Tuesday, January 13, 2004
The Arrogance of Bush's Class War:
Pitfalls for the Right
Greed's Behind Domino Site's Fall0 comments
Juan Gonzalez has this interesting piece in today's New York Daily News, concerning two Cuban brothers who came to the United States and had their efforts rewarded with great wealth and power.
But, their success is due in large measure to their clever manipulation of the federal corporate subsidy game.
That immigrants can come to successfully twist the dollars out of the U.S. Treasury as well as any fourth-generation Yalie is the darker side of the American Dream. You want to bitch about the waste of your middle-class tax dollars? Subsidies are a good place to start.
And prototypically, these brothers seem to have lost sight of how much is enough, and of how much is too much.
Is a 35-ft. sea-worthy boat enough? Are you willing to lay off 250 hard-working people, making $50,000/yr. on down, some for the last 20 years, in order to bump it up to a 43-ft. boat? Where is the demarcation line for losing your immortal soul? Is it the 48-ft. boat that you deserve to have? Or is it the 57-ft.?
Or is it just the thrill of making even more by selling that parcel off for condos than you can make by playing the subsidy game that gets your juices flowing?
It makes my head snap to hear George W. Bush or any of his many Republican/conservative/Neo-Con/whathaveyou surrogates take the pre-emptive step of braying about "class war."
They go on about this as if it were something that liberals or the Democrats have somehow thought up. Or as if it were something that somehow grows from the bottom up. No, "class war" is always something that moves top-down.
This isn't about parties or politics. It has to do rather with an increasingly warped notion of how best to maintain an elevated position in life. Whether you've carved it out for yourself or it was handed to you as a birthright, the strategic position dissolves into "I've got mine. I deserve to have as much as I want. You guys can fight over whatever is left. And I will do whatever I have to, to preserve that."
So now this new millennium begins to replicate the process of most other millennia.
There has always been the poor, the working classes and the "folks who lived up on the hill" in every culture and in every town and city throughout the world's history.
Most people have grudgingly understood and accepted this basic set-up over the centuries. But, the ongoing acceptance of "That's just how life is," entails a series of delicate sociological balancing acts.
This acquiesence is most tightly focused on one simple, yet profound, fulcrum: How do those with an exalted position handle their position in life vis-a-vis the other classes?
Flip through nearly any history book and you'll notice that advances in economic power in the world tended to coincide with the impression by the working classes and poor that they were a respected player in the communal process of economic growth—with commensurate return for their efforts, which, in turn, allowed them to feel that their needs and concerns were cared for. That some of those at the top of the ladder seemed to gain an outsized share was deemed immaterial.
In essence, a sense of success and well being is the true opiate of the masses.
Few serfs complain that the king has jewels on his hands and tapestries on his walls when they have heat in their homes and venison on their tables.
Rather like the 1990s, in fact.
However, library stacks are filled with books detailing the upheavals in various societies when those in the monied classes forget this simple point and allowed themselves to be seduced by the "specialness" of their position.
Greed and self-delusion are always right around the corner when you have money. It's easy to forget how you got it, and how best to keep it.
Throughout history, Royalty/Industrialists/Heirs/Entrepreneurs/Folks Up on the Hill, and the like, have best enjoyed their privileged position when they've understood the underpinnings of that privilege, and worked to assure that the needs of the other classes were fully cared for. This is how statues come to be built for otherwise ruthless and despicable men.
Those who have forgotten this basic lesson have come to assume that there was something uniquely "about them" that fully warranted this luxury.
It is this delusion which has proved to be the potent seed of revolution and democracy (with a small "d") around the world. And throughout history, whenever it has taken firm root, revolution has never been denied.
As the man said, "Pride goeth before a fall."
This is the lesson which President Bush, and others in this oligarchy they've created over the last three years, seem particularly blind to.
At their class's peril.
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posted by Gotham 12:53 PM
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