The Internet and all the hardware and servers on the Internet as well as the computer you’re using to read this were created by hundreds of thousands of ordinary middle class engineers and programmers and installers and technicians who wrote the code, designed the computers and routers, and built and installed the hardware all the way out to where you’re typing this. Yet virtually none of these people own any of their work. It almost all belongs to the super-wealthy, because of the divine rights of kings. Or something.
Generations from now, people will look back upon our current gilded age with the same revulsion that people today have when they look back upon the days when kings could behead people just on whim and lived lives of luxury while their people starved in rags.
— Badtux the Democratic Socialist Penguin
Re: the people who created those things. How many of them are so aggro about the leeching gildedaires that they’re motivated to do something about it? Be part of a groundswell against the kingwealthy, in whatever facets that might take? And how many revere the Jobzez and Gatesys, reckon they might be one someday too? I’m no good at sussing the social mood in Sovamokia, so you tell me. Down here, I’d say there’s mild feeling against gaucheriche types but we’re far from any class struggle mindzeitgeist.
It seems that most of the creator class have internalized the divine right of kings err oligarchs to own everything. It helps that the creators largely are treated decently compared to the peasantry at large, with six figure salaries and plenty of benefits, though they are of course expected to work themselves to death then quietly die once they’re no longer of economic value, just as with the peasants. Their children, on the other hand… we’ll have to see what happens there. Have you been following Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez? She’s the next generation. And she clearly doesn’t believe in the divine right of kings to own everything.
“Have you been following Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez?”
Yeah, especially because I use Naked Capitalism as one of my go-to sites for nooz & vyuz. AOC gets the approval of “Water Cooler” ideologger Lambert, who cocks his snoot at almost EVERYONE. Many favourable mentions of her, for policy positions but also because of the lame-arse whiteboy weakways the Reich has tried to bring her down. An old video of a cute chick dancing is supposed to shame her? Only in the world of wizened cracker-arses…
Heh. Yeah, that one was hilarious. We’re supposed to dismiss her because when she was in college she was… adorably cute? Of course, the anti-AOC video set her dancing to some sort of jungle music, a dog whistle to racists, which was the *real* point of the video. But then the real video turns up and it’s set to something else entirely, at which point even the racist who posted the composite of her dance moves in the original video realized he dun fuked up and deleted it. Except the Internet never forgets, so copies of it are still there ;).
Bukko: Awesome comment.
What do you guys think of the Virginia Governor tempest? I don’t know. As horrific and archetypically Southern as it is, it was 35 years ago, and we ARE NOT talking about outright sexual assault here, so as bad as it is, should the Dembots kick him out? What if the Russians (or GOP operatives find footage of something egregious from when the Lt. Gov was 12? Is anyone pure enough to be a Democratic Party officeholder? Are any of us pure enough? I just don’t know how far this rather policing can go?
It was the 1980’s, not the 1950’s. Everybody should have known better by then. If he’d immediately come out and said yeah, I was an idiot when I was young, I’ve learned better by then, and here’s what I’ve done for black people in restitution since then — well, maybe I’d be inclined to forget. But deny, dismiss, obfuscate… naw, bro. One of the Democratic Party’s points going up against the Racist in Chief and his supporters in 2020 is “we’re the party of not-Racists”. Sorta hard to say that when one of your prominent peeps sort of contradicts your whole party identity.
Of course, if he’d been a Republican, nobody would expect him to resign. Because that’s just a Republican being a Republican, i.e., a racist. Double standard? Yup. But can’t really say you’re the Party of Not-Racists if you got peeps that, well, aren’t convincingly not-racist.
On the other hand, he wasn’t that young. My rule of thumb is that if you’re still that much of an “idiot” when you’re old enough to attend med school (so likely mid-20s at least), it’s probably not something we could expect you to “grow out of”.
In fact, I have to conclude that if you’re smart enough to attend med school, and still an “idiot” in this way, you might be REALLY racist.
On the other hand, with the emergency back up Governor facing murky accusations of past sexual assault, and the Attorney Degenerate (next in the line of succession) now admitting that he TOO engaged in “blackfacing” (has that always been a verb?), the NEXT in line is the Speaker of the House of Delegates, a Rape-Public-Con.
WTF, VA?
