Class warfare, anyone?
Why class war is not a fiction but a fixture of our lives
by Herb Ruhs, MD, Unknown News
June 28, 2005
The sentencing of the Adelphia dynasty this week will bring to an end a particularly comical and painful event in recent US history. Audacity and impunity are willing cousins and dominate the field, but occasionally their conspiracy fails and the perpetrators suffer at least some consequences. Meanwhile, the vast majority of thieves continue unmolested in their appointed rounds.
I will not be surprised if the Adelphia corporate scandal spawns theatrical imitation, but it will be a hard act to follow. How would one go about adapting the story of the Rigas family to the screen or stage? Maybe the producers can bribe them out of minimum security to do the live action sequences themselves, or better yet, take the cameras inside their minimum security housing and do "reality TV." The term "reality TV" becomes oxymoronic as reality itself becomes unreal.
Regardless, they do make great poster children for the reigning group of gangster capitalist. All the loot that's fit to steal.
But the comedic aspects aside, these are big time thieves. "The Rigases looted the company of $100 million and hid debts of $2.3 billion." says the above article. Meanwhile we have folks doing life for stealing a pizza.
It occurs to me to suggest that we consider "thieves' paranoia" as the core functional political problem that faces us now in the US. I am not sure that this perspective will help, but God knows we need to rethink this whole corporate crime thing. Scandal after scandal drifts up against the doors of consciousness. Savings and loans, Enrons, pension pilfering, engineered real estate bubbles, today's headlines. Executive compensation begins to look more like extortion money than compensation. Huge transfers of wealth are registered. Inequality escalates. Draconian control measures are enacted against a restive population who's suffering mounts along with their credit card balances. But are the thieves really happy that they are getting away with these astronomical crimes?
During my years working in the correctional setting, I came to understand that thieves steal not so much to accumulate wealth as to show others how clever they are. Thieves like to think they have gotten away with something big, like little boys in grown bodies. Basically, a thief usually wants to be "caught" by someone, hopefully not the law, so that they can bask in the happiness of smugness. However, to the extent that they are successful, particularly if they are continually successful in their exploits and build up a big piles of loot, as well as power and privilege, they become increasingly paranoid about being caught by people who might call them to account. Their dilemma; they simultaneously want credit for the cleverness of their crimes and to have those crimes remain secret to all but an "inside" group.
They fear losing their loot, but a bigger, if more subtle, problem is the tension that builds up around the necessary pretenses that are demanded by a society that likes to think of itself as a "meritocracy." In our Puritan context, wealth is virtue, and is presumed to have been ethically obtained -- if you have it, it must be yours. They want to force people to accept that they have earned their wealth, and they are afraid that they will be seen as low class if exposed as crooks.
To me this was the lesson from the Nixon presidency. He was an impunity addict as well as a social climber. When he was exposed as the crook that he was, and had been, it was his paranoia about being caught that led to his downfall, not consequences for his real crimes. No, the system is set up by crooks to protect their brethren. But "legal" protections for criminals are not totally reassuring to them. Nixon always feared his enemies, the rightful owners of the property that he had coveted and secured by false means, were up to much more than they were. He overplayed his defensive maneuvers and crashed and burned. Actions of paranoid people seldom make sense in the light of reality.
The whole complex of people we have come to call "the establishment," or more commonly just "them," have come by their combined, mutually supporting power and wealth through a dependency on unethical and immoral means sanctioned by our sick society. Even apparently justified winnings are fruit of the immoral process of "those that have get."
Down deep everybody with any wealth is secretly (often a secret from themselves as well) feeling guilty. The problem remains that we, the common people, are, to a large degree, blissfully uninformed of exactly what means were used to gather this misbegotten wealth. I would suggest reading Perfectly Legal: The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich -- and Cheat Everybody Else, by David Cay Johnston, for some hints on how the smoke and mirrors are used.
The fact that countless crimes have been gotten away with scot-free does little to reassure the growing irrational paranoia that lurks deep in the brain and shouts more and more loudly "they are going to get me." So we see all kinds of hard-to-understand, irrational aggressive behavior by people, like the cabal that hijacked the Republican party, who, in reality, have little to fear from a confused and fearful public. Their actual victims generally have long since retired to their lairs to nurse their wounds and are not an actual threat. Their fear comes from the fact that they know, deep down, that they are wrong. In summary, "they" just can not believe, deep in their hearts that they are really getting away with their crimes.
But how to describe this criminal cabal other than as the representatives of the privileged class? How to describe the daily escalating economic and physical violence being perpetrated by these people as other than as class warfare? It matters little to the paranoid mind whether or not the "enemy" is fighting back. There is only one motto, one banner under which the army of privilege marches: "Get them before they get us." They are "us" and we are the "them" in this Alice and Wonderland world of deceit and greed.
If we ever do get out of this epic class warfare mess, it may have to be via an amnesty for the crooks who confess. They actually want you to know, so we can see how wonderfully clever "they' have been.
Perhaps we can sweeten the deal by agreeing to continue to support them in the style to which they have become accustomed. Maybe then, after the smoke has cleared and the mirrors put to proper use, we can get around to designing a society where such distorted thinking and emotional immaturity does not qualify someone to be king.
© by the author.
What do you think?
There's much more than this at Unknown News.
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How to describe this criminal cabal other than as the representatives of the privileged class?
How to describe the daily escalating economic and physical violence being perpetrated by these people as other than as class warfare?
It matters little to the paranoid mind whether or not the "enemy" is fighting back.
There is only one motto, one banner under which the army of privilege marches:
"Get them before they get us."
They are "us" and we are the "them" in this Alice and Wonderland world of deceit and greed.
|
|
|
During my years working in the correctional setting, I came to understand that thieves steal not so much to accumulate wealth as to show others how clever they are.
Thieves like to think they have gotten away with something big, like little boys in grown bodies.
Basically, a thief usually wants to be "caught" by someone, hopefully not the law, so that they can bask in the happiness of smugness.
However, to the extent that they are successful, particularly if they are continually successful in their exploits and build up a big piles of loot, as well as power and privilege, they become increasingly paranoid about being caught by people who might call them to account.
Their dilemma; they simultaneously want credit for the cleverness of their crimes and to have those crimes remain secret to all but an "inside" group.
They fear losing their loot, but a bigger, if more subtle, problem is the tension that builds up around the necessary pretenses that are demanded by a society that likes to think of itself as a "meritocracy." In our Puritan context, wealth is virtue, and is presumed to have been ethically obtained -- if you have it, it must be yours.
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