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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsOur Marie Antoinettes are getting a little bit nervous
Our Marie Antoinettes are getting a little bit nervous
by digby
For years I've been writing that the wealthy are "begging for pitchforks" with their royalist behavior in the wake of economic crisis that seems to come straight out of the French aristocracy. (I would guess that only in America do they they simultaneously claim they are "middle class".) The smugness and entitlement of these "job creators" has been something to behold, particular among the Masters of the Universe who are largely responsible for the recent crash.
.......................................
Until now. This article in New York Magazine about billionaire Jeff Greene indicates that our betters are getting nervous:
Its strange to imagine someone like Greene, who counts Mike Tyson as a close friend, and who has a streak that caused the L.A. party girls to refer to him as Mean Jeff Greene, feeling vulnerable. Its hard to think of any superrich person as vulnerable, just as its hard to think that a bear with outstretched claws and giant teeth is more afraid than you are. But over the past few months, its become clear that rich people are very, very afraid. Sometimes it feels like this was the main accomplishment of Occupy Wall Street: a whole lot of tightened sphincters. Its not a stretch to say many residents of Park Avenue harbor vivid fears of a populist revolt like the one seen in The Dark Knight Rises, in which they cower miserably under their sideboards while ragged hordes plunder the silver.
This is my fear, and its a real, legitimate fear, Greene says, revving up the engine. You have this huge, huge class of people who are impoverished. If we keep doing what were doing, we will build a class of poor people that will take over this country, and the country will not look like what it does today. It will be a different economy, rights, all that stuff will be different.
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Greene, a registered Democrat, isnt buying this school of thought. It is kind of a problem in America that so many Americans believe if they elect a different president, everything is going to be fine. This whole idea of American exceptionalism, that were the greatest, when people dont have health insurance, dont have housing, he says, swinging past the guesthouse, which has 360-degree views of the bay, and the staff house, which does not. There are all these people in this country who are just not participating in the American Dream at all, he says. This makes him uncomfortable, not least because they might try to take a piece of his. Right now, for some bizarre reason, a lot of these people are supporting Republicans who want to cut taxes on the wealthy, he says. At some point, if we keep doing this, their numbers are going to keep swelling, it wont be an Obama or a Romney. It will be a Hollande. A Chávez.
MORE:
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2012/07/our-marie-antoinettes-are-getting.html
Egalitarian Thug
(12,448 posts)Just like anyone that pays attention, they see that it is coming, and it is coming faster than we care to admit.
Once again, the gatekeepers (richish but still has to work) will bear the brunt of the backlash while their masters flee the country.
Tierra_y_Libertad
(50,414 posts)starroute
(12,977 posts)Glassunion
(10,201 posts)Ikonoklast
(23,973 posts)There is tipping point reached when the vast majority are doing without, and the wealth of a nation is concentrated in a minority.
Each society then decides at what degree of pain, enough is enough.
Violence ensues, every time.
Hungry, hopeless people have little to lose.
Comrade_McKenzie
(2,526 posts)redqueen
(115,103 posts)All the information they've tried so hard to suppress is coming out.
$21 trillion in offshore accounts
Largest wealth gap since the depression
Most gains over the last decades all went to those at the top
Those at the bottom keep falling further and further behind
This stuff is now not only no longer so easy to suppress, it's now being shared in easy to understand, highly effective graphics that aren't so easy to dismiss with catchy PR soundbites.
They're working on eliminating the middle class, but it is only the middle class that shields them.
hifiguy
(33,688 posts)The time for tumbrels and the National Razor is now.
They think Francois Hollande is a Hugo Chavez? How much more deluded could these worthless asswipes be?
MNBrewer
(8,462 posts)Even when they do have a sense of perspective it's flawed.
Ruby the Liberal
(26,219 posts)But given the people he is supposed to be getting through to, probably needed to be written with that slant.
progressivebydesign
(19,458 posts)They have gamed the system, thanks to Bush and his predecessors. And we want economic opportunity.. NOT handouts, not revenge, not violence. We just want our American Dream back. Because most of the uber wealthy got that way by doing it on the backs of their American brethren. People like Romney and Gates made their money by sending jobs to other countries, leaving their fellow Countrymen in the dust.
No one is grabbing torches. We just want the laws and taxes BACK the way they were even in the 80s!! We want the Koch Brothers and people like them to get rich the old fashioned way, by hard work, not by gaming the system and screwing everyone else in America.
Frankly, the people who pave your roads, or worked on your roof, or do day care, work a hell of a lot HARDER than those people ever did. This ruse that we're after them and they're afraid of the commoners, is totally bullshit.. and is exactly the same brainwashing shit that the Right does to the low info voters who are afraid of people in colors other than their own.
lindysalsagal
(20,670 posts)cali
(114,904 posts)Greene is an exception. He's smart and he's a dem. He grasps the basic concept of enlightened self-interest. I bet the vast majority of the wealthy are more like Romney than Greene- or Pelosi for that matter.
Edited to add: Greene is clearly not a Marie Antoinette. Kind of the opposite. duh. I dislike stupid. I dislike sensationalist. And Digby just isn't all that.
closeupready
(29,503 posts)We aren't that dumb.