Let Them Eat Cake

I've been mulling over the rise and subsequent prominence of the neo-con-falangist component in our society. Otherwise intelligent people are mouthing slogans and praising policies with an ardour which would have embarrassed even the most committed Comintern member in the 1960s. Support for diversion of wealth and power from the general population to a very select group of people who are sheltered thoroughly from any real vicissitudes of life is at an all time high. The people providing the most support, besides the ones benefiting directly, are, ironically, the ones who benefit the least from this shift of wealth. The structuralist view would be that the individual's view is governed or at least shaped by those with power. Is that what happens? Or are people true believers in the institution that they trumpet for? Or is it really simply Maslowian: they want protection and will blow with the prevailing wind, telling themselves that their bank, their team, their brand, institution, or cause, is in fact righteous because they desperately need to be self-convinced that their tyrant is benevolent? Is this how the populace puts up with the level of fiscal and ethical debt that it carries, both directly and indirectly? Is this how we make palatable the irresponsibility of a government that forgets its mandate? Is this how we have come to wars all over the world and peril that cannot be erased because it is set so deeply in the generational memories of the oppressed? I think of John Osbourne, living on a barge, boiling nettles for food. Even if the truth is on the losing side, to put a patch on the hole in the armor-plate protecting the intellect from reality is a fix that can't last. Wisdom wins out eventually, but not always in the material world. I don't think the most devoted functionary in post-war France ever said on the death-bed, "I should have spent more time in the office." Maybe M. Antoinette did say, at the very last, "I should have given them meat." Will Dick Cheney ever say, "We shouldn't have taken so much"?

Homeless citizen N, Toronto 2006