CSotD: How the Other 1% Lives
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Mamet satirizes a growing sense that certain politicians have no idea of how real life works. It’s funny that Mamet can’t tell a credit card from a library card, but not so funny that the president of the United States thinks you have to show identification to purchase groceries.
And he specified photo ID, so Mamet’s library card wouldn’t work, though I’d bet Dear Leader doesn’t know what a library card looks like, either.
Jacob Riis published How the Other Half Lives in 1890, during that Golden Age we’ve been hearing about, when the government was funded by tariffs rather than income tax and the Robber Barons ruled.
Of the 12 million families in America, only one million made more that $1200 a year ($42,171.24 today), while the average yearly income of the remaining 11 million was, in today’s money, $13,354.22.
That’s only the average, which left many desperately poor.
Riis’s book opened a lot of the eyes of those who honestly didn’t know how the other half lived. In a world without television, radio or motion pictures, they had an excuse not to have seen the homeless children huddled in alleys and the poor families in crumbling tenements.
And while NYC Civil Service Commissioner Theodore Roosevelt sought Riis out and became a lifelong ally in the fight for decent lives, others in that financial stratum did not respond to the revelations.
But eventually, thanks to the muckrakers and to privileged women like Jane Addams and Josephine Shaw Lowell, some degree of decency began to emerge.
So the plutocrats made Roosevelt vice-president to squirrel him away and stop the reforms he was enacting as governor of New York, such that, when McKinley was shot, Mark Hanna, head of the RNC, gave the historic eulogy: “Now look, that damned cowboy is president of the United States!”
Thus began the Progressive Era.
(We got over it.)
Juxtaposition of the Day
Now we’re back at the best of times (for royalty) and the worst of times (for everyone else), and while Marie Antionette never said “Let them eat cake,” the remark has been attached to Donald Trump, as he shrugs off the potential pain of a tariff-induced recession and, while cutting health care and other aid to the poor, plans a triumphant, $45 million Soviet-style parade for his birthday.
“Let them eat cake” does not mean to give them cake. It means they should just eat the cake (brioche) that, according to the legend, Marie Antoinette blithely assumed they had.
The story may not be true, but it reflects a sadly genuine attitude.
Dear Leader and his fellow One-Percenters cheerfully assume that people who can’t shower their children with 30 or 40 dolls can certainly afford two, despite the 145% tariff.
And despite the parents having been laid off, either as a result of those tariffs or perhaps through the budget cuts of the world’s richest man and his adolescent wrecking crew.
Anderson makes an important distinction here. He’s not predicting that the MAGA faithful will turn on Trump when they find themselves damaged by the coming recession, but simply predicting that they will be hurt because they supported him.
I suspect he’s right. There will be plenty of other people blaming Trump in the storm to come, but the core group of his personality cult will find a thousand reasons that none of it is Dear Leader’s fault.
“The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”
The final line of Animal Farm is crucial in that the animals may be puzzled, but the story ends there, leaving a strong suggestion that they will go back to their chores the next day, believing that “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”
It’s easier to believe that pigs can talk than that suckers can ever wise up.
It’s not hard to convince the cult that everything bad is Joe Biden’s fault. The election was based not on economic theories or discussions of foreign policy but on insults about Sleepy Joe and, when he dropped out, on whether Kamala Harris had an appealing laugh.
The movement was built on conspiracy theories about “the Biden Crime Family,” illustrated in Congress with giant photos of Hunter Biden’s genitalia.
And in Animal Farm, the windmill fell not because of Napoleon’s incompetent planning but because the exiled traitor Snowball snuck back at night unseen and sabotaged it.
Granted, as Bennett explains, Dear Leader has a more complex system, but it’s not all that complex. The things that go well are due to his brilliance, the things that don’t go well are because of Joe Biden.
It’s a well-established, long-term pattern: When the market rose in the early days of Biden’s presidency, it was a carryover effect from Trump’s expert leadership, but as it’s falling in the early days of Trump’s current presidency, it’s because of how Joe Biden ruined the economy.
Ah, Mort, what are the chances of your witnessing them doing anything at all? The people who want to do things don’t have a majority and the people who have a majority are just there to wield their rubber stamps.
Here’s something: When you see video of some patriotic Congresscritter making a dynamic stemwinding House speech, look behind them. If you see empty seats, Congress is not in session and it’s only a special orders speech, not to advance legislation but to impress the rubes.
It’s like the guy whose job is to stand on the Capitol roof running flags up and down a pole so legislators can give constituents “a flag that flew over the Capitol.”
Would they lie to you?
Juxtaposition of the Day #2
Meanwhile, the real changes, or the real attempts, are being brought about by executive orders, which, like fatwas, are statements of position with no actual power of command, and which, Fell points out, often fizzle because, while the loyalists applaud them, the courts recognize that they are wish lists, not binding legislation.
Meanwhile, like sands through the hourglass, so are the days of our nation.
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