Let’s Get This Class War Started

[unhappycamper]

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/10/21



Let’s Get This Class War Started
by Chris Hedges
Published on Monday, October 21, 2013 by TruthDig.com

“The rich are different from us,” F. Scott Fitzgerald is said to have remarked to Ernest Hemingway, to which Hemingway allegedly replied, “Yes, they have more money.”

The exchange, although it never actually took place, sums up a wisdom Fitzgerald had that eluded Hemingway. The rich are different. The cocoon of wealth and privilege permits the rich to turn those around them into compliant workers, hangers-on, servants, flatterers and sycophants. Wealth breeds, as Fitzgerald illustrated in “The Great Gatsby” and his short story “The Rich Boy,” a class of people for whom human beings are disposable commodities. Colleagues, associates, employees, kitchen staff, servants, gardeners, tutors, personal trainers, even friends and family, bend to the whims of the wealthy or disappear. Once oligarchs achieve unchecked economic and political power, as they have in the United States, the citizens too become disposable.

The public face of the oligarchic class bears little resemblance to the private face. I, like Fitzgerald, was thrown into the embrace of the upper crust when young. I was shipped off as a scholarship student at the age of 10 to an exclusive New England boarding school. I had classmates whose fathers—fathers they rarely saw—arrived at the school in their limousines accompanied by personal photographers (and at times their mistresses), so the press could be fed images of rich and famous men playing the role of good fathers. I spent time in the homes of the ultra-rich and powerful, watching my classmates, who were children, callously order around men and women who worked as their chauffeurs, cooks, nannies and servants. When the sons and daughters of the rich get into serious trouble there are always lawyers, publicists and political personages to protect them—George W. Bush’s life is a case study in the insidious affirmative action for the rich. The rich have a snobbish disdain for the poor—despite well-publicized acts of philanthropy—and the middle class. These lower classes are viewed as uncouth parasites, annoyances that have to be endured, at times placated and always controlled in the quest to amass more power and money. My hatred of authority, along with my loathing for the pretensions, heartlessness and sense of entitlement of the rich, comes from living among the privileged. It was a deeply unpleasant experience. But it exposed me to their insatiable selfishness and hedonism. I learned, as a boy, who were my enemies.

The inability to grasp the pathology of our oligarchic rulers is one of our gravest faults. We have been blinded to the depravity of our ruling elite by the relentless propaganda of public relations firms that work on behalf of corporations and the rich. Compliant politicians, clueless entertainers and our vapid, corporate-funded popular culture, which holds up the rich as leaders to emulate and assures us that through diligence and hard work we can join them, keep us from seeing the truth.

[iemitsu]

1. Ain't it the truth?

[SomeGuyInEagan]

20. Been saying that since the '80s.

It's always been about class war.

ALWAYS follow the money.

[iemitsu]

27. Yep, I've been saying it that long too.

[Laelth]

2. Very interesting. k&r for exposure. n/t

-Laelth

[TBF]

3. It was started a long time ago -

and it was not the working class who started it.

[Ninga]

4. Highly K & R nt

[zeemike]

5. K&R for the morning crowd.

I had to read The Great Gatsby for an english course and I hated that gook...it is the most overrated book ever IMHO...
But Hemingway, now that is a different story.

And Cris Hedges rocks IMO.

[kairos12]

6. Hitch up the tumbrel carts

[malaise]

7. Must Read - This

The blanket dissemination of the ideology of free market capitalism through the media and the purging, especially in academia, of critical voices have permitted our oligarchs to orchestrate the largest income inequality gap in the industrialized world. The top 1 percent in the United States own 40 percent of the nation’s wealth while the bottom 80 percent own only 7 percent, as Joseph E. Stiglitz wrote in “The Price of Inequality.” For every dollar that the wealthiest 0.1 percent amassed in 1980 they had an additional $3 in yearly income in 2008, David Cay Johnston explained in the article “9 Things the Rich Don’t Want You to Know About Taxes.” The bottom 90 percent, Johnson said, in the same period added only one cent. Half of the country is now classified as poor or low-income. The real value of the minimum wage has fallen by $2.77 since 1968. Oligarchs do not believe in self-sacrifice for the common good. They never have. They never will. They are the cancer of democracy.

K & R

[sabrina 1]

15. They can never have enough. They are like hoarders, money hoarders. I believe that many

of them suffer from some kind of mental illness because no one needs the obscene amounts of money many of them have accumulated and keep on trying to accumulate.

There is something wrong when you are doing something that is that obsessive and so harmful to others.

And they are the ones in charge. I would love to see some of them analyzed. Without their money they would probably end up in jail.

[malaise]

19. Greedy fuggers

Sociopaths indeed

[socialist_n_TN]

25. Disagree for the most part. Sure some are hoarders and most are sociopaths.........

but it's the system of capitalism that causes the vast majority of these problems. Even individual actors that want to do "good" cannot because the system won't allow it.

