A State of Hypocrisy

 When the lottery came to North Carolina it was a watershed event.  I was absent, and in my absence a change occurred in my native state.  When I was growing up in Fayetteville attending Terry Sanford High School, and then moving to Chapel Hill to matriculate at UNC state standards were high.  This was the 1980's.  Everyone knows the 80's were a different era, and often they get a bad rap.  Indulgence.  Glamour.  Fashion.  Cinema.  Blockbuster.  Romance.  Artistry.  Expression.  Popular music.  I don't equate the decade of the 1980's with decadence, although there was some.  Ronald Reagan, who previously I felt was an adequate president, was a chosen actor for both the job of Governor of California and the President of the United States.  When he came into national office the tax rate for the rich was seventy percent.  I'll repeat that figure.  Seventy percent of the income earned by the wealthy went back to Washington.  Needless to see creative accounting came into play, and CPA's found bountiful and creative ways to reinvest earned income.  The way I remember it was this surplus capital was reinvested building businesses.  Cross Creek Mall was a metaphor for this practice.  Then this mall was a museum, and a symbol of American success.  Each designer store offered unique, quality-made, integral products marketed to American consumers.  It created a mainstream, a foundation for American Capitalism.  Other may remember these glamorous and romantic times shopping in a New York Macy's department store.  America was at her height, and now we are in the sewer.  I never thought I would see the day when a lottery would become legal in North Carolina.  Governor Jim Hunt was conservative, and under his leadership our state toed the line.  "Driving Under the Influence" became "Driving While Impaired," and for this offense you would lose your driver's license and spend two nights in jail.  For passing a stopped school bus, also you would lose your driver's license.  Those were his priorities, and they were good ones.  North Carolina was tight, and today we are a polar opposite.  With fifty vacancies in the Fayetteville PD, traffic in Cumberland Country is one of the worst in the state.  Violations are common and often as are violent crimes.  Recently the city decided to raise police officer salaries to a comparable level with other cities, but teacher salaries still are almost the lowest in the entire United States.  If tight were the adjective to describe North Carolina when Jim Hunt was governor, it also could describe Phil Berger's General Assembly.  There is money in North Carolina thanks to the military industrial complex, but it is not spent wisely.  Our state lawmakers could be one of the most corrupt of any state, and Duke Energy is a part of it.  A "State of Hypocrisy" is the title when one touts billions in earnings in lottery profits that "go to education."  Please.  Certainly North Carolina does not have an education lottery, because public education no longer is a priority for state or federal politicians.  We made a conscious effort to neglect public education years ago in favor of exploiting America's younger generation.  Let's lend then money to go to college, so they graduate with a note to Uncle Sam for $100,000.00.  When we should have been investing in and educating our children, instead we fucked them.  The rest of American society followed along.  When Norman Lear, Aaron Spelling, and Sherwood Schwartz were penning family stories and setting examples for American life, Donald Trump was plotting his communist overthrow.  It should be of no surprise that mass killings have become common.  There are no examples left of sane, rational, and enlightened living.  Turn on the tube or rent a movie and you see murderous violence as entertainment.  We have become desensitized.  America no longer has any idea how to behave like intelligent adults, because the Trump organization has dismantled America.  No science.  No art.  No philosophy.  No religion.  Only riches and money.  It is a hypocrisy to call it an "Education Lottery," because it is not.  The money carefully is funneled to the same places always it has been.  Nothing has changed that way.  It's the same rich folks  controlling the same poor folks.  Wonder why mentally challenged adolescents are shooting up school?  What other example do they have?  Even with America's neglect of public education, Covid sealed the deal.  School closed for a year and a half.  It's kind of like who decided that putting our garbage in plastic bags was a smart idea?  In doing such a thing, putting our garbage in these bags, it prevents the natural process of Mother Nature.  Bury organic products under the ground and they decompose.  Put anything in a plastic bag and bury it beneath the ground.  It will be there forever.  Forever.  Plastic is a forever chemical, and we don't really need it.  We could do without DAK Americas and their Mexican owners.  We could do without Teflon and its Chinese owners.  In fact who changed the law in America that allows foreign entities to own American companies?  Smithfield?  The Chinese.  Poultry?  The Chinese.  This shit has nothing on NAFTA.  The North American Free Trade Agreement?  Bill Clinton thought this was a good idea, and we invested heavily in South America.  Then the peso collapsed and lots of people lost their life savings.  Mexicans had no desire to work in factories at slave wages, but India and China?  Which President made this legal?  The problem remains that Gen X, the same chemical as C8, has not been declared a toxic substance by the EPA.  It is smoke and mirrors.  Presto chango.  Slight of hand.  Meanwhile thousands of American have died and have disease.  Is this right?  Education Lottery.  How to get educated in how to lose your money.  Shop at convenience stores.  But lottery tickets.  Once schools were the place you learned to be smarter, but they decided against that.  Now the well has dried up and America along with it.  I don't think we will recover.