Flimsy Sanity: Let them eat cake

Flimsy Sanity

In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. - Friedrich Nietzsche

Thursday, November 11, 2004

Let them eat cake

When I lived in Shelby Mt., the local supermarket was robbed. To divert attention from the forklift driven through the window the criminal's friend started a fire across town, and it worked to an extent. They never figured that the safe would be so heavy it would blow the tires of their pickup or that blowing up the safe would also blow up the money but all these details are extraneous to my point. It is important to create a diversion while you are robbing the store.

Politicians need hot button issues to divert attention from the real intent of current policies to place the most money in the pockets of the richest 1 % of the nation. Nothing enrages the multitudes quite as much as issues of sex. The very rich truly don’t care if your daughter has an abortion or marries her sorority sister or prays at night. They do care if she unionizes or demands a minimum wage tied to inflation. Thank God Almighty for rapid transportation and technology so jobs can be outsourced to places without pesky worker or environmental protections.

Another hot button issue is crime. The "haves and the have mores" (to quote Bush) don’t really care about crime, only crime by poor people. The FBI estimates, for example, that burglary and robbery -- street crimes -- costs the nation $3.8 billion a year. Compare this to the hundreds of billions of dollars stolen from Americans as a result of corporate and white-collar fraud. Health care fraud alone costs Americans $100 billion to $400 billion a year. The savings and loan fraud cost us anywhere from $300 billion to $500 billion.

They don’t care about the casualties in their wars. In the 30’s Gen. Smedley Butler’s book War is a Racket gave examples of how corporate interests manipulate patriotic sentiment, socializing the risks of overseas investments and pocketing the profits. To quote his speech, “War is just a racket. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of people. Only a small inside group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the masses. I believe in adequate defense at the coastline and nothing else. If a nation comes over here to fight, then we'll fight. The trouble with America is that when the dollar only earns 6 percent over here, then it gets restless and goes overseas to get 100 percent. Then the flag follows the dollar and the soldiers follow the flag.”

The rich don’t believe in equality any more than in days of old Divine Right of Kings. The masses are invisible to them unless they become an inconvenience. I am reminded of the time my friend and I went to a Picasso exhibit in Minneapolis. All these rich buffalos were there for their afternoon teas and my friend and I were moved to conduct a little experiment. We would walk up and down the steps and aim for the more snooty types. Upon reaching them, we would take a half step to the right so that they could not pass without also taking a half step to their right. The looks of utter disdain we got and the number who refused to sidestep was astounding. Try it sometime if you believe all men are created equal.

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