Wall Street Thinks You Are a Jealous Little Malcontent
Courtesy of Jesse’s Café Américain
After thinking it over, and listening carefully to the discussion on financial television today, I can come to no other conclusion. From the guests that are brought on and questioned by the news anchors, it is clear that the believe that the public wants to limit the bonuses paid by Wall Street because they are just jealous and stupid. Or at least they wish to leave you with that impression.
That’s the long and short of it. You, average working stiff and retiree, are just a jealous little malcontent who envies the great success of the financial sector, much like some foreign agitator who attacks the West because they envy its freedoms.
And you are seeking retribution, revenge. That is what this bank tax is all about, retribution.
An economics professor just admitted that he too feels a need for retribution at times, as an emotional response, but being a more educated fellow he sees how negative that is. Instead he proposes that if we must have some bank tax that we divert the funds received into a bank holding fund, a kind of a TARP II, to pay for future financial disasters.
I would not call it jealousy or a need for retribution. I would say that the people as a whole have a sense of right and wrong, a sense of fairness and balance, a sense of outrage that is being held in check by patience, a remarkable forebearance, but wish to see justice done for themselves and their children, because it is the right thing to do.
But I can also understand why the Wall Street Bankers and their enablers would see this as jealousy and envy.
Sociopath: (so⋅ci⋅o⋅path) a person, as a psychopathic personality, whose behavior is antisocial and who lacks a sense of moral responsibility or social conscience.
This is not to say that their enablers, the financial demimonde, are sociopaths. They are doing what enablers too often do; go along to get along, say and do whatever is required for pay. Camp followers, as they used to be called.
And as for the eventual outcome, well, as one well-heeled, successful young manager advised, "Older people are easy to handle. You just scare them. Then they do whatever they are told."
In his mind ‘older’ was anyone over 40. And as for the others, well, you just play on their other emotions like hatred and greed and prejudice. He saw absolutely nothing wrong with this, and was so straightfoward and unabashed in this view that it made my blood run cold, because it was clear that he was not alone in this perspective.
And so they hit the theme that if the banks are taxed, they will just find ways around the restrictions, and keep doing what they wish to do, but stop lending to the people for their commercial and personal needs.
So they you have it. You are a jealous, envious little terrorist desiring retribution from your betters in the land that your fathers fought and died for.
And not only that but many of your middle class fellows would agree. They would not think this about themselves of course, but about you, the other. The lazy stupid one. There is no easier way to elevate yourself in your own mind than to just put down, impoverish, the other.
And they will use this, and shape your thinking about it. You cannot say that you have not been warned. Many times. Money is power, and in a free republic power must be restrained with checks and balances, and with a continuing effort and vigilance.
"Banks have done more injury to the religion, morality, tranquility, prosperity, and even wealth of the nation than they can have done or ever will do good." John Adams
There can be no easy truce, no peaceful resolution of the current crisis, until the banks are restrained, and the political and financial systems are reformed, and balance restored to the economy.
"I believe that it is better to tell the truth than to lie. I believe that it is better to be free than to be a slave. And I believe that it is better to know than be ignorant." H. L. Mencken
Never allow yourself to turn to hatred and a desire for retribution rather than for justice. It is always wrong to hate, because the ultimate tragedy is that we become what we hate, we take the shape of that which possesses our passions, thoughts and attentions, we adopt its methods and distortions, even if as in a mirror, until we too are lost. And that is the real tragedy, how the whole world can become blind.
