You May Already Be a Winner! (but probably not)

Last blog I touched on winners and losers and how "this is what makes America Great" according to some of our more conservative brethren. We all know people who support political ideologies that run contrary to their own best interest. I've always come up short trying to understand that... Well, gather around because I get it now, and now I'm gonna give it to you:

Why are people who will never make $100k/year willing to board buses and protest when earners of $250K + are threatened with a tax increase? They will tell you: "Someday I expect to be in that bracket, and I don't want to pay those high taxes" .

Why are unemployed people with no health insurance willing to shout at town hall meetings that they "don't want government taking over health care"?

It's the winners/losers modality, and it's always running in the background.

Suggestion: listen to John Mellencamp's Little Pink Houses while you read the rest of this.

To say "Hey, I'm struggling here, and me and my family could use some help" is to paint yourself a loser in the eyes of many. Maintaining the illusion that someday you'll be rich (and have the problems of the rich) is worth the cost.

Why are some people so resentful that the government assists people who are down and out? Because they're LOSERS! If they were worthwhile, they wouldn't need help. They would pull themselves up by their bootstraps and become WINNERS!

I don't have answers for this, it's just an observation that came together for me this week. I WILL say there must be a better way to run a society...

America Is...

During a period of sleeplessness, when many things that have been floating around in my head come up, links sometimes click into place and I get an aha! moment.

I have been staying away from the political fray lately, earlier last year, I got enough of it to understand how little my voice means to Washington or even Austin politicians. But these movements still fascinate me, like the Tea Party folks. I heard one spokesperson that was articulate enough that I could follow her train of thought, and that led to a couple of conclusions.

All the pushback and fear around concepts like Socialism, Welfare, Universal Health Care, Taxes, suddenly made a bit of sense to me... When I understood her view of the world:

America is a place where there are winners and losers; the winners deserve to win, the losers deserve to lose. This, in a nut shell is their definition of our country.

It caused me to remember Bishop Carlton Pearson, a preacher who built a huge following and religious institution around the traditional theology of "God loves me, but you're going to hell".
Bishop Pearson had an awakening one day when God informed him nothing of the sort was going on, all his children were on his 'saved' list, and that was that.

Thrilled and excited, the preacher brought this news to his congregation who (like the tea party folks) were less than happy to hear about universal salvation. As in ages past, I suppose many people have a mental list of who's going to hell, and they don't want that list disturbed. Something like 95% of his congregation denounced him and moved on (to someplace where "we're saved, and THEY are not").

I don't know how they square that with an image of the Almighty being identical to the program at a German death camp in the 1930's.