Thursday, July 30, 2009

Bombay, USA

Picture this… You’re a diplomat stationed in Bombay, India, late 1960’s. You live in the diplomatic compound, a high-walled community that virtually shuts out the world outside. Within the compound live diplomats and their families from all over the world. The grounds are beautiful. Lush vegetation and colonial-style buildings. Servants attend to their every need. They have all of the amenities and social interaction of any close community. A club with pool and tennis and restaurant and bar and snooker… you get the idea.

By day the diplomats go to their various embassies or consulates and represent their respective country’s interests, which often gets pretty heated. But by night they lounge and enjoy cocktails together at each other’s homes or at the Club.

No one leaves the compound on foot or unattended. If you do stubbornly decide to go for a walk outside of the compound, a couple of Gurkas go with you. Although this is highly unlikely because there is every reason not to walk outside. For outside the walls of the diplomatic compound lie the streets of Bombay, a teeming mass of humanity living on the verge of extinction.

This scenario is true, related to me by my uncle who was a U.S. diplomat working for the U.S. Information Service at the time. Propaganda was his game. He was good at it, because he liked and embraced the different cultures in which he was stationed. People naturally gravitated to this tall, handsome American with gentlemanly manners.

Unk told me he once insisted on taking a walk outside but it took some time for the two Gurkas to open the man gate. Something on the outside was blocking it. It turned out to be a dead body. He said the thing that got to him most was the stench. Even more than what he saw. Filth everywhere. He said that the contrast between the haves and have not’s in India was so stark as to be shocking.

He told me it wasn’t at all unusual to see great old Rolls Royce’s, Bentleys, Auburns or Dusenbergs on the street in perfect operating condition because the wealthy owners simply had new parts milled every time anything broke. He said they were often better than new.

Uncle had the best of everything while there, tailored clothes, the finest medical care, household servants… because he could afford the best of everything. A bureaucrat’s salary made you a well-to-do man there, in that place and time.

Here’s the take-away. Do gated communities and people begging on the street sound familiar to you? Do run-down county medical clinics crowded with the unwashed, or simply unlucky, sound familiar to you? Do people who are simply cast aside because of accident of birth sound familiar to you?

No child in this country should go hungry. But they do. No one who is disabled and unable to take care of themselves should have to fend for themselves on the street. But they do. No one should be left destitute in old age because they’ve been stripped of everything they have by the medical industrial complex. But they are.

The scene depicting India above is happening to some degree or another right here, right now, in the good ole USofA every day. If you think that good medical care, a good education, a meal and a roof over your head is the least we can do for each other, it’s time to speak up.

If you voted for and really want Change, you had better start raising hell people! The money grubbers are pulling out every trick in the book to kill it.

16 comments:

  1. It's already been killed in Detroit and they still are finding new ways to beat the corpse. Let my city be a lesson to the silent and apathetic.

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  2. And kill it they will C.

    I read an article yesterday in which the author was speculating that Obama had to weight giving in to consessions on the health bill to Republicans, AND SOME DEMOCRATS, against having problems with them in the future on other issues. BULLSHIT. Who the hell is naive enough to think they are going to work with him in the future regards anything...not this old cat.

    He needs to bully right over the bastards. If he is really concerned about these problems, he needs to proceed as if he is not going to be reelected in 2012. And therein lies the whole goddamn problem...our leaders act out of fear of not being reelected, and being thrown out of the "compound" as it were.

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  3. Addendum:

    Forgot to tell that your new layout looks good. Nice job. Sorry I didn't work that into the above comment, but you see, to me, the comment on the post was the important element...so the designy thing just slipped right by me, and being the insensitive bastard that I am, I didn't think of your feelings and how you probably worked for weeks to get just the right look that would be easy on your readers eyes, and yet induce them to participate and feel at home here. Like that there.

    How is that?

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  4. 1. I love your layout and the picture. Quite erotic.

    2. Being in the big city of Atlanta, I see so much social injustice around me. Why? We are better than this.

    I do what I can. I volunteer coaching to veterans and the homeless but most people walk by without a care to those in need.

    We are better than this.

