Feeling Furor in Response to "The Money Heist - Part IV

 

Feeling Furor in Response to Four Seasons of La Casa de Papel,

“The Money Heist” – Part IV

 

Notwithstanding my intense emotion about the storyline and characters of La Casa de Papel, I genuinely appreciate the complex public policy questions that this fictional depiction raises.  It behooves common people to learn more about the symbiotic and nepotistic relationship between international banks and multinational corporations.  Depending upon whom you ask, five banks rank higher than corporations as it relates to wealth, worth and influence.  Possibly, these financial institutions exceed the power and geopolitical reach of some national governments.  Yet, on a microlevel, average citizens have a chance to achieve existential freedom and financial liberty through continual education, debt-free living and increasing savings.  I appreciate this series and its inadvertent yet significant contribution to public discourse in the global village as we prepare for a doubling of our population.  How will we devise an equitable and dignified standard of living for all global citizens?  Answering that question depends heavily upon the direct relationship between the banking class and average citizens.

 

Has the banking and monied class permanently and irreversibly purchased American democracy?  If you answer in the affirmative, you might historically date this purchase on 23 December 1914.  President Woodrow Wilson signed the Federal Reserve Act on that evening thereby legally sanctioning and codifying privatization of United States currency and control of its interest rates and banking system.  For more than century, the banking class continues to determine one of the most significant aspects of the average American citizen’s life.  A private and closed entity assesses the interconnection and worth of capital, labor, currency, spending, debt and market fluctuations.  Instead, you could choose 21 January 2010, the date on which the United States Supreme Court delivered the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission ruling.  In overruling two significant campaign finance and electioneering opinions, the Court removed all previous restrictions relating to corporate speech, contributions and participation in elections.  It equates financial contributions through political action committees with free speech.  The Court extended these First Amendment rights to corporations as if they are individuals.  This decision opened the flood gates and countless amounts of dark money flowed into American politics.  From school board and city council contests to Presidential elections, the ability to raise sizeable sums became paramount to winning.  Not surprisingly, many winners take the oath of office so extensively compromised and pre-committed that they prove ineffective in governing.  Average citizens suffer as public officials prioritize the concerns of major donors.  Vital legislation relating to gun control following school shootings, economic stimulus within a pandemic, deferred infrastructure repair and replacement, Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid reform and other significant issues is not considered.  The agenda of the banking and monied class prevails.

 

The Trump Administration unabashedly demonstrates preferential treatment for the expanding billionaire class in the United States.  According to Forbes magazine, there are six hundred and twenty-three (623) billionaires in the country as of this year.  Together, they amass a fortune approximating $3 trillion which surpasses the annual gross domestic product of many nations and combinations thereof.  The tax cut legislation passed in 2018 bloated the federal deficit by a minimum of $1.5 trillion.  Future generations of poor, working, lower and middle-class Americans will bear the brunt and expense of such corporate welfare.  Quite possibly, that totally unnecessary tax bill demonstrates that the capitol building in which the U. S. Congress convenes is the biggest whore house in the nation.  Frankly, it is deplorable to possess such a negative and pejorative impression of our national legislature.  The evidence regrettably supports this interpretation and polemical characterization.  It does not allow any other reasonable conclusion.  The potent effects of unlimited amounts of dark money in American politics fuels this type of cynicism.    

 

The “God of mammon” reigns supreme over American politics and governance.  If leaders perceive the economy is doing well, they assume average citizens must be doing equally well.  Their tunnel vision compels them to overlook the pain and suffering of millions of American households wherein people sit at the kitchen table to magically make ends meet.  Politicians ignore societal inequities if they deem the economy is bullish.  They conveniently fail to consider any evidence to the contrary.  They facilely dismiss social unrest and upheaval borne of longstanding structural racism, misogyny and expanding economic inequalities such as inflationary erosion of wages of working people notwithstanding greater productivity and prosperity.  It is as if the performance of the stock market is the only indicator of American well-being.  Our leaders painstakingly attempt to hypnotize us into believing that the average citizens welfare depends upon the stock market when most of them do not have a seat at Wall Street’s technological casino.

 

My furor stemming from “the Professor’s” rank hypocrisy boils as powerfully as ever.  I detest the pretense of advocating for common people when committing the same crimes and excesses as “the State.”  “The Professor” is the biggest example of everything he claims to oppose.  Perhaps, he should have joined the governmental, military and finance leaders whom he fiercely despises.  His self-aggrandizement devalues the money and labor of the average people about whom he hypocritically claims to care.  The scene of the money drop and nationwide communique are repulsive given “the Professor’s” actions of robbing their gold would undermine their economy thereby causing them extreme economic harm as inflation would make it hard for them to subsist.  Whereas I do not know how this provocative series will end.  Will “the Professor” and his fellow thieves and criminals finally face justice?  Will the female Inspector’s compelling remark in the final scene of the fourth season, “Checkmate mother fucker,” be the beginning of ending the hypocrisy that pervades this drama?