The Joys of Not Enough

[degringolade]

On a trip to the rain forest

One of the things that amuses me to no end is the obsessive need to “take sides” in the sissy boy slap fest that passes for politics in America.   I think that folks should take a minute to reflect on who the “parties” actually represent and what their goals are.  I will start out with a simple discussion of what I see are the likely “candidates” for the presidency.

Mention anything negative about Biden (and the list there is quite considerable and appears to be growing) and the first thing that spews out of many mouths is the phrase that “Trump is a crook and should be in jail” followed by a stream of vitriol and a recitation of how doubly horrible and evilly-evil Trump is and how he needs to be brought to justice.

The converse is a mirror held up to the first when negative mention of Trump is expressed among a different set of folks.  “Joe Biden is a stupid/corrupt politician who stole an election and should be in Jail”. Followed by a stream of vitriol defining how doubly horrible and evilly-evil Biden is and how he needs to be brought to justice.

Now, to be fair, I reside in the netherworld of “a pox on both houses”

No, 'tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church

door; but 'tis enough, 'twill serve. Ask for me tomorrow,

and you shall find me a grave man. I am peppered,

I warrant, for this world. A plague o' both your houses!

William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, Act III Scene I

The Bard called this centuries ago.  I have a sneaking hunch that this kind of thing has been going on forever.  The organizing principle behind this kind of thing is the fight for control of money and resources for the betterment of the faction.  This fight wanes when times are good and the feeding trough is filled to an extent that even the littlest pig eats his fill.  It waxes when there isn’t enough to go around to all the little squealers.

When this is a crisis is solely defined by what any particular group seems to be shouting the loudest and that definition is usually limited to that particular group.  Most of these groups don’t make a lick of sense, they just reflect a set of caricatures that has been promulgated by the leaders of the opposing factions.  Neither side's candidate for the prez or those folks screaming for them at rallies really care at all about what has been left out of the worldview that has been written for them by the folks attempting to take the ragged mantle of “leadership”.  

I see the issue is the sad belief held by the electorate that one of the parties is running a candidate that is coming to save them from the denouement that is heading our way.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  Both sides are queuing up their hatreds and tuning down their already limited empathy and understanding to allow for a more comfortable mindset for the electorate as they watch their side repress and attempt to destroy the other side.

The always tenuous idea that the castes of this peculiar society can co-exist was always dependent on there being a surplus to be able to buy off all sides.  That surplus is going to vanish (one could argue that it is already gone) when the debt and the promises and graft that has allowed it to occur has hit the wall.

So, worry all you want about the deplorables and the shenanigans of the World Economic Forum.  Hate Trump (my contempt for a crafty and corrupt real estate scam artist that seems to be a reincarnation of PT Barnum is quite significant) you can even hate Biden (a fairly stupid and corrupt small time lawyer operating well above his pay grade).  In fact, taken together they are both quite representative of the country as a whole and actually, they are exactly what we deserve.  

The elites that run the country for their own benefit have thrown up these two doddering old fools as our choices.  One represents the elite educated princelings of what is laughably called the left, but which actually represents an odd amalgamation of entitled fringe groups and the silicon society that is billing itself as “Technology” (when in fact it is an attempted chokehold on the latest fad in communication a la Bernays).

The other represents the state-school educated engineers, mid-level line workers in production and the disgruntled managers that are slightly uglier and less superficially pleasant than the educated princelings, but know how to get the job done.  Throw in the independent plumbers and trade types whose local businesses were once a mainstay of the economy and you have what is laughably called “the right”.

And please, I am painting with a broad brush here, these are my experiential takes, your results may vary, but my best guess is that these two stereotypes are accurate around 75% of the time.

But what they have in common is that they both want the policies and politicians that will reserve their place at the feeding trough.  There is coming a time where either everyone has to take a percentage less so they and their associated grouping  will work to continue at the trough (hopefully with a bigger plate this time) and everyone else will have to endure being on the “Less for You” column.

Remember, when you read the news, what you are witnessing is the  bourgeoisie/petit bourgeoisie (BPB) tearing itself apart in print.   No one cares about what the poor or the proles think, so I will leave them out of the discussion.  I think that the owners are laughing because the trophy herd consisting of the bourgeoisie/petit bourgeoisie needs thinning anyway and they will lie back and watch them tear each other apart and then make peace and support the side that they think will serve their needs best.

Nope, what we are witnessing here in the good ol’ USA is the runup to the decision leading to the processing and restructuring that will occur when the current house of cards economy (and to be fair, all economies are houses of cards) groans and pukes.  The rich will take a tiny trim (mostly for appearances), the fight between the (BPB) will establish the share that each of them will remove from remaining for the 20% of the total population that they jointly represent.  Just be aware that in the grand scheme of things, the (BPB) will take what I estimate to be around 25% of their total number making the current 20%(BPB) into the 15%(BPB). 

The losers of this sissy boy slap fest will join the proles and the poors for the scraps. Now, just to be clear, both the bourgeoisie and the petit bourgeoisie will be in there after the fewmishings hit the fan, but there will be fewer of them.  What we are looking at here is a back-door, where the magical sorting hat of not enough money will send a reasonably large percentage of the (BPB) into the nether regions with the proletariat and the poors.  The right/left percentage of those exiled from the (BPB) will depend on who wins in between now and the next election.  The winner will consign ⅔ of the loser’s “base” to the dustbin of history with the rest of the proles and the poors.

Comments

Thank you

[(Anonymous)]

Really good essay, one little typo:
Paragraph "Hate Trump (my contempt...
scan artist should be scam artist.)
This may be the politics we deserve but it sure isn't the one I want. Just makes me crawl a little deeper into a shell and watch as little tv as possible, besides the Panthers are lousy this year.
Loved the picture, may I copy for my daily happy picture?
OLfromNC

Thank you 2

[(Anonymous)]

Almost forgot, 8th paragraph, went back and counted.
OL

Re: Thank you 2

[degringolade]

Done: Thanks