Hegemon, outspoken leading man; the innocent Subordo, from a world apart; and simple Publico, of short attention span; and Opulo, the merchant.) Let us start. Says Hegemon: "It's vital that we intercede to help you govern." Says Subordo in reply: "This serves us well. In compensation we'll concede our country's wealth." But as its fortunes go awry, Subordo nominates a leader for reform. Says Hegemon: "His record of debauchery and greed will devastate your land. You must transform your nation to a market-based democracy!" The people balk, thus Hegemon's soliloquy: "Such insolence demands that we suspend all trade." Subordo, cast aside in misery, appeals to Hegemon, who promises to send a righteous leader to restore the fragile peace. Says Publico: "You're welcome to our bank accounts!" Says Opulo: "Our arms production must increase!" As Hegemon prepares a gala to announce the victory, Subordo cries, "Our homes are lost, our land destroyed!" Says Hegemon, "We must denounce the enemy, and then rebuild at any cost!" Says Publico: "You're welcome to our bank accounts!" Says Opulo: "Rebuilding? Let me calculate." And Hegemon declares in mighty voice: "We state the Truth -- throughout the world our message resonates!" (Then silence, as production terminates.)
June, 2012	Gini's Growing And as she grows, I wonder what's in store for kids like mine. They're likely to explore a world of wealth we've never seen before, a 'perfect' world. But there'll be jobs galore, apprenticing in Gucci bag design, or working on a Porsche assembly line, or serving trays of caviar and wine, or handling yacht repair and wax and shine, or managing a loaded equity or credit default swap delinquency, or writing books about society approaching perfect inequality. So children, when your money's gone, resist the urge to blame the rich, and raise a fist against the foreign-looking terrorist, or better yet against the socialist.
May, 2012	Governance of the Gods With pity and chagrin the gods look down upon the mortals, tattered, beggary, a breath from Pluto's clutches; and the frown of Zeus advises that the misery afflicting humankind he would relieve. Assembled in a stately council room, the deities a master plan conceive: unnumbered mortal souls they would exhume from spectral tombs of wretched earthly lives. Petition they the worthy Aeolus, the lord of wind and tempest, who contrives a spinning maelstrom in the deep abyss to smartly spirit precious golden dust from earthen troves to heights empyrean, where justice-seeking Furies he'd entrust, in labors valiantly Odyssean, to fill celestial vessels with the fruits of mankind's self-indulgence, to restore and redistribute based on attributes of industry and zeal, and to implore obeisance fitting of recipients. But hail the scheming demigods: each weaves his path through kinship with and providence of Hermes, god of commerce and of thieves. Such lesser spirits, swift as birds of prey, do whisk away the riches to a cache beyond the clouds. The greater gods inveigh against such knavery, and with a brash display of magnanimity decree that all Olympus be at once dispatched to humankind's avail; prosperity would not be compromised by those who snatched the bounty! Better now to manifest divine intent with wondrous monuments and roads and cities, at the just behest of those transcendent. Certain recompense would be compulsory, in equal shares from mortals all, as each one celebrates his fortune through his offering, and swears allegiance to his noble potentates.
April, 2012 See it on Youtube	Sixteen Hundred iPhones a Day Oh, a factory in China makes your telephone, that little seventeen-year-old is skin and bone, but now her shift on the line it goes from seven to nine well that's fourteen hours where the sun don't shine, You're makin' sixteen-hundred iPhones a day, you'd like to own your own but it's too much to pay, St. Peter don't you call me cuz I can't go, I owe my soul to the Apple Store. The minerals are taken from an African mine by children on a dawn-to-dusk assembly line, they're scraping cinder and stone to put a tone in your phone, they'll have their bodies broken by the time they're grown You're makin' sixteen-hundred iPhones a day, you'd like to own your own but it's too much to pay, St. Peter don't you call me cuz I can't go, I owe my soul to the Apple Store. Americans are textin' on their their telephones, and makin' monthly payments with their student loans until they finally see signs that unemployment declines, and we'll all be makin' telephones with jobs in the mines. You're makin' sixteen-hundred iPhones a day, you'd like to own your own but it's too much to pay, St. Peter don't you call me cuz I can't go, I owe my soul to the Apple Store.
February, 2012	Beggar Contemptuous the wind that whips and cracks about the man, a thousand tiny blades of sleet slashing at his flesh, his face endowed with a colorless leathery armor by countless August wars. Pinkish sticks of bone seem to protrude from his spittle-stained mittens. Stoic warrior, this man: his legacy clatters along in a shopping cart, plastic bags flapping like bluish sails on the squally sidewalk, the hull of his vessel reinforced with newspapers. The vulgar throb and throes of hunger flail at the man from deep inside, but his daily ration is a paper cup of scattered coins; he resists a primal call to wail at his misfortune, he deflects the glassy indifference of passers-by. As frigid sidewalks darken in disdain and headlines flutter in storefront corners, the man labors under the sickly blush of streetlamps and the steely sputtering of empty flagpoles to his abode, a catacomb of rail and grime upon a concrete bed. It seems, for a moment, as he is gathered into the shadows, that the blurring winds are sweeping him into the city street's debris. And his limping steps beneath a swirl of white I paint anew in portrait as I lie awake at night.
