We now live in an age of the billionaire. They are American only by convenience. They are not really comfortable here. They are comfortable only with their own kind. When this nation becomes inconvenient, they will simply leave.

They know no bounds of patriotism, no civic responsibility (beyond a desire to destroy social security and public schools), and vicious antipathy toward taxes of any kind.

They are willing to spend billions to protect their interests which are largely financial.

Their contempt for the American middle class is almost unmeasurable. To them, Americans are overweight, greedy, overpaid, unambitious, a lumpen mass of losers, it is time history abandoned.

Globalization has left them abundant places to go that are not the United States, abundant ways to avoid taxes and an astonishing variety of way to vent their contempt for the unfortunate societies that spawned them.

Frankly, as a defender of the middle class, I feel woefully out gunned.

My strong suspicion is that if I am willing to forego my beliefs and embrace the coming new order, my life will improve materially.

By the standards of the new elite, I don’t even make fool.

I am a patriot. I believe in this nation and its future. I am disgusted by the strange sense of entitlement by those who have mercilessly exploited this nation and seem to intend the destruction of its economic base. So, I am not the right kind of person.

We are not as a nation fully abandoned yet. But the ties that bind the power elite to this country steadily weaken. The destruction of the public institutions of the United States will not end with Social Security but culminate in foreign owned roads, bridges, sewer systems, electricity and oil. This nation is valuable only for the money that can be squeezed out of it. The beliefs that created it and the sacrifices that maintain it are of no consideration.

I do not know if this can be changed. I have doubts that it is possible.

I fear for this nation’s future and not for just this nation but for many others around the globes who will be swept up in these changes.

Business ethics is not possible without law to support it. It is not possible with a sense of morals. It is not possible without consideration of other people and their rights.

So, in my mind, I am looking at the destruction of this field.

In fact, the whole concept of business ethics may become an idea only practiced at the bottom of the economic order.

I will continue to believe in this nation and its future but we are going to be sorely beset in the next decade.

James Pilant