(To get some perspective, I include the comment
by Vox Day as an introduction to this article by Damon Linker. – CL)
“Their parasite economy of finance-based
ownership of real world property and produce rests entirely upon the false
claims it generates upon the real economy. And all it takes to destroy the
parasite economy is the mass refusal to recognize its claims, many of which are
already known to be completely fictitious. See: the mortgage title scandal of
2008 onwards.
The parasite economy is already killing its host. It is like a drunken vampire who is too intoxicated to stop draining his victim. And once the host collapses, its component parts will turn on the parasites with a vengeance.
This isn't a failure of capitalism, this is a tripartite failure of usury, fraud, and fundamental morality. The Alt-Right Revolution cometh.”
The parasite economy is already killing its host. It is like a drunken vampire who is too intoxicated to stop draining his victim. And once the host collapses, its component parts will turn on the parasites with a vengeance.
This isn't a failure of capitalism, this is a tripartite failure of usury, fraud, and fundamental morality. The Alt-Right Revolution cometh.”
The global elite think they're sitting pretty. How wrong they
are.
Democrats keep telling themselves that Hillary Clinton "really"
won the 2016 election (or would have, had it not been for interference by
Vladimir Putin and James Comey). Republicans keep patting themselves on the
back about how much power they now wield at all levels of government. And
centrists throughout the West are breathing a sigh of relief about Emmanuel
Macron's likely victory over the National Front's Marine Le Pen in the second
round of the French presidential election on May 7.
You can almost hear the sentiments echoing down the corridors of
(political and economic) power on both sides of the Atlantic: "There's
nothing to worry about. Everything's fine. No need for serious soul searching
or changes of direction. Sure, populism's a nuisance. But we're keeping it at
bay. We just need to stay the course, fiddle around the edges a little bit, and
certainly not give an inch to the racists and xenophobes who keep making
trouble. We know how the world works, and we can handle the necessary fine
tuning of the meritocracy. We got this."
And why wouldn't they think
this way? They are themselves the greatest beneficiaries of the global
meritocracy — and that very fact serves to validate its worth. They
live in or near urban centers that are booming with jobs in tech, finance,
media, and other fields that draw on the expertise they acquired in their
educations at the greatest universities in the world. They work hard and are
rewarded with high salaries, frequent travel, nice cars, and cutting-edge
gadgets. It's fun, anxious, thrilling — an intoxicating mix of brutal
asceticism and ecstatic hedonism.
The problem is that growing numbers of people — here in America,
in the U.K., in France, and beyond — don't see it like this at all. Or rather,
they only see it from the outside, a position from which it looks very
different. What they see is a
system that is fundamentally unjust, rigged, and shot through with corruption
and self-dealing.
They see Marissa Meyer, the CEO of Yahoo, taking home a cool
$186 million in stock (on top of many millions in additional salary and
bonuses) for five years of "largely unsuccessful" work.
They see Henrique De Castro, who worked briefly for Meyer at
Yahoo, pulling $109 million in compensation for a
disastrous 15 months on the job.
They see Roger Ailes and Bill O'Reilly getting fired from Fox
News for sexually harassing a parade of women over the years — and taking home
tens of millions of dollars each in severance.
They see former Democratic President Barack Obama sharing a $65
million book advance with his wife, earning $400,000 for a single speech scheduled to be
delivered in the fall at investment bank Cantor Fitzgerald, and gallivanting around the globe with David Geffen, Bruce
Springsteen, Tom Hanks, Oprah Winfrey, and Bono.
In Washington, they see a president who promised to act as the
people's voice appointing a long list of millionaires and billionaires to top
positions. They see the White House and Congress struggling to pass a
health-care bill that will leave millions more without insurance coverage at a
time when a majority of Americans and a plurality of Republicans favor a
single-payer system that would cover all. They see a president proposing
to drastically cut corporate and individual
taxes (including the elimination of inheritance taxes, which will benefit only
the richest of the rich) when polls show that the top frustration with the tax
system is that corporations and the wealthy don't pay their fair share. They see a unified
push to cut government programs at a moment when polls show a growing share of
the public prefers bigger government.
To those on the center-left who are
disgusted by the plutocratic antics of the Republican Party but dismiss the
significance of Obama cashing in on his time in the White House by enriching
himself and hobnobbing with the most famous people on the planet, I'd only note
that "optics" (also known as "appearances") matter in
politics — perhaps more than anything else.
And this is how things appear
at this historical moment: The world is run by an international elite that
lives in a rarified world of seemingly boundless power and luxury. Though the
members of this elite consider their own power and luxury to be completely
legitimate, it is not. It is the product of a system that's rigged to benefit
them while everybody else languishes in declining small cities and provincial
towns, eking out a dreary existence, toiling away their lives in menial
service-sector jobs or scraping by on disability checks while seeking out a
modicum of fleeting joy in the dumbstruck haze of a painkiller high.
Unless something fundamental changes, the gap separating these
worlds will only increase, economically, culturally, and psychologically.
Republicans show every sign of continuing to pursue policies that actively make
the economic problems worse. Centrist Democrats, meanwhile, appear to be both
unwilling to propose a sweeping critique of the outlook and policies that got
us to this point in the first place and inclined to dismiss the populist anger
building all around us as an expression of atavistic prejudice.
This cannot last. At this
rate, make no mistake: The global elite will fall.
