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phantom power

(25,966 posts)
Tue Jul 31, 2012, 12:28 PM Jul 2012

Sometimes it feels like this was the main accomplishment of OWS: a whole lot of tightened sphincters

When I was a kid, I was taught that the beauty of a democracy, and a nation of laws-not-men, was that it makes violent revolution unnecessary. If the powerful can be brought to justice in the courtroom, or voted out of office, then there's just not much need for the torches and pitchforks.

But the plutocrats bought our democracy, and turned us into a nation of men-not-laws. And if the possible consequences of that have them a bit fucking worried, then maybe a few of them are still thinking after all.

It’s hard to think of any superrich person as vulnerable, just as it’s hard to think that a bear with outstretched claws and giant teeth is more afraid than you are. But over the past few months, it’s become clear that rich people are very, very afraid. Sometimes it feels like this was the main accomplishment of Occupy Wall Street: a whole lot of tightened sphincters. It’s not a stretch to say many residents of Park Avenue harbor vivid fears of a populist revolt like the one seen in The Dark Knight Rises, in which they cower miserably under their sideboards while ragged hordes plunder the silver.

“This is my fear, and it’s a real, legitimate fear,” Greene says, revving up the engine. “You have this huge, huge class of people who are impoverished. If we keep doing what we’re doing, we will build a class of poor people that will take over this country, and the country will not look like what it does today. It will be a different economy, rights, all that stuff will be different.”

More often than not, fears like these manifest as loathing for the current administration, as evidenced by the recent wave of Romney fund-raisers in the Hamptons. “Obama wants to take my money and give it to do-nothing animals,” one matron blurted at a recent party at the Pierre for Dick Morris’s Screwed!, the latest entry into a growing pile of socioeconomic snuff porn geared toward this audience.

http://nymag.com/news/business/themoney/jeff-greene-2012-8/

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Sometimes it feels like this was the main accomplishment of OWS: a whole lot of tightened sphincters (Original Post) phantom power Jul 2012 OP
That last emphasized sentence seems like a psychological projection. NT Trillo Jul 2012 #1
Thing is Xyzse Jul 2012 #2

Xyzse

(8,217 posts)
2. Thing is
Tue Jul 31, 2012, 04:27 PM
Jul 2012

I doubt that it will ever come to a revolt similar to a mob populist revolt.
Not any time soon. It is far more likely that the message will be controlled enough that most would just lay down and take it, particularly if it is coming from the party that they support.

More likely than not, things will end up similar to conditions on workers in China before such a thing happens here.

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