Predatory hearts.

Editor,

These numbers look like what you find in a banana republic, which, with plenty of heavily-armed thugs to "keep the peace" and lots of jails to lock up political prisoners foolish enough to have tried to rouse the rabble, is the model American corporations favor abroad and have finally imported to the "homeland."

Americans have been conditioned by Reaganomic every-man-for-himself free marketism for so long that each one heaves a great big sigh of relief when shown to his or her seat in the lifeboat. Look at the plight of undocumented workers. "There but for the grace of God go I." But help? How? Risk one's own tenuous grip on solvency? "I gotta go to work, then I gotta go to the gym."

The people at the top's solution to social unrest at the bottom is more police, more heavy arms, and more jails. Social justice is not handed out from the goodness of predatory hearts.

re: "The Worst of the Pain" (2/9/2010)