January, 2012	A Fable for a Gilded Age I recollect a party at my uncle's house, some thirty years ago, a hundred hungry guests, and tantalizing pie. But some began to grouse when little Richie Leet (if memory attests) was inexplicably allowed the biggest piece. We couldn't argue, though, for we were satisfied with what we had. As fate would have it - in caprice or serendipity - my uncle would preside at our reunion party, thirty years removed, a hundred guests returning and a luscious pie. But now, discretion notwithstanding, it behooved me to complain, or short of that, to testify for fairness: Richie's piece was bigger than before - in fact, it nearly tripled in enormity! "No fair!" I cried. Had Richie done some special chore to earn his piece? The rest of us would quite agree that we had even less than thirty years ago! My uncle spoke at last: the years had made him weak, he chose to step aside, and it was apropos that Richie cut the pie himself. With this critique of party planning sinking in, I looked around at all the guests, and while I carefully refrained from judgment or admonishment, without a sound they stood and wondered why their hunger still remained.
December, 2011	Of the Street A brooding dusk surrounds the wintry hush of city streets, with headlines fluttering in storefront corners, and the sickly blush of streetlamps and the steely sputtering of empty flagpoles. Revelry departs a doorway, glassy eyes that stare beyond the void to proper worlds where pleasure starts anew. The street belongs to vagabond and beggar, blighted wretch who calls it home, his legacy in pocket, daily bread in scattered coins, abode a catacomb of rail and grime upon a concrete bed, effects we gentle citizens deplore, or more discreetly hasten to ignore.
November, 2011	Fortify Main Street The Wall Street people make a fuss: You're soaking us, you're gouging us - it's war, despicable and ugly class war, so cut 'em back and cut a little more, till government is out the door.. Occupy Wall Street, Fortify Main Street. But going back some thirty years, the soaking, gouging all appears true; it happened, though, to me and to you, our wages all began to accrue in pockets of the well-to-do.. Occupy Wall Street, Fortify Main Street.. Occupy Wall Street, Come here to help us to rise up to fortify Main Street.
October, 2011	Rich Man's Lament We've heard the working class complain that billionaires don't pay their share. With indignation and disdain the spokesmen for the rich declare: "Quit soaking us, quit gouging us, don't redistribute all our wealth, for who are you to raise a fuss and say we took it all in stealth? "We've prospered, to a great degree, through deft financial strategy. We innovate, we oversee, negotiate and referee. "We offer opportunity, we pay the worker's salary, we're masters of philanthropy, we're Vanderbilt and Carnegie. "Oh sure, the poor have had a spell of living with a smaller share, but mostly it's the ne'er-do-well relying on his Medicare, "and education, housing, health, and all the goodies on his list -- you're taking, frankly, all our wealth to give it to a socialist. "So cut 'em back and cut some more and leave us free to stimulate, and tax us less (and furthermore, continue to deregulate). "We promise an economy much better than it was before: an honest mortgage policy and cheaper gas and jobs galore. "For jobs we'll give it all we got (though most will be across the seas); we'll need some servants for the yacht and guards for shuttered factories. "So cancel those entitlements, and we of wealth and great renown will pledge with every confidence that revenues will trickle down."
September, 2011	Revolution Dream Once upon a time we heard from Dylan, tellin' us that things were gonna change. Stocks and yachts and poverty and killin' -- the times they are a-strange. Once upon a time we heard from Marvin: poison is the wind across the sea; escalate the war with children starvin' -- mercy, mercy me. Businessman is getting fatter, workingman is getting battered, evermore the chasm growing wide. Revolution. Revolution. Once upon a time we heard Ms. Baez, criticizing spending on the war. Politicians standing on the dais calling out for more. Once upon a time we heard from Marley, voice of our neglected humankind, telling us Redemption is entirely a rebel's state of mind. Pheasant on a silver platter, middle income kids in tatters, might as well be holding back the tide. Revolution. Revolution. Once upon a time we heard from Lennon, imagining a world that lives in peace. Still we sing the songs and keep pretendin' suffering will cease. Revolution. Revolution. Revolution. Revolution. Revolution. Revolution. Revolution. Revolution.
August, 2011	And All Shall Prosper The splendid gentlemen breathe soothing strains of wisdom like the seraphim, and light uncertain paths and shadowy terrains with inspiration certain to ignite the bleakest soul. Their special expertise is proffered: sleight and stealth and schemes they weave to spirit treasures on a silken breeze to godly pleasure rooms, where they receive idolaters to covet bulging sacks of golden coins, and men in jealous trysts caress their spoils like aphrodisiacs. But comes a promise from these alchemists: for all of us their riches will provide, when breezes, brash and bountiful, subside.
July, 2011	A World Apart The children huddle in the razor cold that numbs their hunger pangs, as nightfall paints the stench of squalor on the walls in bold assurance that their coffin-like restraints shall never be undone. Once-sugary and elfish notions barely blossoming are slumped in grayish pulps of apathy. Outside are tools of fire for butchering the innocents, or seething from the great industrial devices to defile and blacken human breath. Tomorrow's fate is cast, but spared in slumber for the while, and ne'er to breathe the air of destiny that surges sweet and giftlike over me.