p>The top one per cent of Americans control forty per cent of all assets. The fastest growing white collar job in America is security guard. Most multiple murders occur at the workplace where a disgruntled employee comes back to wreak vengeance.
Our society is increasingly violent and our only reactions are to increase prison space, increase punishment, increase security--and all the preceding was elicited by the news that City college in New York city is instituting massive cuts. My sister, who is in the Physics department at City college says that if the cuts are instituted, all six new, untenured faculty members, will be fired.
And all this is meaningless until it has a human face. One of my sister's best-life-long-friends was fired. This lady was an adjunct for twenty years--and adjunct is simply a glorified name for part time-we-owe you nothing will fire you when we please. And they did. And she won't be able to pay the rent. She taught only two classes. She is an artist. She and her boyfriend--who plays a saxophone on the street--have no income, no pension, no medical care.
You want to know what a one bedroom in the good part of New York rents for? Two thousand dollars -- a month. I am not exaggerating. Will my sister's life-long-friend soon be homeless? It is likely, and yet my sister is rich, and my brother is even richer -- and by the standard of many people in the world, I, the poorest of the three, am enormously rich.
Our society is sick, skewered. A few, a very few, are living the life even kings could not dream of. Most of us are scrambling, struggling. We are a few paychecks from the street, from being among the homeless. If my paycheks stopped tomorrow, I'd soon be out on the street
There is no safety net -- and what is left of it is being ruthlessly cut by smug Americans who own most of this country. Ours is a deeply unfair society. Someone called the West, the practice of Capitalism -- a pack of wolves: one succeeds at the expense of others.
We do not cooperate, share. We are rapacious, self-centered. If you are not part of the solution, too soon, you become a part of the problem, and some who are part of the problem don't go away quietly. They go crazy (or is they turn sane?) and wreak terrible vengeance. No one can condone the horrific bombing in Oklahoma, but powerless people--people marginalized, fired, thrown away, lash out in any way available.
If the world does not become fairer -- if the one per cent who own forty per cent don't relinquish some of that forty percent--part of the 99% who have very little will act violently, very, very violently.
Copyright © 2004 Henry Morgenstein