{"id":10,"date":"2005-04-05T23:42:47","date_gmt":"2005-04-06T07:42:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stevegerber.wpengine.com\/?p=10"},"modified":"2005-04-05T23:42:47","modified_gmt":"2005-04-06T07:42:47","slug":"ownership-society","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/stevegerber.com\/?p=10","title":{"rendered":"Ownership Society"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Maybe it&#8217;s ADD.  I used to think in in long, carefully-crafted, almost legalistic arguments. Now I think in plosives. Like this one.<\/p>\n<p>I make no claims for the following as carefully-reasoned political discourse. It&#8217;s more like a hunch or an instinct.<\/p>\n<p>Whenever Proxident Bush&#151; I can&#8217;t bring myself to call him &#8220;President&#8221;; it just feels <em>wrong, <\/em> like calling Scott Bakula &#8220;Captain&#8221;&#151; anyway, whenever he talks about his vision of an &#8220;Ownership Society,&#8221; this line from Dylan&#8217;s &#8220;Like a Rolling Stone&#8221; comes to mind:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>When you got nothin&#8217;, you got nothin&#8217; to lose.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Conversely, when you got <em>sumpin&#8217;<\/em>, you do got sumpin&#8217; to lose &#8212; and you fear losing it &#8212; and that&#8217;s what the Proxident&#8217;s &#8220;Ownership Society&#8221; is really about: making sure every American has a stake in the status quo, a vested interest in the well-being of large corporations, and therefore a reason to vote Republican.<\/p>\n<p>You probably know the old adage: &#8220;If you owe the bank a thousand dollars, the bank owns you. If you owe the bank a billion dollars, you own the bank.&#8221; Well, we all know people who are owned by their possessions, and that, too, is at the heart of the &#8220;Ownership Society&#8221; concept. If you own a billion shares, you own the corporation. If your net worth is based on a few thousand shares, your continued existence becomes contingent on the corporation&#8217;s profitability. In a very real sense, the corporation owns you.<\/p>\n<p>So let&#8217;s call this &#8220;Ownership Society&#8221; idea what it is: The Republican Dream. Every American a slave to corporate interests. Sort of a Middle Passage for the middle class.<\/p>\n<p>Which brings to mind this tidbit from the same song:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Ain&#8217;t it hard when you discover that<br \/>\nHe really wasn&#8217;t where it&#8217;s at,<br \/>\nAfter he took from you everything he could steal?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Oh! No, wait! I&#8217;m sorry &#8212; <em>that&#8217;s <\/em>the Proxident&#8217;s plan for Social Security.  Another discussion for another time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Maybe it&#8217;s ADD. I used to think in in long, carefully-crafted, almost legalistic arguments. Now I think in plosives. Like this one. I make no claims for the following as carefully-reasoned political discourse. It&#8217;s more like a hunch or an instinct. Whenever Proxident Bush&#151; I can&#8217;t bring myself to call him &#8220;President&#8221;; it just feels [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":41,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/stevegerber.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/stevegerber.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/stevegerber.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stevegerber.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/41"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stevegerber.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/stevegerber.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/stevegerber.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stevegerber.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stevegerber.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}