The Political Class Are Not Like Us
Posted by Thomas L. Knapp on Jul 13, 2009 in Commentary • 2 commentsEvery time a “major league” politician comes to St. Louis, I cringe. It usually means that some significant portion of the metro area will be shut down to accommodate “security,” by which is meant a moving bubble of lawlessness from within which said “public figure” will grace us with his or her presence.
The ultimate manifestation of this phenomenon is the presidential motorcade: A procession of vehicles protected, rather than pursued, by police as they careen at speeds well in excess of the posted limits down streets blocked off from use by the general public for the purpose.
This week, as will often be the case for the next 3 1/2 to 7 1/2 years, the “rock star” in question is President Barack Obama, who — fresh off his most recent world tour, including arms negotiations in Moscow and a speech to the parliament of Ghana — will throw out the ceremonial first pitch at Major League Baseball’s 2009 All-Star game on Tuesday.
The president’s nominal salary of “only” $400,000 per year — about eight times the median income in the United States — doesn’t come close to capturing the real chasm between people and politicians.
Obama will leave the mansion in which he lives at public expense (private chef included) by helicopter. He will fly to St. Louis aboard what amounts to a private jet. No auto company executive ever had a jet this luxurious: 4,000 square feet of floor space on three levels, an office suite, a medical suite with operating theatre and doctor on constant standby, and two kitchens capable of serving up to 100 guests at a time. On the ground, he will travel by limousine. Should he engage in some facsimile of “mingling,” he will do so while surrounded by the most expensive security detail in history.
He will throw that ceremonial pitch to St. Louis Cardinals first baseman Albert Pujols in front of thousands of people who’ve paid hundreds of dollars each for the privilege of watching … and then he’ll return to Washington and to the job of lecturing the rest of us on issues such as unemployment and economic malaise.
Even if political solutions to these issues were possible, it seems counter-intuitive to believe that those solutions can be arrived at from inside the bubble which surrounds America’s political class.
“The rich are not like us,” wrote F. Scott Fitzgerald. “Yes,” replied Ernest Hemingway, “they have more money.” It’s not just money which separates the political class (which includes a good many of the “rich”) from the rest of us, though. It’s an experiential gulf which effectively creates two entirely different worlds.
As unemployment grows in the private sector, it shrinks among the political classes as government expands. As the incomes of regular Americans shrink from under-employment and inflation, the portion of those incomes demanded by the political class for their projects grows. And make no mistake about it: The political class measures “success” according to the metric of how much wealth it can get away with confiscating and disposing of, not how much wealth it “allows” the productive class to actually create.
It isn’t only, or even primarily, “the rich” who pay the price of this massive ongoing transfer of wealth from the real world of industry and production to the fairy tale world of politics. The owners of retail chains are not giving up their yachts. Rather, it is the cashiers and stockers and baggers who are giving up their jobs.
While the election of Obama is widely regarded as a watershed moment in advancing racial equality, the economic statistics tell a different story: In the last six quarters, unemployment among whites in New York City has grown from 3% to 5.7%; among blacks, it has jumped from 3.7% to 14.7%. The alleged benefits of identity politics apparently stop at the Beltway’s edge.
There is an up side to the increasingly obvious separation between the productive class and the political class. As the demands of the latter upon the former become more onerous, resistance to those demands is likely to stiffen.
The first manifestation of this will be huge growth in the “counter-economy” as the productive class moves more and more of its activity “off the books” and out of the political class’s systems of taxation, tribute and regulation.
The second manifestation — a more difficult one to achieve, as it’s an intentional, rather than “invisible hand,” process — is the creation of revolutionary consciousness among the productive class. The final break between the classes cannot occur until the productive class realizes that it doesn’t need the political class.
Thomas L. Knapp is Senior News Analyst and Media Coordinator at the Center for a Stateless Society (c4ss.org).
I’m not sure there will be a break between the classes, other than the sort at public schools when annoying bells sound to indicate that you are allowed to get out of your seat in one room to dash down the hall to another equally pointless class taught by an equally pinheaded fool.
Rather, it seems to me, the nature of agorism and counter-economics is that each break happens individually. Each individual makes his break from the political class on his own. Each person chooses for herself the moment to be free. There is no class revolution in the wings waiting for the realisation that the political class is unneeded, but there are two hundred and seventy million breaks (assuming about 35 million bureau-rats, politician scum, and the parasites who contract with them) which have either already happened, or are about to happen in the next few years.
