Where Did ‘We’ Go?

Our leaders, even the president, can no longer utter the word “we” with a straight face. There is no more “we” in American politics at a time when “we” have these huge problems — the deficit, the recession, health care, climate change and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — that “we” can only manage, let alone fix, if there is a collective “we” at work.

Like most prominent civilizations through out history the United States may have already hit its apex, and may be reaching the crux of its own history where it now begins to diminish. We as a nation seem to have splintered ourselves into so many camps and created so many voices that now nobody can really grasp all of the strands being dangled around, and we seem to have given up on the idea of listening to one another. I know that I have become much more timid about bringing up political views around strangers.
Are we now in a position where our government and society are stifled because the interest in bettering the country, the ideas of improving the lives of our citizens, and extolling the virtues of the old American Dream have been replaced with greed, and power mongering? Our government appears to be at a place where those in power are now only working to keep their power, while those out of power are only making decisions on the basis of what will bring them back into power, and both sides seem to not care about the consequences.
I found the article that I linked above to be well written and thought out, it was thought provoking. But it has left me feeling a little hopeless, because as much as I try to see an end to all of this, I just don’t see it.

The mortgage company, Chase, sent us a notice at some point in August telling us that our new monthly bill was going to be X beginning Sept. 1, but then sent the actual statement for September saying that we owed Y. Forgetting about the previous statement telling us to pay X, we inadvertently paid Y. This all culminates in me getting a phone call at work, which by the way sounded very much like a phishing scam, telling me that my mortgage was past due. After checking into it we found that the payment of Y had gone through, and that money had been deducted, and at this point I’m thinking that there had simply been a burp in the system. When we get home we check into it a little more, and then I call the number to talk to someone about what’s going on. Of course the CSR explains what’s going on, that we had paid Y when we should have paid X, and that since we had paid less than we should have those funds hadn’t been applied to the account, but had been put in ’suspense’.
Mitzy was pretty visibly upset about all of this, and I don’t blame her. What it boils down to is that Chase had sent us conflicting statements, then when we sent them the wrong payment mistakenly they waited until three days before the lack of payment would impact our credit negatively before contacting us. They also charged us a late fee, so this all starts to look like a bit of scam on their part, and while I’m willing to admit to my own mistakes, I feel that the behavior of Chase was more than a little predatory. I voiced my displeasure too the CSR, telling her that it was very frustrating that their ’system’, as she called it, was smart enough to take my payments and cash my checks, but not smart enough to flag a discrepancy as obvious as this one should have been. We’ve made every mortgage payment on time and in full, and instead of Chase contacting us as soon as, or a few days after, they received our payment to let us know that there had been a problem they waited until the last possible moment.
What this whole scenario tells me is that Chase isn’t, on any level, at all interested in taking care of or looking out for their customers, but are more concerned about taking their money, and charging late fees. Again, I made a mistake in not paying close enough attention to the statements I was sent, and that won’t happen again, but at the same time this scenario doesn’t seem that outlandish and I can see this type of thing happening somewhat frequently. They did after all send us our monthly statement with the wrong amount due on it. Of course, I should hardly be surprised that a large multinational bank doesn’t give a rat’s fart about me, but it makes me wonder if this would be worth pursuing to higher levels.
Another aspect of this that bothers me is that I now have to guard myself against my own mortgage company. I take the concept of borrowing a vast amount of money from someone, even a bank, seriously and I want to make good on my debt. I wanted to think that Chase was on my side in this, that due to our record of payment they’d realize we’ve taken a vested interest in doing right by them, and as a result they’d happily point out in a timely manner that we’d made a mistake, a mistake they did help instigate. Now I feel as if I am forced to scrutinize everything they send me in the mail in order to make sure no mistakes are made on my part, because Chase has no qualms about taking my mistakes and turning them into a profit.
So way to go Chase, you’ve pretty much managed to tarnish whatever image I had of your company before, and I can pretty much assure you that I will conduct no more business with you, nor advise others to do so.

This has now been found on a couple of sites I regularly peruse, and let it never be hypothesized that I am a feared of jumping wagons, band or otherwise.

found via SEB and ToBS
God Bless the Internet, where all potentialities are eventually reached.