Wednesday, Aug 18, 2010
Why the ruling class needs big government
Joe Bageant: Understanding America's Class System
Entertaining, bourbon-fuelled, Hunter S Thompsonesque look at the ruling and political classes - and what the rest of us see from the cheap seats. Is he thinking about Clinton/Blair? - "Washington's political class is richer than the working class by the same orders of magnitude as the ruling class is richer than the political class. This gives the political class something to aim for. They have adopted the ruling elite's behaviors, tastes and lifestyles with an eye on becoming members. The political class adopts the ruling class's social canon and presumptions, especially the one that says that the public has the collective intelligence of a chicken". Not off-topic - he gets to the financial crash, the housing bubble and upward transfer of wealth.
8 Comments
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1. Crunchy said...
That's why the founding fathers advised on small government.
The more I learn about the American Constitution the more I revel at the brilliance of it.
They even stated that Americans would have to fight to uphold it. Foriegn or 'Domestic.'
Hence the second amendment. If I see that day in my lifetime (by whatever means necessary) I shall die a happier man.
"I have always been afraid their numbers might lead to confusion. Twelve hundred men in one room are too many."
Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Paine, 1789.
2. mark wadsworth said...
I'd agree with that.
The key word is "patronage", i.e. Home-Owner-Ism, where the little people get bribed with their own money (or other little people's money) into feeling richer and grateful for small mercies while the bankers take million pound bonuses out of billion dollar bail-outs and most MPs own second, third and fourth homes.
I don't think that HOism was pre-planned, I think it was the perfect propaganda which sort of created itself over the last few decades, and what we now consider the "ruling classes and their remora" (politicians, NIMBYs, banks, and people who think that rising house prices make us wealthier in general) are merely people who realised this was a one-way ticket to eternal power and the trappings of wealth and coat-tailed on the back of that.
3. mark said...
there is not just a class system but also a race / colour system
4. icarus said...
crunchy - why do your posts always take so long to appear? Are they vetted? No password?
5. mark said...
probably because that "crunchy friday feeling"
6. clockslinger said...
Read all of Noam Chomsky before this stuff if you want a 360 on America and it's political exports...or an insight into the realpolitik of the UK for that matter. Not "bourbon fuelled", just wide awake lucid.
7. clockslinger said...
As to the American constitution, one has to wonder why, if it really is so "brilliant", it has facilitated the growth of massively powerful psycopathic entities (limited companies), enabled the same to destroy the democracy enjoyed by the majority of it's citizens and continued to accord equal (if not de facto greater) rights to such entities. Hmmm, more American propaganda maybe? Somehow I don't think Tom Paine had in mind a citizen working hard full time in a land full of multimillionaire brother citizens yet being reduced to having to sleep in a homeless shelter and queuing to be fed at a soup kitchen when he was contributing his thoughts. I rather think Tom would be advocating a bit of very direct action.
8. mark wadsworth said...
Tom Paine advocated Land Value Tax to be collected and dished out as a Citizen's Income.
They ignored him, of course.