To speak of class consciousness among the individual producers is a bit silly, I think. Perhaps tax consciousness. Certainly awareness of regulatory madness. The productive are as likely to be in competition with each other as cooperation. Indeed, competition is a sort of cooperation for opportunities. The best part is, no class consciousness and no group action is needed. Our destinies are written in ourselves, not in our neighbors.
With regard to the rock star treatment, I encountered a bit of that locally on Sunday 5 July. There was a bicycle race in town. They closed a bunch of streets, but neglected to put up signs, or have police at the barricades. Instead, some nationalist socialist former competitive cyclist was manning the illegal street barricade when I responded to a call from my elderly father that he needed help, possibly a trip to the hospital.
Of course, the barricade guard was unfriendly, and would under no circumstances let my car through. “It’s a short walk” he said, gloatingly. Rather than explain that my elderly father was 192 pounds and carrying him three blocks to get to my parked car was unworkable, I drove up the street and found legal street parking nearby. Then I walked back, straight up their “protected” route. The pace cars passed me, as did several cyclists, but I wouldn’t get out of the street. They yelled, honked, reported me on their walkie-talkies, but I called them names and gave them the finger.
It is this sort of civil disobedience that individuals engage in when they are finally fed up. KU Athletics, Inc., makes tens of millions of dollars a year in revenue from sporting events, television rights, kickbacks, and corrupt contracts. They think of themselves as the local rock stars. Their political monopoly on sporting events is part of the charade of bread and circuses that keeps the political class in power. And I’m sick of it.
Perhaps what is wanted are pedestrians in the right of way. Not blocking traffic, but just walking along. How many would they arrest? How many ya got?
Doesn’t sound like your idea of a tea party? Then do something else. That’s the freedom inherent in you as a sovereign human being. You choose what to do, how to protest, how to strike back, and at which roots to strike deeply.
It isn’t up to me, it isn’t a class struggle, it isn’t about forming a new collective of us against them. It is about the individual. Live your life and make your choices.
Hef had a nice jet too, probably nicer, if you consider he had Playmates aboard. Rock stars have jets too, as well as busses.
Air Force One is also full of command and control equipment to run a nuclear war without having to land. Its total cost was $1, since it was a gift from Boeing – although AF 2 was a bit more expensive.
When Obama threw that pitch, he was probably throwing to someone who makes at least as much as he does, if not many times more (given that it was the All Star Game).
The nice house is a budgeted item, he does not have Carte Blanche. Much of its granduer is there because he has guests, both everyday citizens who walk through on tours and official visitors – many of whom have residences that are much nicer, by the way. Mrs. Elizabeth Montbatten has a far nicer collection of properties than her distant cousin, Mr. Barack Obama – even though Obama, like much of the Plymouth Colony descendents, is probably more closely related to Henry Plantagenet then she, except that his ancestry is through mothers rather than fathers.
The silliest statement you make, however, is about unemployment and the political class. In that business, unemployment is chronic – sometimes as much as 50%. Just as a Republican member of that class, whose share among the unemployed as balooned quite nicely in the past 3 years, among elected officials, staff and lobbyists. Indeed, even among Democratic political class members, supporting the wrong candidate can get you unemployed – just as Terry MacAuliffe and anyone in his personal orbit. Quite a few of them are having to hustle right now, some by starting Astro-Turf Organizations and others by having to get a real job. Look at Terror Apologist Michael Gonzales. He is now working at a Houston university doing minority student outreach. You can’t go much lower than that after having been Attorney General without donning an orange jump suit. Usually a recent Latino graduate would get that kind of job.
I don’t think the excesses of the political class will spur the masses to revolt. Indeed, much of the recent unemployment is among the “rich” in the finance world, although the housing industry is not far behind in suffering. This suffering is due to the desire of the political class to pander to the non-political class by making credit too easy and too cheap for people who did not in any way qualify for it. This has resulted in excess housing stocks. The holders of all this stock are trying desperately to keep it off the market, since if they sold it they would realize the loss. Eventually these tracts will be sold or bulldozed. If sold, it will be because someone has found the money and credit to realistic buy these properties. If bulldozed, it will be because not doing so will cause housing values to fall to such a degree that drastic action is really necessary to forestall financial collapse – like requiring across the board cramdowns for people who aren’t in trouble with their lenders.
Note that the latter would be a political solution, demanded of the poltiical class by everyone else. If the “everyone else” were to stop making demands of government, anarchy would be an easy thing to set up. The key is to get the “everyone else” to stop making demands. A crisis will not get you to that point. When the going gets tough – the tough demand more government, it is not thrust upon them – they beg for it.