Insulting your readers is not endearing.
"Our lack of empathy for fellow Americans is vulgar and un-American."
What makes you think your readers lack empathay for their fellow Americans. You should have written the 1%'s lack of empathy for fellow Americans is vulgar and un-American." It is the Neo-Liberal/Conservative Plutocratic Oligarchic Elites who rule this country who lack empathy.
We have long known that we live in "a feudal state and not a democracy." I mean since the founding. The Founding Fathers just replace the King with a cast of elites, the original 1%. In the beginning they totally disenfranchised more than 70% of the population. While larger percentages have the right to vote they have divided us so that our votes are almost meaningless, the 1% still call the shots.
Until the 1% find their empathy, improvements in our society will at best continue at a glacial pace.
Your preaching to the choir. Who among us can communicate with the 1%. They do not engage with me. It seems they only talk amongst themselves or with their fans. When they do talk with their critics, they are almost always defensive. Few desire to reform.
Changing gears:
Talking about money. The most important thing that money has provided me is security and freedom. I have few of the things that my kind of money can buy. I am anti-consumerism. I think I walk that talk. When I realized I had achieved my goal of not having to take a job for a paycheck/health insurance my freedom and security improved orders of magnitude.
Before Obama Care and before my first wife died I was a slave. My wife had an expensive pre-existing chronic degenerative medical condition. Even with the kind of heath insurance that top 10 aerospace companies provide our health care expenses huge. Even with a generous salary we had to be frugal, actually we were too frugal, I was too selfish. She let me continue to save for a retirement that she was unlikely to experience. We should have taken more and better vacations while we had the chance.
When she died, my expenses dropped to the point that our savings and investments would be enough to pay the bills until I could collect my pension and social security. With Obama Care I could buy good insurance without a job. I was free from wage/job slavery. I did not have to worry about sucking up to my boss or looking the other way when leadership did not do the right thing. This got me laid off but that was a good thing. It set me free.
Security/precarity - I did not look for a job but a job found me, a great job where my boss sucks up to me not vice a versa. It is a huge financial bonus that should make me financially secure. I mean I am much richer now than even before when I did not need a job but I feel a bit precarious.
I may be rich but not so rich that if the economy collapses I will still be comfortable. If the 1% are setting up Armageddon shelters, how can I feel comfortable. I can't do that. I am a bit of a prepper but not for the end of the world, just for something like this pandemic or the next hurricane or a typical or even very bad recession. Not the end of the world as we know it.
TEK
