It's Time to Go All-Roman

We have reached the point in the country's latest war --the war on everybody who doesn't make a million bucks net per year --where one side or the other has got to give in.  On the right, there is 1% of the population who owns, I dunno, about 22% of everything worth anything in the entire United States, including 90% of the Senate, 99.33% of the House of Representatives, and 5/4ths of the Supreme Court.  Just slightly to the left are the other 9% of the top 10% who own, according to CNN, about 65% of the rest of the country's wealth, including just about all the rest of government, industry, farming, manufacturing --you get the picture.  On the left, we have 90% of Americans (plus all those undocumented workers who work for the top 10% under the table) who own about 23% of America's wealth, including Senators Boxer and Sanders (D-CA and D-VT respectively), US Representative Nikki Tsongas (D-3rd Cong. Dist. MA) and maaaybe one other Congressman from either Ohio or Michigan, Ruth Bader Ginsburg on her more lucid days, President Obama, but not on his golfing days -or when he's busy making a speech after the latest mass killing -or when Michele, a.k.a. The Flotus, is bugging him about all the fat kids in America -or on days when he's forced to grovel before the Republican Congress to, like, KEEP  THE  UNITED  STATES  OPEN.  Oh yeah, and a Taco Bell in Fresno.  Oh, and a couple of late model Chevys and one Subaru.

To be fair, it looked a whole lot better back when I had a job

I know what you're thinking: if it was a tug-'o-war instead of a class war, the left would totally kick ass.  There is one small problem: this ain't no tug-'o-war.

"Over? Did you say it's over?"

You see, the right has managed to buy the media, government, legal establishment (except for one legal aid clinic in Newark, NJ), the police, the military, the health care industry, all the farms and grazing ranges, all the mines, oil wells, and even most of the other 90%, or at least the 90% who work for the 10% and are regularly cowed into silence by the ever looming threat of unemployment.

To put this in perspective, the unequal distribution of wealth in contemporary American society far surpasses even that of France's Ancien Régime just before Louis XVI literally lost his head during the French Revolution.  So is this our fate?  Must we set up la guillotine in places where Occupy America, um, protesters pitched their quaint camps and go 10% head huntin'?  I think not.  For one thing, Americans don't go in for killing people unless they do it with one or more of their legally owned, Constitutionally protected guns that take clips of 20+ rounds.  For another thing, the downtrodden of today can institute meaningful economic and social change by doing as the Romans did a couple thousand of years ago: leave.

The year was 494 BCE; the place was what was then modern Rome, but is in fact that which we today call ancient Rome (try translating that tortured syntax into Latin!)  The Roman underclass, the so called Plebeians, were sick and tired of getting shafted by the Roman 10%-ers, the so called Patricians.  I mean, they were paid literally in bread and salt, had no legal rights, couldn't even run off and join the army, and had literally had it up to here, when some wily Plebeian had a stroke of genius: let's all just fuck off and leave the stupid Patricians to fend for themselves.  Which they then proceeded to do,  The whole lot of them -men, women, children, old folks, transvestites and a dog named Rex -left Rome and set up camp on the nearby Sacred Mount.  Days, then weeks went by, Patricians in their nearly empty city, all eyes on the Plebeians, who in turn watched the Patricians, who finally freaked-out when somebody started a rumor that the Gauls were on the way to administer a little elective surgery upon the persons of the Patricians.  In short, they caved-in, gave the Plebeians rights, officials called Tribunes and welcomed them back with open arms.

So here's my plan for today: how about the entire 90% of America go on vacation for a whole month, all at the same time!  We could all go to Mexico, unless the undocumented bunch want to go somewhere else like, um, Canada.  We'll all pool our meager resources and rent a nice but not too expensive thousand square miles of Manitoba for the month, eat breakfast at Tim Horton's every day, watch hockey every night, say "eh" a lot, and watch the CBC for reports of how those spoiled rich bitches and bastards are doing back in the States.  I just bet that Paris Hilton will crumple in the first hour, Kanye West might make it a week, and that blow-hardest of the blowhards, Donald Trump, will be Donald-please-oh-please-come-home-you-losers by the end of week two.

So, who's with me?