the new darwinism

[click image]

One day a few years ago, I was called out to the picnic area in the redwood grove beside my house. I was wearing my blue flannel negligee and my sneakers, carrying my ever-present thermos cup of coffee. It was my neighbors from a mile away and their good friends from Chico. All in their 70s -- all college educated... two of them had been teachers, and two had been business executives before they retired -- their request of me sent me running back to my cabin for my cigarettes before I could sit down and oblige them. They wanted to know if I'd help them with the legal aspects of the Chico couple's financial woes. Seems their son had gotten involved with some real estate developer swindlers, some weird scheme where you invested and got credits for them to build you a new home. Long story short, they'd lost their home of some forty-plus years to these swindlers.

My neighbors asked if they hadn't checked out the swindler who'd dealt with them. I'm never going to forget the Chico wife's answer. It was immediate, and stern, as if to say, Do you think we're idiots?

"Oh, yes! We checked him out very thoroughly. He wore very nice suits. He drove a really fancy new car. And, oh, his office building was gorgeous."

Later, she admitted he'd always met them in the lobby of the building. They'd never been to his office itself.

The point I'm trying to make is that there are a vast preponderance of Americans -- especially older ones, but really it cuts through every age and socio-economic level -- who trust people who wear suits, if they think you're rich. They think that if they qualify for a mortgage, that means they can afford it. They think that if a person in a suit tells them something, it is true. Everyone in the investment banking industry knows this and relies on it. They're virtually the only people left in America who wear suits... and politicians. It's really almost as dirt simple as: wear a suit and most people will think you are someone to listen to, follow, obey, associate with. It almost doesn't matter what you do, even in front of them. Your bearing and your attire get you everything. You can tell the most transparent whoppers and they're still hypnotized -- inoculated against awakening by whole lives full of movies with high-powered characters dressed to the nines, the besuited bank executives they see passing behind the tellers, Perry Mason reruns -- by your suit, by the rest of the apparent evidence of your success in life, your tone of voice, your visible self-assurance, whether it's impromptu posturing, your ordinary mien, your ordinary posturing, or a carefully-plotted sting. [I keep mentioning the movie, Glengarry Glen Ross lately. There is SO much truth in that masterpiece. It applies here. Big time.]

Candy from babies. Lambs to slaughter.

These herds of lambs are being put out to pasture by the thousands just now, in the same position "John" was, and they were put there by Wall Street, left to the tender mercies of soup kitchens and street gangs.

Yes, even amidst the Wall Street gangs there was a lot of ignorance as to the consequences of their lethal game of musical chairs, maybe even in some the fact that musical chairs was what they were playing, but very many of them, the ones who understand the system, not just serve its imperatives, KNEW this was going to happen. In fact, they knew our economy was being crashed, and why, and that they needed to loot as much from it as possible before it all came down. Their only miscalculation was that it would happen before election day instead of after.

* and Fudd took office with the express imperative to do this.

They screwed it up only a little, while screwing everyone on Earth up a lot.

So. Sometimes when I rudely shout for you to wake up, I hope you know I'm doing it out of love, but I am, and have been, more serious than the oncology ward, people. If I hassle you and hassle you to listen to Naomi Wolf about the fascist shift, and to watch and re-watch "Zeitgeist: Addendum", it isn't because I want to be colorful, not merely me showcasing my personality. There is real cause to take me seriously.