The Good Samaritan: A Liberal’s View

A certain selfish and elitist man in business traveled from Jerusalem to Jericho to see if he could exploit some more victims of the capitalist’s economic system.  He was forced to go through a neighborhood in decline where his company had thrown men out of work by outsourcing their jobs to China.  Desperate to survive, these oppressed and disenfranchised citizens saw this fat cat in his expensive clothes and diamond studded jewelry.  They had no choice but to get back what he had, for all practical purposes, stolen from them.  Unfortunately, the encounter turned somewhat ugly because the rich guy kept lying about his role in the loss of jobs.  He wouldn’t cooperate and return the goods that rightfully belonged to the residents of that area.  He should have just done the right thing and admitted his wrongdoing.  Sometimes, bystanders said, violence is justified if people get pushed to the point where they have to react. 

During a lull in the action, an opportunist came by and poured his misplaced compassion out on the real culprit.  Beneath the exterior of his good deed, however, he saw how he could make a profit.  Acting like he was a long, tall taxpayer on a big white horse, he life-flighted him to an elite hospital and paid for his care with a donation to the clinic and the company of the business person.  His purpose was, of course, to curry favor and get a big return on his investment. 

Meanwhile, the real victims were trashed by the right-wing press as thieves and thugs.  They were able to pawn off their reclaimed merchandise to buy bread and milk for their starving families.  Of course, it was a bad situation, but everyone knew that nothing would change until the big corporations were made to pay for their crimes against humanity.