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  5. WM... It's places like your home town that drove me to this post.

    jj & Peach... Make posts like this yourselves, drive people to this post, we have to support Obama any way we can. There's no way he's going to get what I asked for and he knows it. It's why he shot so high, knowing he would have to compromise but that's alright. It's the way the system was designed. We just have to get as much as we can.
    Remember this and pass it around... As long as there is profit in sickness, people will be sick.

    Thanks to you both for your kind comments on the new look. I kinda like it, but I'm not completely satisfied with it. Too monochromatic. But I'll figure something out. JJ... didn't hurt my feelings bud, but thanks for the thought.

    BTW... the story and my uncle are true. He has some fascinating tales.

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  6. had it been a real emergency i would have had something to say

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  7. Whores and theives that's all they are. Good Buddy.
    Fuckin' Whores and Theives.

    One in five people are aginst everything all of the time!

    And! and these cunts are scared of 'em, like some silly teenager on a friday night the 13th in October. buggga buggga bugggaa.

    Predator Whores and Theives. They go to church and pray to god and puke family values and fart patriotism.

    Fuckin' whores and thevies. Praying on the fears of the old and stupidly gullable.

    The minute a newby gets to washington they are given the clap, susally within two weeks.
    If they are really cool they catch chlamydia, which keeps them off the radar, until they piss on the public.
    The good news? Syphilis is usually reserved for artist and musicians.
    HIV is latent in all of the whores and theives in washington. Hell they paid CIA black ops, down in 'Nawleans, tens of thousand in the 50's to develop a virus to kill Castro. They called it polio vaccine. It went bad and They said shit we'll figure out a cure for cancer by the time it infects the population. (By the way Castro is still alive. Ike, Jack, LBJ, Tricky Dick, Jerry i can't stand up, Ronnie, what's my next line?, Jesse Helmes, Krusheve, all dead, but i digress)
    Have you noticed when any idea gets to DC and is caressed by Senators it become diseased. A disease that you catch by doing nothing and that you have to pay for to get cured from.
    The up side!! Bombay makes a good gin. That is what the whores and theives really want from us. A better gimlet, for them for free.

    Fuckin' whores. Whores ain't cheap! Their pimps are the radio talk show hosts. Notice how a host is needed to spread a virus?
    Fuck 'em all.

    I hear the crying of the hungry
    In the deserts where they're wandering
    Hear them crying out for Heaven's own Benevolence upon them
    Hear destructive power prevailing
    I hear fools falsely hailing
    To the crooked wits of tyrants when they call
    I hear the all,
    i hear them all
    i hear them all.

    With sincere apoligies to Old Crow Medicine Show.

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  8. Punch - Bravo! No shit...I mean it.

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  9. Damn Punch. You oughta rant more often. No shit.

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  10. Oh, I wish I could give you a standing ovation. Truly, you really said how I feel!

    I BARELY missed the chance to vote by 3 months due to age, which I find horrendous considering I know I am at least two times smarter than most of the hicks voting in my little town. I'm following now, I'm not sure why I wasn't before? But keep posting, especially stuff like this... I read so much terrible stuff of the internet about things, and really this makes me feel like there's some sort of justice on the web LOL

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  11. But punch we. you,me, Mr. C., Tart and especially young Juan Pablo, are the disease that is standing between the whores and pimps and their wealth. Which is why we are being eradicated "without prejudice or malice of forethought"

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  12. I'm afraid it's even worse than that Walking Man. We're not even on their radar, invisible, except as numbers in the great consumer society.
    That's really whats so sad, the dumb-asses who wave the flag and shout about freedom don't even realize they're the reason we're losing it.
    But, it's our duty as old men to confront them. Speak out, even if it's only on a blog, because there are enough of us to make a difference and if we're joined by people like Juan Pablo... who knows.
    That's why it upsets me to hear people tear down unions. Don't the morons realize that if it weren't for unions there would be no time off, no vacations, no 40 hr work week, no benefits. In a way, we're all in a union as the vox populi.

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  13. Brother you would be amazed at the depth of the anti union sentiment here in Detroit for God's sake!

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  14. Walking Man it's just a testimony as to how gullible and stupid people really are. They have managed to let the super-rich-ass bastards that run those companies convince them that it's the unions that have ruined the business, not obscene executive salaries and bonuses. There's no doubt that many of the union's have become bloated, but nothing compared to management.

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  15. lol don't be mad and buy some Cheap Viagra Online to bang your wife.

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