January 29, 2012

The Unbearable Lightness of Being


My nom de plume (nom de keyboard) is Tomazulob.  This is a combination of a character of a novel/movie and the initials of he movie:  Tomaz from The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera.  I have chosen this name because of the transformation of a man who went through the early part of his life doing good for society but taking care of his narcissism as well.  His political views were minimal until one night he made a statement about the Russian occupiers of his native country, Czechoslovakia.  When the Russians came into Prague in 1968 to reclaim control of Czechoslovakia from its liberal and independent ways, the Russians found citizens they felt were agitating their own homeland to resist the Russian control.  He lost his ability to be a doctor; so, he had to resort to menial jobs.  During this time he changed his personal philosophy from a harmful creator of pain to those that loved him into one who learned the true love to those close to him and to those he came in contact with.
Some of the situations in this novel parallel what we are seeing now with the so-called conservative tide overwhelming the common sense of how people should treat each other.  We see a wave of oppressive and repressive corporate leaders moving in with the financial tanks, reclaiming what was lost before the FDR administration.  When FDR and the Congress instituted the New Deal policies, the corporate overlords were seething.  It got to a point in which they contacted Major General Smedley Butler (a James Cromwell look-alike) to try to lead an overthrow of the US Government.  Gen. Butler, hero that he was, testified to Congress what had happened and stopped the insurrection in its tracks.  However, they are back.  Their tanks are loaded with huge wads of cash and misinformation.  Their soldiers are politicians that they have bought and are using against the foundations of the Middle Class:  collective bargaining, fair tax rates, Social Security, Medicare, and more. 
We are living in an age similar to what Tomaz and the rest of the Czechs were in:  a false sense that the overlords had been minimized, that their influence on society was not in the political equation.  Some of us were voting for the overlords’ soldiers, thinking the consequences would not be dire.  Then Wisconsin happened.  While some of us saw the signs, many of us did not.  Those union members who voted for Gov. Walker bought into the innocuous presence he led them to believe were his policies.  While the Koch brothers were paying him to suppress the unions of the teachers and the fire fighters, many people were shocked to find that he completely misrepresented himself in his campaign.  Now the tanks are rolling in, and the people need to fight back or lose their livelihood.  While we wallowed in our lightness of being, the overlords took advantage of us and have come in for the end of our easy ways.  They want us in poverty.  They want us in ignorance.  They want us in revolt against each other instead of against them.  They want us to stop our ideals of helping children for our country’s future because their definition of a good future is a large savings account on the Cayman Islands.  Will we allow them to do this, or will we stay awake from here on?

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