Diatribe: An Orgasm of Selfishness

There’s very little digging to do to understand the basic principle on which right-wing ideology rests.

Selfishness.

It doesn’t take much scrutiny to understand that the average Republican feels that they earned everything they have with their own hands. They completely take for granted the society, era, structure, accidents of birth, and other factors that contribute to whatever success they manage to glean. This “pulled up by your own bootstraps” idea is a childish fabrication which grossly oversimplifies the incredibly interconnected modern world. The problem is, many people in America are staggeringly dumb – whether it’s our underfunded education system, religious zelaotry, or just some strange national character, trying to get right-wingers to understand that paying taxes is paying for the very structure of the society in which they live and has benefited them every day for their entire lives is nearly impossible.

This is why the idea of “gub’ment handouts” so infuriate these Teabaggers. Like I wrote in a previous article, they don’t seem to understand that the government is not a malign third party in our society but rather than an extension of the will of the people, or at least it used to be. Until the will of the people started electing black people to the white house. Then, “We want our country back!” There are still people who refuse to accept that the de facto dominance of people with white skin on the globe is finally coming to an end, whereas I say good riddance to bad rubbish and let’s hope some other upcoming culture is smart enough to learn from our mistakes. We sure fucking didn’t.

But I digress. I dismiss all Teabaggers offhand as incoherent racists. My point is that an attitude of selfishness can often come from what I consider a lack of understanding of the interconnected nature of the world. These people do not self-reflect to the extent where they see themselves interconnected as a part of a larger whole than, say a family or culture or (gasp) “race.” The fact that I demand equal rights for gays even though I am not myself homosexual would utterly confuse someone without the ability to understand that I consider what is done to any US citizen as being done to me. That is why I got furious when I learned about the torture. It not only erodes our moral credibility almost entirely, but more importantly it means that me, or a member of my family, or my community, is effectively being tortured. It means that we are inflicting great harm to a human being, someone just like you. But this is completely lost on right-wingers, who are able to condone, support, and even laugh at the idea of torturing people in the name of the United States. In their names.

Scum.

When America’s engine of prosperity really got going, postwar, tech boom, etc. the eighties were upon us and it looked like everyone was doing just spiffy. So spiffy, in fact, that there was plenty of money for all. Even those who wanted much more than their fair share. So we began a series of economic adjustments to this country that were based on an incredibly selfish rationale dressed up in “free market capitalism.” Whereas just thirty years ago the top 1% in this country were pulling in maybe twelve percent of the incoming in this country, three years ago it was up to almost 25%.

Who is looking at that number and shrugging? Who feels nothing when they see the gross inequality in terms of the money produced by us, the American worker, the labor of this country, the ones who actually do the things, compared to the massive raking off of this very wealth by the capitalist masterclass? The fact is all of us see this as acceptable, because somehow one day in America we all decided that rich people were better than us. The rich deserve to stay rich. After all, they GOT rich right? That’s the America Dream and they should be able to ride that goddamn gravy train to the end because they pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps…oh wait.

The fact is, the people raking in this wealth are not the ones that actually PRODUCE it. Even in service industries, the people in the company who actually do the work are the ones that produce money that all the executives point laser pointers at and compare in charts and rake off in millions for their own bank accounts. But does the VALUE of their labor, leading the company, necessarily entitle them to some pyramid-scheme compensation just because they happen to be steering the helm of this money producing entity. I tell you hell no.

I tell you, in fact, that this neo-feudalistic capitalism is incredibly anti-American and anti-democratic on its face. As these libertarians will tell you, they simply want to enjoy the fruits of their labor without government interference – and yet the truth is in a democracy government interference is simply those pesky workers redistributing wealth to benefit all of them instead of the lords and kings of Wall Street. These people at the top are NOT entitled to what they take, and when you understand that, you can understand that we are condoning a form of robbery with this insane cult of capitalism. If these Ayn Rand types REALLY wanted to be entitled to what they earn, they would support unions, not oppose them, support taxes on the wealthy, not oppose them, and be in favor of widespread social programs because of we the people don’t take our money away from the feudal capitalists by goddamn force (taxes) we are not going to get it AT ALL.

This is why right-wing ideology and philosophy of government is nothing but a series of pseudo-rationalizations for a form of government that operates for the benefit of a small elite instead of the majority. They are oligarchs. And they want America labor so stomped down that they can have labor cheaper here than even in Vietnam. When that happens, America will truly enter a new era of feudal capitalism. The serfs will work at the wages chosen at whim by the capitalist lords. This is the true end result of unregulated capitalism. And this is not happening by chance.

And it is is exactly what they want.