The 60’s left people worn out. They’d given everything they had at the office and their activists pockets were bare. After having been beaten and tear gassed and even shot to death by the authorities for exercising their right to protest, people were dazed and confused as to what it had all been about.
The 70’s marked a time of spiritual awakening and the search for inner peace. After spending a decade trying to help others, they stopped to ask, who will help Me? But before that question could be answered they realized that they really didn’t know who “Me” was. This gave birth to the Me Generation who decided to find out who Me was by setting out on different exploratory missions. The first mission was religious and that’s when they discovered Jesus.
Jesus became a huge commercial success and his songs were played all over the radio and his rock opera became a classic of his time. But Jesus demanded that you reach out to him and for people with short arms that just didn’t work so they looked inward and then someone who had re-named himself Werner Erhard stole a Buddhist concept from Alan Watts and re-packaged and marketed it as an expensive weekend seminar called est. Thus, another mission was launched.
But it was still costing people money to attain personal awareness and for many people it was a one-way transaction; they were paying big bucks for the opportunity to be deprived of bathroom, eating, drinking, and sleeping rights and many of them would think during the weekend “Ok, Erhard is making a good living off of my discomfort but what’s in it for me?” The light bulb appearing over their heads changed the world.
What’s in it for me? That single question then was re-framed as “What makes me happy?” And the answer was…money. Lots and lots of money. Enter the 1980’s.
People who had pursued Jesus and then personal awareness were now pursuing law degrees and MBAs. They started working at high-paying jobs and quickly found out that it wasn’t heroin or morphine nicotine or coke or alcohol that was the most addicting substance in the world: it was money. Lots and lots of money. Too much money was still not enough. If they felt guilt over how rich they were becoming, it was all absolved by an old man with prematurely-orange hair they had installed in the White House who kept pointing to the morning sun and telling them don’t worry about how much money you’re making— we’ll make more and besides, we're all in this together.
But there was only so much money the federal government could make and people demanded more and more. So they looked around for other sources and saw that middle class people had more money than they knew what to do with, and they saw poor people who shouldn’t have any use for money in the first place. So, setting out on a new mission under the a flag upon which the words “Greed is good. Greed works” was written they set out to find their Me in other people’s money, turning it all into THEIR money.
It has been 30 years since the inception of that last mission, which is active still today. And what’s more, those people have raised children to take on the mission with them. The Me Generation has evolved into the Me-My Generation because the two words are never far apart from each other. How dare Obama and the Democrats raise MY taxes when it doesn’t benefit ME?” “Why can’t I run MY business any way I want to that’s best for ME?” But some in the lower echelon in the Me-My Generation decided they needed an official name and began to call themselves “The Tea Party”, which quickly was subverted by the higher echelon who then decided they needed to take stricter control of the money drug, doling out just enough to the lower echelon to keep them both addicted and willing to support their pusher in all things just to keep the money drug supply flowing.
Then the term “those people” was added to the mix: “Why should I have to share MY wealth with THOSE PEOPLE? What’s in it for ME?” Those people weren’t too please with being referred to as “those people” and chose their own name for themselves: “The Other 99%”.
And that’s where we are today, except “those people” has further evolved into “you people”: “We’ve given all YOU PEOPLE need to know.” There is a war out there, and it isn’t THEY vs. WE as writer Greg Palast contends, it’s ME vs. YOU PEOPLE. The Mes see themselves besieged inside their walled estates by the masses of the 99% who want a piece of what they stole fair and square. But the Mes are quick to point out that it was all done legally—just take a look at the laws; laws that were bought and paid for by the Mes courtesy of their paid employees in Congress and the White House and the U.S. Supreme Court. But a lot of what was taken was illegally gotten, otherwise, why the need for hidden offshore bank accounts in expensive and exotic vacation resort locations?
The MEs are already experience the cold sweats, body cramping and tremors of going through withdrawal just from the thought of losing some of their money drug supply. The YOU PEOPLE just want their fair share of the money drug and why not? A sufficient dose is not addicting and does make the body feel good. It’s only from decades, even centuries of overdosing that the uncontrollable need for too much sets in.
The election this year comes down to who wins a major battle in the war between ME vs. YOU PEOPLE. If the Mes win, the YOU PEOPLE will only be allotted enough of the money drug to keep them numb enough to perform slave labor. If the YOU PEOPLE win, more of the drug money becomes available since they get a piece of the action. The war will rage on regardless because the Mes can’t stand the pain losing it would bring, while the YOU PEOPLE will fight until their pain stops for good.