General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsObamacare "the worst thing since slavery"?... perhaps this IS an apt metaphor.
Back in the good ol' antideluvian days of yore, slaves were sold as chattel and made to work the cotton fields throughout the American South. Most of these slave owners, though they could be cruel and abusive and even murderous at times, were often quite sober-minded capitalists who wanted to maximize their profits first and foremost, but were still smart enough to recognize the basic physical needs of their work force... so they provided them food, shelter, and MEDICAL CARE when needed.
For the last 30 years or so, the new brand of corporatist slave owners of America have chosen to ignore this last... because nowadays slaves are plentiful, they come in every color now; and it just turns out to be a lot more profitable to simply work them to death. There's always plenty more waiting to snag a good slave spot out there. And they are ALL very eager to please. Most of them don't even KNOW they are slaves, and they still believe they can rise in an economy dominated by a very small, utterly insane and insatiable group of power-mad pirate kings who tend by and large to treat their dogs better than they do most of these desperate and doomed workers.
1StrongBlackMan
(31,849 posts)yoyossarian
(1,054 posts)There is a certain element of humor to the post... tho I think it's a valid point I'm making, that the very powerful are NOW so EXTREMELY removed from the mass of humanity that they treat most of us the way chickens get treated in a poultry factory... that indeed, the barbaric slave masters of the past were not NEARLY as cold and heartless and dispassionately cruel as these new masters are.
We see this in the cuts to food for children going on now. Hell, they don't even want to feed or house people anymore. They just want to use you til' you're dead.
The old masters were total assholes. Racism is idiocy, and slavery is insane.
But at least they weren't a bunch of totally power-mad narcissistic psychopaths bent on slowly but surely making ALL of society their slaves, like this new bunch.
And that seemed to me a comparison worth making.
1StrongBlackMan
(31,849 posts)I am okay with this:
This made me rock back with a huge question:
But it was answered here (and also, but less so in your initial post):
But at least they weren't a bunch of totally power-mad narcissistic psychopaths bent on slowly but surely making ALL of society their slaves, like this new bunch.
I am reading your words to say, the American institution of slavvery is less horrendous than this current system that you liken to slavery, because the former left you unaffected; but not so, the latter.
DireStrike
(6,452 posts)Have you (or the OP) ever read The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas? It's a short story that touches on the topic of evil hidden in a society because it affects only a minority. Here: http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/faculty/dunnweb/rprnts.omelas.pdf
Is it truly "better" to have the evil out in the open where it affects nearly everyone? Is it worse to heap it all onto a certain kind of person? Maybe so. Let me say that evil has always been heaped onto a certain kind of person: the powerless.
yoyossarian
(1,054 posts)Of course slavery is evil, and it matters not a whit who is enslaving who.
I'd have to be a pretty selfish and stupid person to see it any other way, and I am not that sort.
Our COMMON enemy: Those who rationalize such obvious and inhuman evil, and make faith-based apologies for slavery as part of some natural order.
But that IS, after all, the sort we are now struggling with once again.
NO ONE should own slaves. NO ONE should BE a slave. EVER.
End of story.
Or is it?
penultimate
(1,110 posts)bemildred
(90,061 posts)BumRushDaShow
(129,662 posts)From a man who made a decision to throw away his entire career.
yoyossarian
(1,054 posts)It goes a good ways to making my meaning more obvious.