===> Under the above title, I forwarded Doug's Brian Barry quote
from "Thatcherism" to a correspondent in the Deep South.
Presently the following analysis / prophecy came back,
entitled "Common sense and vampires." Whaddya think, class?
valis
I've been thinking a lot about addiction lately, not because
I work for a nonprofit company that does drug, alcohol and
tobacco prevention, but because a priest friend of mine remarked
the other day that the vampire is, or rather evokes, the archetype
of addiction. The more I think about it, it is true. (I'll connect
this up to the social/economic scene in a second.)
Dracula's home was an abandoned monastery in Transylvania (crumbling
of Christian hegemony). He was an old man, and to revive himself
he had to suck the blood of a willing female. (The key word is
willing.) Because of his charm, females would allow him to drink
their blood and as a result become zombies, bereft of the ordinary
human emotions. It's an archetypal perversion of the Eucharist,
by the way.
The priest pointed out that the addict likewise must prey upon
another, such as a co-dependent spouse or lover, and the victim must
be willing and believe that s/he is saving the addict. The charm of
the addict enables him to convince the victim to make the sacrifice.
Family members of addicts frequently describe themselves as zombies.
It occurred to me yesterday that Wall Street has all the
characteristics of the addictive archetype. It's charming, makes
a few people very rich, proclaims that its welfare and reinvigoration
are essential, and requires new victims on a regular basis to willingly
make the sacrifice.
Since WW2, here are the major victims (omitting non-Americans like
the Iraqis, Guatemalans, Salvadorians, Brazilians, Iranians, Vietnamese,
East Timorese and Indonesians):
1. 58,000+ young Americans in Vietnam (1960-1974). (This exercise in
patriotic sanguinity stoked the coffers of Wall Street over a decade.)
2. The lower middle (blue-collar) class (1972-1984). This started with
Nixon and Schultz's affirmative action program specifically designed to
split up the unions, and culminated with Reagan's firing of the striking
air traffic controllers. The unions lost the war at that point. The NLRB
was stacked with Republican appointees charged to ignore the law.
3. The middle (managerial) class (1980-1992). Downsizing, globalization,
outsourcing, leveraged buyouts and merger mania put a lot of white collar
folks on the street, only to find jobs paying considerably less.
The willing victims, evangelized by the cult of the free market,
willingly sacrificed themselves for the official god and voted
for Reagan and Bush.
4. The poor (1989-96). Welfare reform, workfare, Medicaid cuts, cuts in
public housing, increases in homelessness, doubling of prison beds,
the war on drugs, the attack on civil liberties, etc. "Ending welfare
as we know it." More unemployed means lower wages, lower taxes,
and higher profits.
Slurrrp!
5. The elderly (1997-). The privatization of Social Security. This is
the most obviously blood-sucking move of them all. Divert SS tax revenue
directly into the stock market, which is living on borrowed time with a
world collapse slowly making its way to our shores; an extra $100 billion
or so would prop up stock prices for a long time. Reinvigoration!
6. After the elderly are robbed the next class will be the professionals.
Health care professionals are under attack at the moment through managed
health care. Professors and education professionals have been experiencing
a slow decline for some time, but I predict that the attack will be savage
when it comes. There have already been attempts to put university classes
online and claim the electronic materials thus generated as intellectual
property by the institution. The brave new world envisioned by the vampire
will not need intellectuals -- in fact, it already regards free thought as
dangerous. People who think don't willingly become victims.
7. Lawyers will be the last obstacle, because they are one of the main
instruments used by the vampire. With the abolition of serious tort
litigation, the law firms specializing in defense will downsize by,
I suspect, 60 to 70 percent. Plaintiff lawyers have already seen a drastic
reduction in their own numbers, simply through the consolidation forced by
the legalization of law services advertisement.
Since there will be a lot of competent lawyers on the street without
any place to go, the surplus of lawyers will ultimately fall subject to
Ricardo's Iron Law. Some will hang up their shingle and attempt to go it
alone. Sole practitioners, however, make most of their income from the
lower middle class, which is being crushed. As those fees continue to
plummet, fewer persons will apply to law school and become lawyers.
Those lawyers unable to support themselves in a world where legal advice
is a cheap commodity will do other things. There will be an increased
demand, however, for prosecutors and prison workers which could soak up
some of these unemployed.
So if you haven't given it YOUR blood quite yet, just wait.
The Optimist
