Ever since Reagan, the only value that America has projected and modeled to itself is sociopathy. S&L, ADM, Maxwell, LTCM, Enron, Robert Rubin and Citigroup, fund timing, 2008, libor fixing, HSBC money-laundering, Wells Fargo and on and on. The rich are above the law. The purpose of corporations as weaponized by them is merely to allow…
Ever since Reagan, the only value that America has projected and modeled to itself is sociopathy. S&L, ADM, Maxwell, LTCM, Enron, Robert Rubin and Citigroup, fund timing, 2008, libor fixing, HSBC money-laundering, Wells Fargo and on and on. The rich are above the law. The purpose of corporations as weaponized by them is merely to allow their private theft and power addiction to operate at scale. Over and over they get caught stealing and polluting and cheating and lying and perjuring and get away with it anyway, and this is not a bug but a core Morality Play of sociopathy as America's highest value. If this were not the case, behavior would have *some* impact on social status. Jeffrey Epstein is a case study - the university trustees and scientists and labs and cultural institutions bowing and scraping before a child-rapist and his friends because he has money...in an endless chain, one of his friends and funder sociopaths *still* chair at MoMA right now. This - power for the few as an end in itself - was all the GOP was ever about, as apotheosized in their 2020 platform of nothing. The Nazism and theocracy and culture wars all just empty political expedients to protect plutocracy. The reaction to Gamestop is just the latest in endless examples -- the aggrieved special pleading of the billionaires who love to talk about personal responsibility and welfare queens and drug testing for medicaid recipients. Reaganism told 40 years of Americans that honest work and public service were for suckers and lying and cheating and getting away with it the highest good, and they listened. It is hard to imagine that detox will not take generations. And seems clear it can't even start as long as Fox and talk radio continue to exist without the Fairness Doctrine.
I have a theory that the reason wealthy, ponzi-schemer, Bernie Madoff, was indicted, tried and thrown in jail was only because he stole from the rich. You can trick, steal, fabricate, wreck the middle class and starve the poor, you can nearly crash the planet's economy, but you better not mess with the rich! Epstein knew that entertaining and donating to the rich and mingling with the Harvard and MIT crowd was his kryptonite. Then the "little people" ganged up on him (as they did Weinstein). But so few abusers of any kind are ever exposed unless, of course, they mess with the rich.
Ever since Reagan, the only value that America has projected and modeled to itself is sociopathy. S&L, ADM, Maxwell, LTCM, Enron, Robert Rubin and Citigroup, fund timing, 2008, libor fixing, HSBC money-laundering, Wells Fargo and on and on. The rich are above the law. The purpose of corporations as weaponized by them is merely to allow their private theft and power addiction to operate at scale. Over and over they get caught stealing and polluting and cheating and lying and perjuring and get away with it anyway, and this is not a bug but a core Morality Play of sociopathy as America's highest value. If this were not the case, behavior would have *some* impact on social status. Jeffrey Epstein is a case study - the university trustees and scientists and labs and cultural institutions bowing and scraping before a child-rapist and his friends because he has money...in an endless chain, one of his friends and funder sociopaths *still* chair at MoMA right now. This - power for the few as an end in itself - was all the GOP was ever about, as apotheosized in their 2020 platform of nothing. The Nazism and theocracy and culture wars all just empty political expedients to protect plutocracy. The reaction to Gamestop is just the latest in endless examples -- the aggrieved special pleading of the billionaires who love to talk about personal responsibility and welfare queens and drug testing for medicaid recipients. Reaganism told 40 years of Americans that honest work and public service were for suckers and lying and cheating and getting away with it the highest good, and they listened. It is hard to imagine that detox will not take generations. And seems clear it can't even start as long as Fox and talk radio continue to exist without the Fairness Doctrine.
I have a theory that the reason wealthy, ponzi-schemer, Bernie Madoff, was indicted, tried and thrown in jail was only because he stole from the rich. You can trick, steal, fabricate, wreck the middle class and starve the poor, you can nearly crash the planet's economy, but you better not mess with the rich! Epstein knew that entertaining and donating to the rich and mingling with the Harvard and MIT crowd was his kryptonite. Then the "little people" ganged up on him (as they did Weinstein). But so few abusers of any kind are ever exposed unless, of course, they mess with the rich.
When they mess with the 99% they call it capitalism......and so that is "normal"!
Makes perfect, if disgusting, sense.