Racket

To the editor:

I believe that New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani truly understands and cares that, a few social/labor uprisings or revolutions notwithstanding, the superfluously rich and powerful have always had the police and military ready to foremost protect their big-money/power interests, even over the basic needs of the masses. 

Even today, the police and military can, and I believe they probably would, claim (using euphemistic or political terminology, of course) that they had to bust heads to maintain law and order as a priority during major demonstrations, especially those against economic injustices. Indirectly supported by corporate news-media, the absurdly unjust inequities/inequalities can persist. 

And I can imagine there were/are lessons learned from successful social/labor uprisings — a figurative How to Hinder Progressive Revolutions 101, maybe? — with the clarity of hindsight by big power/money interests in order to avoid any repeat of such great wealth/power losses.  

We in the West live in a virtual corpocracy, regardless of who’s elected prime minister or president. Leaders are elected via the first-past-the-post ballot system, which enables an insidiously covert rule by way of potently manipulative/persuasive corporate and big-monied lobbyists. 

Apparently, the superfluous-wealth desires of the few, and especially the one, increasingly outweigh the life-necessity needs of the many. The more they make, all the more they want  —  nay, need!  —  to make next time. It’s never enough. “We are a capitalist nation, after all,” the morally lame justification typically goes. 

Frank Sterle Jr.