I'm getting to the point where it's not the greed that disgusts me so much any more..

[Fumesucker]

It's the utter and complete damn cluelessness of the 1%.

Marie Antoinette wasn't being sarcastic or mean when she rather famously said "Let them eat cake." she was clueless about the way the 99% were living.

So it is with our modern day Marie Antoinettes, they are either monumentally ignorant or equally cretinous or some unspeakably vile combination of the two.

The leaders, the 1%, should never have let it get to this point, they are shooting the goose that laid the golden egg.

Less than a century since it happened right here in the USA and the 1%, the best and the brightest, utterly ignore that lesson.

FDR saved capitalism from itself in the 30's, I wonder if it's going to get saved this time.

[tabatha]

1. The 1% would not have their riches without the 99%.

Unfortunately, it is part of the psyche of some humans to look down on others as inferior - hence racism, sexism, etc.

[dkf]

7. The 1% convince the 99% to spend spend spend.

It's the spending that makes wealth building impossible.

[MedleyMisty]

2. The 1% are NOT the best and brightest

They are the greediest, most psychopathic, and the ones who inherited the most money and privilege from their parents. They are NOT intelligent. If they were, we would not be where we are now.

Our system is totally gamed against intelligent people. Do note the Republican candidates.

Why would anyone think that intelligence equals riches in this ignorant society?

[Poll_Blind]

3. Hey! If you really want a chilling but real view of just HOW clueless, watch THIS documentary: LINK

http://www.hulu.com/watch/174635/born-rich">Born Rich (2003)

This documentary is many things and I won't attempt to sum it up in a few words, but it is an insider's view of the 1% from a young man who on his 18th birthday will inherit a huge family fortune. But it's not just about the money- it's the bubble in which so many of them live. If you watch this video with an eye for that, specifically, I think it will reveal a lot about just how out of touch some of them are.

And how in-touch and world-aware others are.

PB

[RKP5637]

4. IMO we have greed + sociopaths in much of the 1%, they just can't see what

is happening to this country. It is learned behavior and for some it's pre-wired IMO. And others are completely oblivious to what is occurring, it's all out of sight, out of mind. As long as the money rolls in that is their only priority.

[leftyladyfrommo]

8. If it's a sociopath - they see it - they just don't care

about how their actions affect others.

[RKP5637]

9. Yep!!! It just doesn't register with them. n/t

[RevStPatrick]

5. Greed is easier to deal with than cluelessness.

And modern propaganda is designed to foment that cluelessness.

[Fumesucker]

6. Good point..

[RKP5637]

11. Yep, exactly! n/t

[hlthe2b]

10. The irony I find most remarkable is that FDR could not have been more

privileged growing up and throughout his life. Yet HE GOT IT. Just like Teddy and Jack and Bobby Kennedy (and their kids/family) got it.

How do we awaken the clueless and produce more FDRs, JFKs, Teddy Kennedys and the like and less of the corrupt, narcissistic and sociopathic assholes we have hoarding their $$$ today?

[OnyxCollie]

12. The 1% rely on the media apparatus

to ensure the 99% do not see the disparity of wealth as unnatural.

The political and media elites must convince the populace that the reasons their life chances suck are due to their failures, not a rigged system.

[uponit7771]

20. +1

[blindpig]

13. I wouldn't overestimate the cluelessness or the greed.

Before all of that is the system which they serve and which serves them well. Capitalism has it's necessities which must be tended or it all falls apart. A lot of these people really believe this is the way things must be, they cannot or will not see beyond class interest. Hopefully this is an inkling of the beginning of the end of capitalism.

[Fumesucker]

15. What else would you call that besides clueless?

They refuse to learn from the obvious lessons of history.

Can't get much more clueless than that.

[blindpig]

26. But you forget, it's the end of history..........

some people actually believe that shit. It was so comforting, capitalism uber alles, they won't believe otherwise until the shit is rubbed under their noses. And then they will respond like rabid beasts.

[Fumesucker]

27. Clue-less..

If you actually believe that cretinous crap *you*are*clue-less*.

