Friday, February 13, 2009

Let them eat dirt

It begins, but so much sooner than I expected.

A panicky middle class moves from worrying about its bank account, to railing against those richer and stronger than itself, to turning on those poorer or weaker than itself. Then it seeks to connect the two:

"However you slice it this is ridiculous. FOURTEEN children as a single parent? Assuming she has medical "insurance" from somewhere, exactly how does a desire to have as many kids as humanly possible entitle her to this sort of abuse of that insurance? If she doesn't have insurance, who's footing the bill? And how do you possibly go out and earn a living while raising fourteen kids?

This is what the nation is up against.

This is why California is broke."


"...there are two Americas. A poor America on socialism and a wealthy America on capitalism...

A vast sea of perhaps well intentioned government programs, all initially set into motion in the 1960's, that were going to lift the nation's poor out of poverty.

A benevolent Uncle Sam welcomed mostly poor black Americans onto the government plantation. Those who accepted the invitation switched mindsets from "How do I take care of myself?" to "What do I have to do to stay on the plantation?""

"Because society no longer believes that it's appropriate to let these children die because of the gross irresponsibility of the mother, the only humane way to prevent this sort of stuff from happening again is to require sterilization of anyone who would receive food stamps or other sorts of welfare. "

Long ago, bailouts were unheard of; failure meant starvation, perhaps death. Consider the caveman: Ug's tribal chief couldn't afford to say, "It OK Ug no kill deer this week. It not Ug's fault. Tribe will bail out Ug."

If he wants his tribe to stick around, the chief must say, "Ug no kill deer: Ug family starve."

(For a moment, one has a vision: Ug family no starve; Ug family kill, eat Virginian economics professor.)

But the tendency... We must punish the wicked rich, correct the feckless poor, do something about the swelling ranks of the disabled, and then we'll all be jolly, prosperous and middle class. Without the bad, sad and mad, everyone would be happy. Patriotic citizens must form a united front... The communists are a deadly threat, and must be firmly suppressed... It's for the working man and the national good that we must for a while band together, almost as though we were socialists...



The clouds were boiling red and yellow over the Alps. Standing on the balcony of the Leader's retreat, the party gazed awestruck. A woman said to Him, "Das bedeutet blut, blut, und mehr blut." The Leader paled, trembled violently and said, "Wenn das sein musss, dann lass es sein."

So proud and lofty is some sort of sin
Which many take delight and pleasure in
Whose conversation God doth much dislike
And yet He shakes His sword before He strike

2 comments:

uni-talian said...

Normal service is being resumed. Graduates now face the prospect of taking unpaid internships if they wish to get on...

http://www.gulf-times.com/site/topics/article.asp?cu_no=2&item_no=272441&version=1&template_id=38&parent_id=20

What this means of course, is only those that can afford to will get on. It has been the same here in Italy, which has been in semi-recession, for some time. But at least then some graduates from poor backgrounds could look to London for the opportunities they were denied at home.

The systemic inequalities that Labour let fester in its boom-time complacency will now really come home to roost - at least in the Eighties when I was at Uni there was a full grant system, along with a society built, for all its faults, as a result of an consciousness of just these kind of issues. Future generations now face the worst of both worlds. We are looking at a massive widening in inequality as the middle classes batten down the hatches.

Sackerson said...

It's an irony oft remarked these days, isn't it, Labour increasing inequality. But then the Party officials in Communist countries got the nice stuff and the official girlfriends in the Black Sea dachas, didn't they?