Monday, August 30, 2010

Goodfellas: An Analogy For America

Have you seen the movie, Goodfellas?  If you have, you may recall it was a film about the mafia in the 1960's and 70's. You may also recall a scene early in the movie, where Henry Hill and his wife-to-be are on their first real date. As they arrive at the club, we see a long line of people waiting to get in, but Henry has no intention of standing in line. He is going to use the delivery/employee entrance, the entrance he always uses. He doesn't own the club, he doesn't work at the club, and in fact his only connection to the club is that those that do own it and those that do work there have become subservient to his organization. As the scene unfolds, Henry and Karen move through various back rooms and kitchens that support the club; past the swarms of cooks, waiters, bus boys, bouncers, and night club personnel. At every turn Henry exchanges pleasantries with the minions. The director made it clear that the rest of the world existed for the sole pleasure of Henry, his friends, and whomever he was escorting that evening. I couldn't help but draw the analogy to current-day America.  I saw Americans ... represented by the cooks, waiters, bus boys, etc. working hard, trying to make a dollar to support their families .... and I saw the political elite, represented by Henry and his date, taking privileges they did not earn, as if that was the way it was always suppose to be.
We see the analogy played out in the behavior of the current administration;  Extravagance, extensive travel, duplicitous  vacations, and an obvious disconnect with the current economic situation in America.
I don't know exactly when it happened, but at some point in my lifetime we started moving in the direction of electing a king.  We are on the precipice of working not for ourselves, but to support our government.  We are near to the point of electing ourselves a king ... and that king is big government. Some people say we're already there, but if we are not there yet we soon will be .... given the behavior and stated intentions of the current numb-skulls that we have elected to represent us.
It's really time to claim the America that we earned during WW2 and the four decades that followed, an America where the the middle class worked for their best interests not the interests of the political elite.

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