Good point about how he was likely in his mid 20’s by then. That makes it even worse. Still, I’m a forgiving sort and might have forgiven if he’d come clean right off the bad and said yeah, I was an idiot when young, I’m better now. (Hmm, isn’t that a skit from Monty Python and the Holy Grail?). But he didn’t, he just sort of tap danced until he tap danced right off the edge of the stage…
I second Tux on this. If Northam had taken the approach of “I was a dickhead then, but I’m not one now” then that would be acceptable to me. But he tap-danced around in his responding, like he was doing a Step’n Fetchit routine, still in blackface. No genuine contrition; just the calculated response of “how much damage control do I need to do?”
I tend to psychologise everything, because that’s how I earn my living. That said, my take is that politicians as a class CAN’T sincerely admit error, in general. That’s because the ones who succeed at getting elected are by nature egotistical, grasping bastards (and bitchez). The average humble human has a hard time getting up in front of people and saying “Vote for ME-ME-ME because I’m so great!” Only a smarm-merchant can beg rich people for thousands of dollars for hours and hours every day, which is what it takes to get elected. The workings of legislators, whether they’re at the city hall level or the halls of Congrifts, are filled with venal conversations with similar sociopaths. Anyone who’s got the ability to evaluate others on their moral quality (which is not a common talent, I am coming to understand more and more as I grow older) would sicken of swimming in a cesspool of sociopaths. The people who RISE in politics are the ones who love that sorta shit, so they’re all about shallow surface appearances and political calculation. No genuineness.
I can relate to Northam being a putz because when I was in university way back when, my best bud and I hung out with some neo-Nazis for a while. They were punk rock fans, liked to drink booze, smoke weed and talk politics. We’d go up to their flat, which was just inside the Washington, D.C. boundary line outside Maryland, and get all outrageous. It felt rebellious to me and my friend, politically incorrect and toxically masculine, decades before those terms were coined. We were spewing testosterone, feeling like we were powerful, dangerous young warriors.
But my friend and I eventually realised these Nazi types (they were not members of any organisation, just bigoted jerks) were dirtbags. They rarely paid for any weed, borrowed money and whiskey from us and never returned the favour, and they BELIEVED that Nazi shit, while we were just shouting it to be snarkrageous. After we had a falling-out with them, my mate and I nailed some pieces of scrap wood together in the shape of a swastika, stuck it on a pole, wrapped it in petrol-soaked cloth, propped it outside their building and lit it up. I was a decent shot with my Wrist Rocket slingshot, so it was no trouble to blow out a hole in their second-floor living room window so they’d notice. This was when there was gas rationing, and they lived across the street from a station that somehow still had fuel and was open late into the night, so there were lots of eyes to see the spectacle. Including the police who chatted to these fuggers. (My friend and I got word second-hand about the fallout, including when someone kicked in the door of an apartment we had recently vacated and terrorised the female housemate who was still living there.)
I got clean away with that, but if I was somehow called to account, I’d admit that I was an idiot then, but I’ve got a track record of being a better person since. I don’t expect politicians to be perfect. If you haven’t done anything unsavoury in your life, you’re a shut-in or a Mormon, which makes you unqualified to understand the reality of regular people. But decent folks have contrition for their errors. Politicians can’t, otherwise they wouldn’t be able to do what they do.
The world would be better off if we selected our leadership class by sortition, as H.L. Mencken satirically suggested in the 1920s. There would still be sociopaths in legislatures, but they’d be represented at their typical percentage in the population (maybe 4%?) instead of the 50%+ that are in politics now. The moral members of a polity would have a better chance of balancing the socios out if legislators were chosen by random selection.
One of the things I like about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is that she doesn’t tap dance. Someone asked Corey Booker whether Trump is a racist, and he tap danced all around the question, never giving a clear “yes” or “no”. AOC didn’t tap dance. She said “Yes. Definitely.” Cue freak-outs from MAGAts :).
Fair enough comments, guys. The denials and obfuscations do seem to be a big part of the problem here. (I have to confess cluelessness on how old he was. Mea culpa for sure)
Bukko: Excellent analysis, also. I like to delude myself that there can be “civic virtue” types at the local level, (and I have know some in my role as a minor bureaucrat), but there are also an annoying number of graspers and liars.