Burrrrrr it is -12 outside this morning. Last night I saw A Christmas Carol in Denver and it was a wonderful and insightful production. I very much enjoy live theatre like this and I was struck by the timeliness of the message. How can we take these lessons and make them of value today, was my question as I sat there watching.
There are a number of Scrooges today and I hope we can use the lessons of the recent past, today, and plan for a better future. Here are some Scrooges that need to gain a heart and a larger understanding:
The Republican Party seems full of the scrooge mentality with its attitude of survival of the fittest. Give as little as possible to those in need because they don’t deserve help, seems like a predominate theme. Ba humbug seems like their cry to those less fortunate whether it is the poor, the auto workers, the slaughtered Iraqi families, those loosing homes etc.
The Conservative Christians say they follow the teaching of Jesus except for the ones about love. Believe like we do or you will be judged as unworthy. We have the right to tell you what to believe and you are a heretic if you question us. Ba humbug sinners repent.
Credit Card Companies have an attitude, if you don’t do what they want they charge you whatever they feel like; even if you do what they want they keep charging you more through all these fees. They are not about customer service, they are about taking as much money from you as they can. Ba humbug here is another credit card offer, won’t you be our customer so we can take more money.
Bankers and financial professionals have gotten these huge unregulated amounts of money from the bailout and they won’t loan or let people have access to it. They are not asked to take lower wages as the auto workers were as part of their bailout. Ba humbug says the financial industry as they go predatory in their loans, fees, mortgages, hedge funds etc, and still they want more as they seem to want to control the world.
The Congress has sat there for the last 8 years actually starting with Reagan and have let big money do all the law making, allowing the rich to claim that capitalism must be set free and through deregulation we now have this mess we are in. They were elected to represent us and look out for the needs of the people. Ba humbug let’s make sure we do what those with the money want; we’ll tell the people one thing and do another.
Corporations and their CEO’s have gone crazy in their greed driven need for power and profits. CEO’s now make 100’s of times more money then their employees. They don’t care what they have to do as long as they can show profit. People are just resources that are easily replaced or eliminated. Ba humbug all that matters is getting more money into the hands of the rich since that is who owns most of the stock in companies.
Won’t it be really interesting if they could all see The Christmas Carol and understand Scrooges lessons of the importance of kindness, compassion, understanding, caring and generosity as if they applied to the way they conducted themselves. Well let’s hope so because we need them to understand, to learn from the lessons of the past and to make the wise and compassionate changes necessary to save our nation and the planet.
One last thought, what has become of our freedoms when in Bagdad a reporter could throw a shoe at Bush but in this country if that happened the person would be labelled a enemy combatant and held indefinitely without rights? Shouldn't we all be throwing shoes at Bush and Congress?
I will try not to rave so much, about the situations we have allowed to happen to us, the rest of the week and spread more cheer.