By Dan Bodine

Of course, everyone knows why! So actually this is just fluff. Mexico is a free state. In all its messiness! The United States, on the other hand, is owned by corporations in a plutocracy! Which drives neoliberalism.

Which drives both education and radical white extremism. But a plutocracy can’t boot itself! Savvy? But you wanna know what’s cutting “neoliberalism words and concepts” from school textbooks in Mexico?

Hee, hee! The teachers’ union, aka, Ministry of Public Education! That’s power, my friends! In the hands of local Mexican people who could be your next-door neighbor!

The move was being voted on in a convention this week at a textbook design assembly in Veracruz — concerning textbooks for primary and middle school students. A big concern is an initial economic policy tied to U.S. capitalism!

“They promised us that if the companies did well the workers would do well and today we see that’s not the case,” said a spokesman in the Feb. 3 issue of Mexico News Daily. “Not even money brings happiness and this excessive industrial development and this free market [model] they proposed is destroying the environment, morals, and security,” he said.

And just like that! Presto! Did they boot it? Probably. I spent enough time with a little border town newspaper once to know the power of teacher unions in Mexico!

And I sure-as-hell like the idea that somebody‘s working on it! That’s how Life moves — first the itch, then the scratch! Hell’s Bells, if’n there’s a chance a New Reformation is starting up in Germany, who knows what’s at hand here?!

And don’t get me wrong on corporations! I once worked at one of the largest — Texas Instruments, Inc., Dallas, TX. Best job I ever had! They’re one of the world’s largest chip makers, too, if that rings a bell.

I was employed as a diodes assembly line supervisor until the Fall of 1974, when I resigned to go into newspapers. Took a 33 percent cut in pay to become a cub reporter!

Was I stupid then? Scared shitless of the unknown facing me, yes! But I’d finally completed my journalism degree at old North Texas State University (now UNT) in Denton, and that itch was just too much!

I went to work as a cub reporter at the Temple Daily Telegram, down I-35E a couple of hours in Temple, TX — for the lionized media mogul Frank W. Mayborn, who not only helped put the nearby Fort Hood Army Base on the map but in death his wealth founded the Mayborn School of Journalism at UNT.

Was leaving for new wings stupid? Nah, people do it all the time! Do things on a whim! That’s how I ended up at a little weekly in Presidio years later, remember, while shutting down three larger weeklies in the D-FW area — e.g., on a whim!

But Texas Instruments — we’re on a linear plane of thought here, OK — was no doubt the best job I ever had! Oh, there were so many benefits!

But…For the young and restless, these kind of corporations can rub on you, too! Assembly lines — although good jobs usually — limit vertical advancement, in most large corporations. Just not a lot of positions.

I still remember another line supervisor in my area at Τì who I often took coffee breaks with, Robert Yarbrough — who like me had returned with wife Cookie after military leave from the Vietnam War days.

We’d sit out of the production area, in the hallways, on the benches — and talk about “those big doors of opportunities” closing in on us!

“They ain’t gonna git me, Robert!” I’d tell him. “They ain’t a gonna git me!“

“Well, whatcha gonna do, Danny!? Whatcha gonna do?!”

Robert’s degree was in Business sumpthin’! A few months after I left I’d heard he’d resigned also.

Years later, after I’d moved to Cleburne, he called me from Abilene. He was the business manager for some West Texas nursing home group.

It’d been difficult, but each of us, eventually, had gotten what we’d wished for!

Walls on corporate employees moved in even tighter in the ’80s, though. That brought on the era of Libertarian squawks. Which sprouted wingnuts! Cancún Ted, anyone?!

Neoliberalism’s pinchers are squeezing workers so tight now, more and more it looks as though armed, rightwing extremists have got to have a war with someone!

With police? Who shield Corpocracy’s wealth? With Universities? Who’d taught them now how to land jobs in the first place — but failed to teach ’em how to think?!

I mean, I was on the judicial bench 17 years in all of this once — one of Society’s squeeze herders! Yes, there are forces in our society we have no control over! But can we do anything?!

Change neoliberalism?! Well…

“Neoliberal policies often imply reregulation rather than deregulation, replacing controls on the market and the behavior of firms (such as tariffs and pollution limits) with rules that ensure the smooth functioning of the market (such as those that protect property or investments) (5),” states Oxford University’s environmental 2006 publication, Annual Review of Environment and Resources.

Hee, hee! REregulation!? Imagine getting new restraining regulations thru Congress against the super-heavy lobbying Koch Bros., for instance? You might!!! For rant and rave all you want, remember it’s a plutocracy — in terminal decline, though, it appears!

Even WikiLeaks tells you: “Unlike most political systems, plutocracy is not rooted in any established political philosophy…[Plutocrats use] their power to serve their purposes, thereby, increasing poverty and nurturing class conflict; corrupting societies with greed and hedonism.”

Uh…So…Is it as my ol’ buddy Luis Armendariz back in Presidio use to complain all the time, “We’re screwed and tattooed! There’s nothing to do!”?

Nah! As survivalists (aren’t we all?), we’ll re-bake and re-bake this country’s “cake” until we finally get a better version.

Indeed, a former economics professor and political consultant now, writing that “Plutocrats Are Only Part Of A Larger Problem” [JPR 2/6/’20 The Journal of Political Risk], strongly suggests in neutering lobbyists we’ll eventually come to a “socially moderated capitalism.”

Hee, hee! The joy of joys!

That day is comin’, Jethro! Just hold on!

 

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