The Empire Smokes Crack

by Keith Johnson
Some of you older readers may remember this public service announcement (PSA) from the late 1980’s:
The scene unfolds in a men’s restroom, where we find a young white urban professional snorting up a spoonful of cocaine.  He then looks into the camera and says, “I do coke…so I can work longer…so I can earn more money…so I can do more coke…so I can work longer…so I can earn more money…so I can do more coke…”
He begins to pace around in tight circles as he continues to recite those same three lines.  His pace picks up faster and faster until he spins into a blur that eventually fades away into nothingness.
Such is the insane life of an addict, caught in a vicious circle that compels them to do the same things over and over while expecting different results.
The same could be said for the addicts who have seized control of our nation’s monetary system.  If we were to produce a PSA to appeal to them, we’d probably have to change the lines to something like, “We print dollars…so we can pay for the budget…which puts us further in debt…so we print more dollars…so we can pay for the budget…which puts us further in debt…so we print more dollars…”
This is precisely the kind of thinking that prevails in the minds of those who occupy seats of power in places like the U.S. Department of Treasury and the privately owned Federal Reserve.  Unfortunately, nothing short of an intervention will ever put an end to their insanity.  Like the hardcore substance abuser, these money addicts have succumbed to a latter stage in their disease that renders them incapable of rational thought.  They cannot be reasoned with, they cannot be negotiated with, and they will not stop until they have consumed every last resource on the face of the earth.
Their drug of choice is currency, and they all picked up their habits on Wall Street.  But these are no small time junkies.  They’ve parlayed their dependencies into a lucrative criminal enterprise.  They are the kingpins of their trade, and their career paths are identical to any other successful drug lord.  They started out as pushers, became suppliers, and then eventually worked their way into the cartel itself.  Now they’re making the stuff, and there seems to be no earthly power capable of stopping them.
The word “addict” usually conjures up images of the weak lost souls who have alienated themselves from society. They cannot hide their disease for long, and soon begin their rapid spiral into total despair and ruin.  They lose their dignity, their homes, and eventually end up squatting behind a filthy dumpster with a glass pipe pursed between their lips.  This stereotypical perception often blinds us from identifying the well-groomed addicts in our midst.  They ride in limousines, spend holidays in the Hamptons, and are celebrated with awards and illustrious titles.  But they do not suffer the physical manifestations of their addiction.  Instead they transfer that pain and hardship upon the backs of those whom they have stolen from.  It is their victims who end up losing their homes, jobs, family—and eventually—their dignity.
Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go is a dystopian science fiction novel that follows the lives of three children as they grow into young adults. The story begins while they are schoolmates at the fictitious Hailsham boarding academy in East Sussex, England. According to a summary of the book from wikipedia:
“It is clear from the peculiar way the teachers—known as “guardians”—treat the students, that Hailsham is not a normal boarding school. Eventually, it is revealed to the reader and to the students that the children are clones created to provide vital organs for non-clones (“originals”). The students are not taught any life skills, though the teachers encourage the students to produce various forms of art and poetry.
By the time the children transition into adulthood, the years of indoctrination renders them incapable of offering up any resistance to their ultimate fate. When called, they voluntarily take to the operating table so their vital organs can be removed. Some die of complications after the first surgery, but many more are capable of withstanding three operations before they ultimately expire. Most die before reaching the age of thirty, but their sacrifice allows their betters to live beyond the age of 100 despite their unhealthy lifestyles.
Are our lives really much different than those chronicled in Ishiguro’s book? Most of us  have attended public schools that do nothing but indoctrinate us to accept our fate as slaves to the power elite. We are trained to be good workers, but are denied the life skills and education that would make us capable of competing against—and ultimately defeating—this ruthless system of greed and corruption.
We have become the surrogate bodies of the money addicts. We toil in endless pursuit of a dream that has already been denied. The fruits of our labor are devoured by the elite, and the nectar that drips from their mouths is all we are afforded—just enough to provide for our basic necessities—so that we can continue to work and feed their insatiable appetites.
We must stop being “enablers” to these money junkies. This cycle of dependancy must stop. It’s time for an intervention.
Vote for Dr. Ron Paul and let him put this nation into rehab—and the drug lords behind bars!