Thomas Frank has an article in the February issue of Harper’s entitled "Servile Disobedience" well worth a read. I am sure Frank is not the only member of the non-elite class in America who at some point wistfully has envisioned the members of the privileged class breaking down and actually exhibiting empathy for us poor slobs struggling in the merciless economic quicksandthey created for us. There is the rub.
Frank doesn’t mince words:
“The rich are different from you and me. They are ruder and less generous. They don’t get what others are thinking and apparently they don’t really care."
"... People don’t craft poisonous collateralized debt obligations by calling on what they learned in Sunday school.”
[snip]
“We let them build a system of bonuses and executive compensation on the theory that it would be good for everyone if the people on top got to take home much, much more. And when it turned out that the theory was wrong -- that in the most famous cases the rich chased bonuses not in the shareholders’ benefit but at their expense, why, we promptly bailed them out. We allowed them to step up to the Fed’s discount window and fill their pockets. We generously transferred their dumb investments to our balance sheet and we sent them off with little more than a request that they please do not do it again.”
[snip]
“We need the rich to be nicer. We need the rich to discover brotherly love, and fast.”
Frank does not rule out the existence of a few nice plutocrats, past and present. Warren Buffet and Bill Gates embrace philanthropy, he acknowledges. Andrew Carnegie had a sense of responsibility to the lower classes. Carnegie endorsed rather than fought the “estate” tax (which the Republicans craftily re-termed the “death” tax to repel and confuse low-informed citizens to its actual nature).
Most of the present day, emotionally-arrested rich seem to downright awe Mr. Frank. As does a docile -- okay, doormat -- American citizenry. He accuses the power players of “using media properties to run experiments in human credulity.”
Frank explores the idea of working out some kind of pr campaign to make altruism sexier, more ego-gratifying for members of the upper class. He cites the adoption of Sri Lankan orphans as having had a noble chic for the rich in years past. Frank ponders if a member of the American elite might at this point be willing to, say, “adopt the entire blue-collar population of Rockford, Illinois”? What if that city promises to change its name to that of said billionaire, Frank coaxes.
Frank maintains that non-elite Americans deny their own level of oppression. We like to brag about our freedoms while we are more accurately a “nation of footmen.” This serfdom is becoming more and more pronounced.
Frank proposes a “day without deference” or a “servility strike” for all the service providers to the ranking class. Just a one day strike in which people don’t stop performing their service duties, they just don’t smile placatingly while performing them. Waitresses, doormen, etc. Chauffeurs will let the rich open their own doors. Frank suggests it may be a useful exercise in empathy-raising for the rich. At the very least, it would be refreshingly cathartic for us non-rich.
There seems no external rescue for us from our capture by the elites. Certainly not from the “dueling political parties dedicated to the principle of serving them” Frank asserts.
Finally, he wearily concludes:
“If it’s a choice between us spending our dotage in helplessness and filth and our high-net-worth friends having to forego next year’s Learjet, Americans will choose the personal sacrifice every time.”
[cross-posted at correntewire and sacramento for democracy]
poor weary Frank, poor weary F. Scott....things just never change