[Bigmack]

8. They only call it "class war" when we fight back. nt

[B Calm]

30. So true!

[Snake Plissken]

9. The Class war has been going on for the last 32 years

Back when the Republicans declared war of the Middle Class

It's hard to believe that Democrats allow the Republicans to set the narrative by labeling the attempt to stop the robber barons exploitation of the American Public as 'class Warfare'

[ffr]

10. Enlightening reading. Puts it all into perspective w/what we see every day.

Rich have no concept of our struggles. I've witnessed it first hand. It's like we're disposable human beings to them.

[dmosh42]

11. Hard to get a class war started(for equality), when we live in a 'kiss-ass' society. Just think ....

about the popular TV shows built around celebrities, the wealthy, etc. All wanting their asses to be kissed by the adoring populace. Truly sickening!

[alittlelark]

12. Living out here among them for almost 25 years,

I can certainly attest to his observations.

[Starry Messenger]

13. Whenever you're ready Chris.

[Nye Bevan]

14. I assume we make exceptions for Alan Grayson, Al Gore, Nancy Pelosi, the Kerrys, Barack Obama,

the Clintons, the Kennedys, etc.?

[MsLeopard]

16. I love Chris Hedges

From the article:

It is not a new story. The rich, throughout history, have found ways to subjugate and re-subjugate the masses. And the masses, throughout history, have cyclically awoken to throw off their chains. The ceaseless fight in human societies between the despotic power of the rich and the struggle for justice and equality lies at the heart of Fitzgerald’s novel, which uses the story of Gatsby to carry out a fierce indictment of capitalism. Fitzgerald was reading Oswald Spengler’s “The Decline of the West” as he was writing “The Great Gatsby.” Spengler predicted that, as Western democracies calcified and died, a class of “monied thugs” would replace the traditional political elites. Spengler was right about that.

“There are only two or three human stories,” Willa Cather wrote, “and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before.”

The seesaw of history has thrust the oligarchs once again into the sky. We sit humiliated and broken on the ground. It is an old battle. It has been fought over and over in human history. We never seem to learn. It is time to grab our pitchforks.

[Ron Green]

17. The Rich (and their minions) don't talk about class

but they use it.

The rest of us can't use it, so we better damn well talk about it.

[alfredo]

18. Kick and recommend

[SheilaT]

21. What's possibly even worse, is that many

of the lower echelons sincerely believe that 1. They will themselves someday be in the ranks of the uber-rich. 2. Taxes are too high for them, so surely they are also too high for the wealthy. 3. Poor people deserve to be poor, have no health care, send their kids to crappy schools, work at jobs with no benefits.

And the upper classes make things worse by undermining unions and any sorts of benefits, especially health care, paid time off, and (this is the worst as far as they are concerned) good pensions. This from the people who get millions of dollars in so-called golden parachutes which they mostly get when they've truly fucked up a company and royally screwed the workers.

Some years ago Calvin Trillin wrote a piece about no one needs more than some specifically obscene amount of money. I don't recall the amount he named, but I'm beginning to think that after a million dollars a year -- and I'm happy to let that be a million dollars actual cash income after various taxes, everything over that is taxed at 100%. Probably 20% of that could go to the state which is the person's genuine primary residence. If you live in a state with no income tax, then you'd be required to stand on street corners and hand out the excess cash to passers-by.

[nashville_brook]

22. from undermining good pensions to just outright stealing them from seniors.

it's been going on for years in a number of different ways -- from corporate raiding to Wall Street bubbles to simply taking them away from public employees (sorry, we need this $ to pay the new special administrator and all the private companies he'll hire to blah blah blah).

[Dark n Stormy Knight]

29. I think it must be true that no one gets more than a certain amount of money without seriously

screwing over a lot of other people. Another reason why I agree there should be a limit.

Yes, libertarians and other RW shills, I'm willing to restrict some freedom. Not really that radical a concept if you're paying attention.

[nil desperandum]

31. Taxes

Agreed,

I like to use the example of business to my conservative acquaintances since they love to throw around business references when discussing how best to run government.

I ask them if they have ever owned a business or had a partner, most of them have not. I then explain that in any business where one partner owns 80% of the business and collects 80% of the profits the 20% partner is never responsible for 50% of the upkeep or capital improvements. I then ask them if they are aware that the folks with the most income in the US own over 80% of all the wealth and have access to over 80% of the resources, most don't know that. I then ask them if those people who own 80% of the wealth why would we ever expect them to only shoulder 10% of any tax reform burden? Just like a business those who own the most wealth owe the most money to operate the government, it's not a redistribution of wealth it's actually those people paying their fair share...I realize I am oversimplifying this, but it always kills me that people buy into the redistribution of wealth propaganda from the right...I don't disagree that some of those people worked their 4sses off to get super rich, but it doesn't excuse their obligation to pay their fair share at tax time at the expense of those who have less and own less of the overall wealth of the nation...

[99th_Monkey]

23. The reflexive accusatory projections by rich fucks are legion

The super-rich calling the poor "parasites" is a classic example;
as THEY are the fucking parasites, not the poor.

[Martin Eden]

24. K&R n/t

[JEB]

26. Got my pitchfork at the ready.

[Lizzie Poppet]

28. Ditto.

And I'd best leave it at that...site rules, and all that.