[saras]

14. I don't buy it. Just because it's hard doesn't mean they can't learn it.

Willful denial is a much more accurate model than ignorance, except for the under-12 crowd. They have the exact same access to information we do, if they only choose to use it.

[Fumesucker]

It doesn't matter if it's willful or not..

They are still as clueless as the man that killed the goose that laid the golden egg.

:shrug:

[woo me with science]

16. I still nurture fantasies about mandatory "trading places" scenarios.

For many of these people, empathy and even sympathy are so thinly constituted that they never would understand without living it.

[The Doctor.]

17. Marie Antoinette was much maligned.

http://europeanhistory.about.com/od/antoinettemarie/a/histmyths4.htm

[Javaman]

18. In actuality, Marie Antoinette technically never said that...

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/550/did-marie-antoinette-really-say-let-them-eat-cake

I have a dream that someday one of these alleged facts of history is actually going to pan out. However, today is not the day. While Marie Antoinette was certainly enough of a bubblehead to have said the phrase in question, there is no evidence that she actually did so, and in any case she did not originate it. The peasants-have-no-bread story was in common currency at least since the 1760s as an illustration of the decadence of the aristocracy. The political philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau mentions it in his Confessions in connection with an incident that occurred in 1740. (He stole wine while working as a tutor in Lyons and then had problems trying to scrounge up something to eat along with it.) He concludes thusly: "Finally I remembered the way out suggested by a great princess when told that the peasants had no bread: 'Well, let them eat cake.'"

Now, J.-J. may have been embroidering this yarn with a line he had really heard many years later. But even so, at the time he was writing — early 1766 — Marie Antoinette was only ten years old and still four years away from her marriage to the future Louis XVI. Writer Alphonse Karr in 1843 claimed that the line originated with a certain Duchess of Tuscany in 1760 or earlier, and that it was attributed to Marie Antoinette in 1789 by radical agitators who were trying to turn the populace against her.

As for your friend's suggestion, I suppose it's possible that one day, while under the influence of powerful hallucinogens, Marie said Le theme est quete ("The theme is quest"), and was overheard by an English-speaking tourist — thus giving rise, as your friend suggests, to the "Let them eat cake" legend. But frankly I doubt it.
______________________________

And besides she was probably around 15 or 16 when she said it. Not what you would consider the optimum age for wisdom.

[Fumesucker]

24. Well Dayyuum..

You just took the wind out a fine rant..

Dam kommie liebrusl with theer fax ..

:evilgrin:

[uponit7771]

19. AMEN !!! Include the media and somewhat Washington as whole

[alfredo]

21. Is capitalism worth saving? It is diametrically opposed to democracy.

Look at how the capitalist fight any semblance of democracy in the workplace.

[Huey P. Long]

22. Things WILL get worse. The inertia of movement crushing us all

will see to it! Many more of us will be shoveled into the meat grinder to feed the machine before we amass the numbers needed to stop it. Too many are still on the sidelines, distracted, or averting their eyes, hoping they get passed by when the choice of more victims comes.

More pain ahead.

[OneGrassRoot]

23. I'm more disgusted by the average people in the 99% who defend the greed. n/t

[RKP5637]

30. Yep! Same here! n/t

[TheWraith]

25. Nevermind, someone already pointed it out.

"Marie Antoinette wasn't being sarcastic or mean when she rather famously said "Let them eat cake"

This? IT NEVER HAPPENED. Not with Marie Antoinette, or with anyone else. It was made up propaganda, but people still quote it like it's real fact.

[Fumesucker]

28. You want me to request having the OP deleted?

:shrug:

[valerief]

29. They're NOT clueless. They know exactly what they're doing. THEY. DON'T. CARE. nt

[redqueen]

31. I think it's generous of you to think it's cluelessness.

This seems far too intentional to be accidental, IMO.

We've been here before, remember. The great depression saw the same excesses with investing and banking. They intentionally dismantled the safeguards that were put in place specifically to prevent that from happening again, and look where we are now.

These people aren't stupid.