I got a call yesterday from my bank regarding some changes they were making to one of my loans. What I found particularly offensive is that apparently my bank (who I have been with for 24 years now!) feels that I am not really important enough to have real person call me, so they had their automated system call me.

Seriously?

Let’s stop right there for a moment. Banks depend on us –the consumer—to function. They ~need~ us, otherwise they would not exist.

Human beings, on the other hand, have gotten along just fine for hundreds of thousands of years without banks.

This year I’ve fully woken up and realized the bald-faced lie that I’ve all been tricked into accepting as a “modern, civilized” life.

Most of us --as individuals-- have far more loyalty, commitment, and honor than the companies that we choose to work for. This really became apparent this year as we’ve all watch leagues of corporations change the rules, shift priorities, outsource, or cut the jobs of the people that have given their years of service to these companies . Yet at the very same same time the investors and board of directors (most of which have had a ~much~ shorter tenure with the company) voted in “golden parachutes” for themselves, or strategically sold their stock options before things really started to tank, so they can maintain their profits.

We’ve been loyal to our creditors. We signed loans in good faith, paid back our debts as agreed to, and maintained our credit scores. But in 2009 the letters poured into almost every person with a credit card of line of credit, and all of them said the same thing: “In order to maintain our profitability, we are increasing your interest rate.”

Did I miss something? Can I send a similar letter to my credit card company: “In order to maintain my household budget, I am changing the interest rate we agreed to so it is now HALF of what it was.” Didn’t we sign an agreement somewhere?

Do agreements actually ~mean~ anything anymore?

We’ve blindly paid insurance for everything. For our cars. For our health. For our lives. For our homes. For our kids. We signed agreements with these companies because they were so helpful and forthright when they were selling it to us! The agreement seems simple enough: we pay a premium on time and faithfully, they will pay if something unexpected happens. Sounds like a good deal in the beginning.

Until you need to claim. Then you need a lawyer who will gleefully collect between 30% and 50% to fight with the company to actually get them to pay out ~what they agreed~ to pay out.

We’ve been true to the ideals we were taught in school about what a wonderful democracy America is, where anyone can do, or be,  anything, and we all have a voice. This last year there was not one American alive that did not sit back and look on in abject horror as the curtain peeled away to reveal the true mechanics of our government.

No, I am not talking about Obama at all: This fiasco of our economy has been the culmination of over 20 years of political and financial deals handled quietly behind the scenes and out of the eyes of the public. The majority of laws and rules that were put in place that govern how our economy runs here was NOT decided by the public, it was driven by multi-billion dollar industries intent on keeping their own lifeblood running. Their lifeblood. Not ours.

So in 2009, it really didn't matter what "side" you were on anymore: the common denominator and the common frustration for everyone is that somewhere along the line we broke the system. We've painted ourselves into a corner where we cannot even chance the laws to fix what we have done.

No wonder Joe Stack took matters into his own hands this week and plowed his plane into the IRS building in Texas. No wonder crime and theft are up nationwide. I do not condone violence, and I am by no means saying it’s time to burn everything down or join the Tea Party Movement.

However, I do believe that this frustration at what has become of life in America is something that is shared by millions of us.

It's just the symptoms people display when the pressures are too great, and it’s starting to feel like we are all gingerly walking on a powder keg.

The end result is that somewhere along the line, I realized the American dream isn’t that nice little fairy tell they told us all in school.

We are cattle. You, me, our families, and friends.

We are roped into a system of debt and misdirection from an early age, are made to feel a strong sense of guilt and compliance to toe the line and not really think too hard about when we are doing it.

Otherwise, it wouldn’t work, would it?

We, the few people left that actually hold “real” jobs where we provide a service or product, are supporting a vast network of financiers, lawyers, and bureaucrats whose ONLY JOB is to make money by moving money from point A to point B and skim from the top.

They move money, take their cut, and they are the richest of all of the workers in America. But, when you pull the curtains back, who is actually ~making~ the money and paying the bills that allow them to exist?

You, me, our families and friends.

This year, I am giving up.

I refuse to carry anyone that does not offer equal trade, equal honor, equal loyally, and equal commitment as I do.

My business endeavors (QwikChord.com and services provided by LRWMedia LLC) are strictly based on an old-school sense of honor, where a handshake and verbal agreement are a valid bond. There is no need for legalities, EULAS, lawyers, or any of the other trappings of this modern system where both the business and the client are weighed down by nameless third parties who exist solely to scrape profits in what is essentially a thinly disguised protection racket.

To the modern "civilized" bureaucratic and politically correct world: I quit.

To my employers: If you do not have the same sense of honor and commitment as I do, you will not have my services. I will only trade and give my best efforts to those that do the same in return.

To my creditors: I am offloading my debt owed to those who think I am just another cow on the path into the slaughterhouse. If you really think I am going to quietly walk forward to and be grateful to you for building these fences that keep me solidly on the path to my death, I am not. You will not carry a penny my debt again for the rest of my natural life. You need me more than I need you, and ~I~ am the hand that feeds.

To my insurance companies: You’ve really done the best job at entrenching yourself into our economy, haven’t you? I mean, in most states I cannot actually drive a car unless I am insured! I can’t own a home unless it’s insured. Amazing. I don’t have much choice it seems. Or do I? Food for thought…

I am going back to what I was taught in school about honor, equality, fair trade, and commitment, and live my life according to the idea that “Nobody stays here by faking reality in any manner whatsoever.”