As sacrilegious as it might be, one given to dark humor would have no problem with inauspiciously comparing the Enron collapse with the toppling of the World Trade Center’s twin towers on 9-11. If truth is told, almost 5,000 Enron employees, who suddenly found themselves facing a scary Christmas and an unhappy New Year, more than likely entertained a fleeting thought that they would be better off if they had been the victims of a fatal terrorist act.

For sure, in today’s materialistic land of the free, carnal-minded Americans, who have become addicted to a lavish life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, not only realize it’s hell being poor, but (based on some of the greed-driven schemes and downright sleazy money generating enterprises evil in high places pursue), they would rather go to hell trying to get rich quick than be poor. In other words, 2002 America appears to have allowed a lust for money to become the root of a proliferation of evil deeds that could be considered a national threat. For sure, the haves live in constant terror of being terrorized by angry have nots (foreign and/or native), who are as mad as hell and ain’t gonna take it no more.

Without a doubt, America’s underclass has become a dangerous subculture that has turned the urban jungles which they inhabit in the land of plenty, into a very scary place to tread. Nevertheless a capitalistic system’s self-perpetuating composition can’t lose for winning. Hence, the more desperate, impoverish, criminalized citizens struggle to survive, the more a greed-driven society’s institutions will thrive.

Conspiracy theories notwithstanding, social engineers are fully aware that poor, lazy, crazy and criminal bent people are the nation’s most abundant and expendable natural resource. Thus, our criminal justice system and mental health industry are the fastest growing and most cost effective enterprises in the land.

Meanwhile, lust of money and/or power suggests that random crimes, even when violent, poses no real threat to a nation that is ready, willing and able to incarcerate or control nearly 5 percent of its citizens, including women and children as young as 8-years-old. Furthermore, America’s criminal justice system has proven to be more than equal to the task of using citizen’s human fragilities to turn a profit.

Ergo, the real threat comes from evil in high places, that often times is defined as the misnomer “white collar crimes,” that are committed by black hearted people who ignore the sage biblical warning, “For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and loses his soul?”

John W. Sutherland, author of “The Buffalo Creek Disaster,” describes white-collar crime as: “A crime committed by a person of respectability and high social status in the course of his/her occupation. Need we remind you of the social status enjoyed by the executives who literally raped Enron and robbed thousands of unsuspecting, loyal employees and all who associated with the huge energy corporation… not only of their wealth and dreams of a secure future, but of the almost child-like trust in a system of government that made America the greatest nation in the history of the world.

Woebeit, the Enron bamboozle is considered the biggest ever economic collapse in corporate America’s history, it pales in comparisons to the 1980’s savings & loans scandal, that notably included members of President George W. Bush’s family.

The same Bush who shook America’s Democratic system to the core, when he allegedly stole the 2000 presidential election with the brazen and unrepentant support of his brother Jeb, who also happens to be the governor of Florida, the pivotal state that allowed him to move into the White House at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

History records that federal regulators filed a $200 million lawsuit against Neil Bush and other officers of the Silverado Bank, accusing them of “gross negligence” contributing to its $1 billion collapse. African-American News&Issues’ research and historical data department, affirmed that the failure of hundreds of U.S. Savings and Loans during the 1980s, as detailed in such sources as Stephen Pizzo’s “Inside Job,” and Pete Brewton’s “Untold Story,” cost America’s taxpayers an estimated $500 billion. Plus, a U.S. House committee concluded that over three-quarters of all S&L insolvencies appeared to be linked to serious misconduct by senior insiders or outsiders.

Also, in 1998, the comptroller of the currency found that less than 10 percent of recent bank failures had been caused by economic factors. If you desire further details, please checkout David E. Scheim’s “Trust or Hustle: The Bush Record,” at your nearest library or at www.campaignwatch.org. Meanwhile, one of the nation’s top criminologists, Niccos Passas, says: “The Savings and Loan frauds have cost at least $125 billion. The fraud in the Medicare and Medicaid program are upwards of $70 billion a year. If you compare that with the ordinary theft as reported by the FBI, this is far, far more significant.”

Janine Jackson, of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, however, put the S&L scandal in a far more enlightened perspective when she countered, “Crime that in fact cost the public a lot more, like the Savings and Loan scandal, like pollution and toxins in the atmosphere that effect a lot of people don’t get the kind of coverage that muggings and street crimes get.”

Conversely, when a supposedly uncompromised free press fail to inform the public sufficiently, it becomes co-conspirators with evil in high places, therefore a nation loses its moral compass and began to decay from within.

Has America the Beautiful reached that point and time in each nation’s history when greed and corruption becomes a bigger threat than war and terrorism? Denial aside, when a man who would be president has no shame in his game, the words from Adolph Huxley’s “Themes and Variations,” ring true.

To wit: “The thin precarious crust of decency is all that separates any civilization, however impressive, from the hells of anarchy or systematic tyranny which lie in wait beneath the surface.”