I know from grade school science that there is a similar story like this that exists in nature. It is the story of the locusts. The locusts form together in to swarms and they travel great distances and consume all they can along their journey. They destroy crops and leave vast acres stripped. When they finish their consumption of all resources they travel on to the next area to consume all they can there and so on. They have been the source of great tragedy and fear and even served as one of God’s plagues cast upon the Pharaohs.

If this seems like a stretch, I invite you to look at the facts. These wealthy individuals and corporations have made enormous amounts of money from the United States, Europe and Australia. Following that success, they began to shift labor and investment to Asia and the Middle East. Asia has formed a trade coalition that excludes the west and is becoming increasingly powerful. The Middle East has not been an enthusiastic partner in this endeavor. As a result, the corporations have made their money by investing in and lobbying for perpetual warfare in this region. This constant war is being carried out increasingly by private contractors making millions of dollars for doing the jobs of US Service Members, but at a much higher cost. Now we are seeing a push for further development of industry and trade with South America. Meanwhile, there has also been a rapid land-grab going on in Africa by western corporations. So the 1% has practice greedy strategies that amount to slash and burn tactics to drain nations of all the wealth they can before they move on to the next region to do the same thing there. Just like locusts.

Another organism that is similar to their tactics is a virus. Viruses were something else I learned about in grade school. Viruses will replicate within a host and will eventually kill that host if they are not stopped by that hosts immune system. In some cases, a cancer or HIV/AIDS disables the immune system and allows that previously described virus to destroy the host without any resistance.

This is very similar to what is taking place in the US as well. You see, the immune system that tries to stop viruses is kind of like government regulation that is meant to protect the people from predatory business practices. The cancer or HIV/AIDS would be the lobbyists and corrupt politicians that wrongfully change or remove that regulation to favor those predatory businesses.

In either case, the results are tragic and devastating. Any grade school child could look at this and ask why no one is going to stop this from happening. Unfortunately, even with all my experiences and education, I do not think I can really explain it to them. Hopefully, we will make the hard decisions that require us to wake up and fight for our fellow man and for our own wellbeing, as opposed to having to face the hard task of explaining to our future generations why we did not do anything to stop them.

When it is said that “we need to stop them,” it does not mean reading about it and being outraged. It does not mean waiting for someone else to do it for you. It means that each one of us are responsible to ourselves and to each other and we need to get up, stand up and, in one unified defiance, take the power back from the 1% and give it back to “We the People.”