Can't blame the masses (too much)

I rec'd an email from my mom this morning talking about how some of her neighbors were making comments to the effect that maybe it wasn't so bad what happened in New Orleans, implying that it was eliminating an undesirable element in the area. She was naturally appalled. She said these were the same people who sent in donations and care boxes, and she wondered if maybe they put "for whites only" on the boxes or something like that.
Here's my response to her statement. I know there's lots of division within this nation, but I wish people wouldn't look at it as a black/white issue. It's so much more complicated than that, and so much more related to income and wealth than skin color. The whole skin color issue - that's smoke and mirrors to keep all us peasants fighting against each other instead of against those that keep us in chains.
So without further ado, my response to her statements ~~~~

Yeah, but to say it's a white versus black issue is only seeing a thin
veneer of the problem. It's a sociological issue, it's a moneyed versus
poor issue. There's a very small minority of people who control the weath
of the nation, the wealth of the world. They expend considerable resources
to keep the bulk of the population brainwashed and "on their side". The
people they target to brainwash are the middle class. These people are
easy, because their lives are comfortable enough that they are not pressured to
effect change or question the status quo, even though their lives could all be
much much better if they actually woke up and saw how badly they were being
screwed... But they can't, they are kept doped up on TV entertainment, and kept
busy in make-work middle class jobs that seem to pay ok, (until you compare them
to what our grandparents used to earn.) So- day in and day out, all adults
in the middle class family are kept distracted from truth. Day in and Day
out, all children in a middle class family are kept insulated from
reality. And they are programmed to think a certain way, that poor
people are bad, that whatever segment of the population that is lower class
caused their lack of wealth, etc. So, this small small minority of rich people
keeps the bulk of the people afraid of the poor, and distrustful of their fellow
man, who really are all in the same boat. It's like the god analogy -
compared to a perfect supreme being, the difference between a saint and a
monstrous murderer is negligible. Well, compared to the super wealthy and
powerful, the difference between a well off upper middle class person earning
200k per year and a homeless person is negligible too. But the middle
class can't see that. So - forgive them, for they know not what they do, they are
too weak minded to see reality, they are too long inured in the lies and
brainwashing that those in power have used to keep us all in line, like lambs
being led to slaughter so that they may feast upon our roasted flesh.You have
heard the phrase "divide and conquer", right? Well, that's what it's all
about, create frission between the middle and lower and lowest classes of
income, create distrust among the races and social divisions, among the
religions and sexual orientations, keep it all stirred up. That way, when
someone does manage to lift their head from the muck of daily drudgery that is
leveled upon their shoulders, to ask "what's going on with the world", they can
be kept distracted from the architects of their prison. They don't see the
guards, or the walls, they just see their other fellow inmates and they are made
to fear, made to distrust, and kept - distracted. It's all about the
distraction. So - if your neighbors are parroting the neo-con line that it's for
the best that these people are suffering (be they judging them as sinners or
because they are black or whatever reason), the truth is not that they are
inherently evil, it's most likely that they are just weak minded and well
programmed.

Maybe I'm too harsh on the average middle class right winger, the neo-con stooges, the conservative, the religious fundamentalists, and all those others who are out there with this warped sense of right and wrong, this predjudice and hatred of those that are different from them, this insistence on imposing their lifestyles and beliefs upon others, their paranoia that those who have different lifestyles are implementing a diabolical agenda to eliminate their way of life. Maybe they are not weak willed and easily manipulated by powerful but small groups of people who are greedy and interested only in consolidating and insulating their power. Maybe they really are hateful, spiteful, nasty, evil people who have the urge to destroy that which is different from them. But I don't think so, because it's been my observation that people are generally more good than evil. Most people are inclined to "cut a break" to others in close proximity.
It's easy for the people in power to keep the rest of us distracted and distrustful when we are insulated and not exposed to diversity and they play on all that. They play it like a concert pianist. They fan the flames of fear, highlight the differences between us, between us and each other and between us and those nasty brown foreigners from the other side of the planet, they're all out to get us so we better strike back now.
No, I think that the blame that I level on the predjudiced and fearful, the intolerant and insular, is that they are weak and easily manipulated, but not that they are inherently evil, I don't think that that is the case at all.