Ian Welsh is often good for a quote of the day, a thought that sums up some subject remarkably well in few words. A comment of his yesterday at his own blog is a case in point. Discussing how the Wall Street elite have been handling the Occupy Wall Street protests so far, he wrote:
I find the way the elites are acting incredibly stupid. If I were them and didn’t want fundamental changes, I’d pat the protestors on the head, tell the cops to be nice to them, and even go say sympathetic things to them. Smile, nod, be supportive of the encampments themselves, but don’t make any changes to how business is actually done. Let winter and disillusionment deal with them. Give them nothing to rally against.Arrogance makes you stupid, and I suspect this is the case here. Not too long ago, their peer among Presidential candidates, Herman Cain, had this to say about the 99 percent of us who aren't rich:
They are incompetent even at this.
I see the police are providing an education (comment)
The Tea Party favorite then argued that the plight of the unemployed was their own fault.How much of an arrogant jackass do you have to be to not recognize how much good fortune has to do with whether you're rich or not? If nothing else, all those signs about "the other 99%" should be a clue. Being rich is a rare thing, and there are many reasons. You have to win the genetic lottery, for starters - be given enough brainpower and good health to be able to achieve your ambitions. You have to live in a stable society, at least assuming you're not a sociopath. And you have to be able to get enough support from those around you to at least get started.
"Don't blame Wall Street, don't blame the big banks, if you don't have a job and you're not rich, blame yourself. It is not someone's fault if they succeeded, it is someone's fault if they failed," the ex-Godfather's Pizza CEO declared.
Herman Cain to Occupy Wall Street protesters: If you're not rich 'blame yourself'
Image credit: Buzz Feed
Yet Herman Cain, and the arrogant clowns like him who are running Wall Street these days, seem to think that there's no such thing as not being smart enough, not being able to stay healthy, or not being able to catch a break when you need it.
So, yes, while I agree with Ian's assessment of what they should do, they're so arrogant that I'd be very surprised if they ever did. They just don't seem to be able to get over themselves.
(h/t Joyce Arnold for that Buzz Feed photo)
1 comment:
The lower photo probably is the best depiction of the greater part of the upper class elite that I have ever met; conscientious, caring, secure in their person and most often generous in some form or another.
These qualities are not those of the MOTU corporate CEO type pathologically driven psychopaths endeavoring to accumulate dynastic levels of wealth from their privileged positions of management.
Unfortunately the word wealth doesn't distinguish between these types, and neither do those who rage against the rich. Much of this hatred and misunderstanding comes from not having a functioning understanding of basic economics or the vocabulary that supports that understanding, e.g. rich best refers to certain levels of income from some source, whereas wealth would refer to retained (saved) unconsumed income preserved in some manner; totally different species altogether but confounded in the popular but untutored mind, the term land-poor comes to mind as an example of possession of a means of economic production with limited income derived from that production.
The calls for class warfare eventually incorporate the call for extinction of members of the opposing class. The top 1% in the US involve over 3 millions individuals, the top 0.5% comprise 1.5 millions people. If only 1 in 10 are actually guilty of economic malfeasance, there are 1,350,000 people who are not guilty of economic pillage. Justice is either done or it is not, a hard decision even in the best of times.
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