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This post is part anecdote, part rant, and part business idea.
My obsessive nature got the best of me, and I've decided to go to the other side of the country in the last week of December to see The Book of Mormon (any highly-dedicated New Yorkers want to put together a little Slopefest during that last week of the year?)
I know the show is popular, but I set out to try to buy tickets in the normal way. Good seats are $175 each….
I woke up this morning to an interesting juxtaposition.
First, in the nearby bucolic town of Davis, California, some students were participating in an Occupy event. The police – – who, in my experience tend to be little people who like to feel like Big Men with their billy clubs and pistols and stupid dark gunglasses and black boots – – decided to show these people who were expressing their opinions exactly who was in charge and doused thoroughly them with pepper spray.
In case you think this photo is 'shopped in some way, here's the video. This took place just yesterday, I believe….
And, as freedom-loving Americans were being saturated with chemicals, there's this story from China in which financiers (the same ilk as, say, Richard Fuld, Lloyd Blankfein, and all the rest) were sentenced to freakin' death for defrauding citizens.
And the amount – a billion bucks – is miniscule compared to what we've seen over here. And, yeah, yeah, I know – – Madoff – – but he made the mistake of ripping off, shall we say, the wrong people.
It's just eye-opening to read on the same morning about how the police state is blossoming here in the U.S. against innocent regular people, and yet when it comes to meting out justice to the real criminals, that job has to be left to China.
And where does that leave us? A terrified population of little people and a handful of dick-swinging bullies at the top who know that, as long as they don't set up shop in China, will be richly rewarded for their crimes.
This is the New America.
