The American Pie (The Destruction of the Lower Crust)

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So.  You're a wealthy capitalist...is that correct?  Thanks to the latest tech surge, you could be very well pulling in a few cool million a year.  You drive the best of automobiles, your house is filled with all you ever wanted or needed (along with an awful lot of what you don't), and what you wear becomes who you have always strived to be.  Life is good.

So.  You're the best the middle class has to offer.  Sure, you have some sizable bills to pay, but you're comfortable, your family is fed, clothed and has the perfect roof over your head.  You can honestly say you've worked hard to get where you are.  Your marriage is a happy one, your kids are a joy, and the neighborhood is to your liking.  What more could a guy ask for?

You, my fellow Americans, represent the upper crust, as well as the delicious pie filling.  We Americans, here as your bottom crust; here to hold the pie together, to make our great nation complete; are more than happy to have you aboard.  We salute you, and all you have done for us.

There's only one little itsy bitsy problem...

See, we here at the bottom are a bit unhappy with you of late.  As you upper crust folks enjoy all your easily obtained comforts, your feet are sorta on our necks down here.  You of the pie filling, well, you're so incredibly busy with your so-so lives, that you don't really see (or care to see) the problems that plague your lower brothers on a daily basis.  Our problem?  We're dying...and it's because of the rest of you that this is so.

And this concerns you how?  Why should you care, you ask?  I'd say closing your eyes to our plight, and plugging your ears to our cries of "foul" may just be your undoing, if you don't notice.  In your reach to the higher rungs of the American ladder in order to obtain the ring - whatever metal it might be made of these days; as you look up with your self-help attitudes and your ambition in achieving the American Dream, you're overlooking only one important fact.

Someday has to clean up the s***.

Someone has to dig the ditches in which to put the foundation that will someday support that house with the white picket fence attached to it.  Someone has to build the skyscrapers that sport your business's name on the door.  Someone has to unplug the toilet, construct your cities and clean up the mess.  The worker ants.  The lower class.  Those of us, here, at the bottom.  And we are dying...and you see it not.

Oh, you know our plight...yet you plug along, attending your little business meetings and social hours.  They say the middle class is disappearing...and that may be so.  But your foundation, the crust that holds the pie together?  We'll go first, of that you can be sure.  That one, you're more than happy to see go.  "Good Riddance to bad rubbish, I say."

But who then takes the reigns?  Who unplugs our toilets and cleans the sewers then?  The rest of you would be stuck with that...if any of you would be able to stand getting your manicured nails dirty, that is.

Remember...waaaaaaaay back...prior to all that DHS nonsense...when I talked of legalized prostitution and drugs?  I said something back then, that I'm sure the majority of you missed.  It's not the drugs...those (the natural plants that went to produce them are the ones I mean) have been around for thousands of years.  It's our attitudes towards these drugs, and the people who misuse them that are the problem, and the real reason we have manufactured and prescribed drugs, drugs we never needed before the 20th century.  And, more importantly, what really gets me is?  That some of our largest drug addicts are those of you in the upper two eschelons.  You just have more cash and connections to get away with it, without a ton of jail time.

Well, that...and jails and prisons, lawmakers, the justice system, laws, and, more importantly, your attitudes that create the problems some of us at the end of your lowered vision and snubbed noses have today.  And, as you look down and call the police in order to rid yourselves of the souls that crawl up your doorsteps begging for change, you forget to notice that you're the ones that continue to put them there.

I don't need facts, really.  No charts are truly necessary here.  You don't have to be a genius to see it.  And I'll also say it's not all your fault.  No, there's many more to blame, including the tyrannous government that threatens to destroy all we've worked to achieve.  Let's just re-plug in a few little lights in your heads...the ones that have been burnt out for a few decades or so.

Thievery.  Didn't USED to be a problem...now it's an epidemic.  I remember the good old days...when you bought something, and the next day decided you didn't want it afterall...and you didn't have to worry about looking around the house for 6 hours trying to figure out if you still have a receipt...you took it back, and you got cash back that day, with no questions asked.  Today?  You can't take ANYTHING back without a receipt...nope, you're stuck with it.  Even if you have a receipt, there are actually, honest to God, people that won't even refund your money then either.  Wow.

Gambling.  Reserved for Las Vegas only, back in the day, along with a few old fashioned bookie joints, you were all good...Now it's getting to where there's a casino, generally in the vicinity of your back yard.

Pawn shops open about every half a mile.  Used everything shops are everywhere.  Nobody would pay retail costs if they haven't a choice, or if you're considering a bed or a couch (thanks to the resurgence of the nasty li'l bedbug thingies).

Here's the thing I love the most though, buy it for brand new, still in the box, for 1,000 buckaroos?  It's almost guaranteed, that if it isn't a major purchase, resembling electronics, cars, etc.  You can bet yer sweet bippy that no one on this planet will buy it for more than half price.

Druggies.  Only a problem as long as the attitude towards them and the people who use them have been.  Prostitution...same story.  You get the picture.

Where's all this trouble coming from?  Why is the markup on everything so terrible;  why are insurance bills and medical bill so high?  Why are your banking interests at almost NOTHING for savings, and the charges so sky high?  Why are more people homeless now than ever before, and what, you might wonder, are we so upset about?  I mean, obviously we are.  If you clean bathrooms at a local K-Mart, you might get EXACTLY what I'm talking about.

