Jul 12, 2009 4 min read

As the struggle between Republican capitalism and Democratic socialism is now rising toward the left of our economic/political seesaw, you and I, assuming the attitude and fulcrum seat as “neutral observers,” will maintain some semblance of comfort and stability if we remain independent thinking political eclectics. We’ve learned in our playground days that every seesaw includes and depends upon an immoveable and steady fulcrum. Thus, this “seesaw economy” will least affect those who do not allow their minds to fear losses nor chase after irrational gains. Just sit tight, stay put, don’t panic, flee or run. Like game-playing children let’s all just pretend to embrace socialism just like we’ve pretended to embrace capitalism. I mean, let’s be honest, the results of all these years of capitalists efforts has been nothing more fruitful than our overeating and fattening ourselves before we are called back to God. We’ve managed to make more fat-cat producers and distributors of food products because we’ve made ourselves into a nation of fat fanny consumers. We’ve become so successful at over-indulging our appetites for “things” that we are seen all over the world as a nation of obese shopaholics, flea market bargain vampires and addicted yard sale junkies.

And while a basic democracy still rules over this decadent process of enlarging our waistlines, we’ve also expanded capitalism globally. Greed, rather than just being grateful for everyone’s basic human needs being met, is our real God.

Now it is America’s turn to learn how to best control our greed along with getting our obesity problems resolved. Now it is time for our Socialist Sovereign, President Obama, to help us control ourselves by the power of his governmental decrees, because you and I have failed to control ourselves.

American socialism is becoming clearer every day. Our state and federal governments, pushed to taking over key economic functions from the corrupting and corruptible capitalists, have now become the most powerful employment players, standing head and shoulders above the private industrialists, who, in any case, will soon be crushed into “pea gravel” size by Obama’s socialist tax machinery.

You see our Socialist Sovereign has fear on his side, reminding us all, “The barbarians are already at our garden’s gates!” Which translates: “Individual capitalist liberties must be shelved until our collective safety can be restored.” Thus the rising seesaw of socialism will continue its support of America’s military/industrial complex much to the pleasure of the strongest capitalist warmongers.

All this fantastic econom-ic/political juggling, balancing and orchestration among the chief economic players involved is somehow made plausible by virtue of one key emotion in the primitive human brainstem, which is fear.

It is the human brain’s irrational fear of America’s growing foreign energy dependency and strange cultural infiltrations, along with the possible takeover of our fractured banking system and our globally-exposed businesses and foreign trade alliances, along with the huge foreign claims on our U.S. treasury system that causes us to reluctantly surrender the economic controls over to our Socialist Sovereign and his “Patriotic Vision.”

Will this “vision” of America’s future include controlling every finite economic detail? Or will such a daunting task prove too much for his expanding and expensive government bureaucracy?

Will taxes rise even higher as some economists predict, as an unavoidable necessity to support his vast officialdom empire? And will you and I, the common householder class, lose our personal incentives to work, to earn and save?

I laugh thinking that our nation’s lawyers will prosper -some presiding over finding sly devices for avoiding taxes; other government lawyers formulating evermore complex tax codes to neutralize the former.

So it’s back to the future … back to what has always dominated men’s brains, that most primal of emotions … fear. Fear of future uncertainties has always been at the root cause of all man’s evil doings. Man’s fears of capitalism has finally enabled us to voluntarily herd ourselves into the protective corrals of Obama’s socialism, in hope that we might regain our freedom from fear of capitalism.

But, guess what? Eventually, man’s fear of socialism will compel us to once again encourage the rise of the capitalism seesaw seat in order to increase more freedom and equal opportunity.

My take on all this? Just be happy and try to sit as close to the immoveable center, the fulcrum, where you should have been all along. And try to be happy and not worry too much.

Remember? In absolute reality – thou are bodiless bliss. Thou art faceless space. That’s what we all really, really are and forever shall remain.

And so it is.

S. Raymond Pohaski is a resident of Uniontown.