We used to be more respectful of the upper two thirds of America.  We used to never complain.  If we had problems, we pretty much kept it to ourselves and dealt with things the same way.  But see, corporate greed, pay divergence, and a host of other things have upset the balance of things.  It used to be that we did our job, you did your job, he or she did their jobs, and no one got hurt; now it's not only dog eat dog...it's dog eat dog while stompin' the crap outta some cat and drowning the mice, all at the same time.  You're destroying the balance of things, and your reaction...to OUR reaction goes like this:  You either a.  put them in jail, or b.  call the police to remove the nuisance from your sight.

I'm not sure where this new strategy of our middle and upper classes came from, but all scopes are aimed at the lower class.  They take the blame, do the time, accept the punishment...until enough is about enough, and then you wonder why it is that retaliation is rampant.  If you don't provide what the lowest class needs to survive, you get all this class knows, when it comes to its revenge on its oppressors.  Yup, you guessed it.  Crime.  Crime against YOU, their tormentors.  Then comes scheming and looting and stealing and lying, suing etc.  When company A fires your whole family at the local plant, its survival instinct is now CONTINUE LIVING...BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY.  If that means inhabiting the freeway bridge to ask for change, then so what?  Better than DEATH, isn't it?  If no one will help me pay for my medications under the new administration's health plan?  Then I can always swipe 'em.  Or, better yet, slip on a spot of water on the way out the door without my meds...Ill bet a friendly game of who's got the money will wisen you @#$%^! up.

Now, don't get me wrong...not everyone turns to crime.  I'd have to say there's an equal chance of crime in every class.  No, some of us are good people...as a matter of fact, I'd have to even go as far as to say that MOST of us are not only good people, but REALLY good people...more so than any good the other two classes claim.  For one, we take care of OUR poor, For two, us really good people, we don't retaliate illegally...we pick fights and win wars instead.  These are the folks you need to be watching out for, not the lawbreakers.  Because people like us have been known to, if handled correctly, get laws altered or changed, have been known to change people's way of thinking...and this would be done, unlike the other two's methods, which are aimed at ...nobody but themselves and their own.  The middle class's vision is one direction...forward, with blinders on.  The upper class's vision is also one direction...up, with blinders on.  The poorer class has this vision as well..although ours involves fighting the rest of what you upper classes have brought on us through whatever blinders you had on the day you voted...or passes a law that helped YOU out...but cost hundreds of people their jobs.  Hay, as long as it doesn't affect you, just those ants down on the ground, everything's gonna be ok...isn't it?

No, because when the lower class dies off...mainly because they can't afford to live on what they make these days, and because services are eliminated daily?  Because you eliminate the problems by throwing them in jail and utilizing the police force for stupid things like having those bums moved on away from your small business...because you'd rather imprison the problem then offer it help, you damn the lower class to its inevitable fate...extinction.  The problem is, now someone among the next class up is now going to have to do their work, as well as take on work left slack by the disappearance of the nuisance you considered this class to be before, when the whole reason for them becoming a nuisance was something that YOU did...directly or indirectly.  How?

1.  Voting (for all the wrong people, due to your naivete or the proper use of brain-washing.  Either way, it's not what you want on your resumes.  There's nothing worse than voting for the worst guy possible, then kicking yourself in the RAR for the next 2-4 years.
2.  Suing Corporate America (as well as personally suing those who couldn't possibly be expected to pay).
3.  Cracking down on crime (by lengthening sentences, asking for higher penalties, when all we more than likely need is a revamp of the justice system, or a little compassion in ourselves, with an offer of HELP to solve problems at the ready...all topped with a little TOLERANCE for appeal.  There's a novel idea, huh?

I mean come on America.  What we have done...what we ARE doing, along with what we further plan to do?  Ain't working, today, or evermore.  And unless you like maximum security prisons in your back yards, along with the perennial flowers you planted last year (believe me, the colors don't match up), forever holding the threat of PRISON BREAK over you and all you are and hold dear for the rest of your suburban days...well...you get the high-resolution picture.  We tried...and failed.  Time for some new strategies that don't line the pockets of someone in order to get it passed, but instead..dare I say it...SOLVE REAL PROBLEMS FOR A CHANGE, without getting kickbacks to the county sheriff and his boys if he backs you.  The time of the dishonest politician and his equally dishonest deals are OVER.  I will run for the office of SOMETHING that involves ACTUAL CHANGES, and soon.  If not the biggest one, well, I'll just take whatever America hands me.  And, after I get through, I'll have a minimum of the bottom third of our country behind me.  We're tired of holding you up...and we're tired of doing all the work.  One day, we'll be so tired, we'll just fade away.  That'll be the day the yuppies will have to go out and buy knee-high wading boots, because if they keep looking away and calling the police because they don't care for the stench we carry?  They'll be picking up the shovels next time.  And believe me when I tell you your upper brethren, the ones with the dollar signs in their eyes and their attention tuned to MO MONEY MO MONEY?  You think they're going to waste any effort to get you out the mess you inherited?  Hell no.  Then YOU'll have to fight the battles...even though you've never been trained to use a sword.  It ain't gonna be pretty.

Asta.  :D