The Moneyed Classes Must Love Peaceful Demonstrations
Flag-Waving Don't Impress No Hawg!
Although we should admire and show our gratitude for their well-meaning efforts, the thousands of demonstrators world-wide against Capitalism and the infamous “one percent” would seem to be doing little real good.
It takes more than waving a banner in a hog’s ear, which has its snout deep into the trough, to get it to desist slurping away until all the food is inside its ample gut. Shouting slogans at it is ineffective, too; all it can hear is its own jaws and that of the others in line.
In fact, the only losers as a result of these demonstrations are the participants themselves and the members of the public that are sometimes inconvenienced. This causes those who had no previous agenda to add their voices to the establishment calling for control.
Take the ongoing demonstration outside St Paul’s Cathedral in London (England!). Neatly encircled by building, it can get no bigger. The demonstrators have politely allowed access to the cathedral and the nearby business district (Ha!). The result is a nice little splash of color with tented hippies and their ilk available for tourists to have their photos taken with real, live insurgents!
How Cameron and his gang from the upper classes must rub their hands and benevolently allow this farce to continue. The press favorable to the Tories carefully interviews the lesser educated demonstrators, while the “people’s press” finds a couple of the more educated to put in print. The TV news finds both, but the few seconds sound bite they allow gives no chance for the demonstrators to get their point across.
Watch how quickly the riot police will arrive, along with the helicopters and the press hordes, if a window or two gets broken, or a fight breaks out between the demonstrators and outraged citizenry who have to walk a few extra yards to get to work! This spells real danger and what the ruling classes really fear…escalation and violence!
Change has rarely been achieved by peaceful and reasoned means. It would if we were dealing with fair-minded people. They know their conniving, or that of their ancestors, has won them a larger piece of the cake than they merit or have worked for. They are “conservatives” in the main, they want to conserve all the cream they have skimmed from the national pie. They want to continue having all the high-prices toys: the BMW and Mercedes cars, the luxury yacht, the holidays in top resorts, the trophy wives and toy-boys; the best schools for their kids terminating in Oxbridge, the club of the haves, where they meet the contacts allowing them to lead and find good positions all their lives...how do you think so many inept people are in government?
The wealthy know that in challenging times where 99% of the world is suffering economically, they have to mend fences and encircle, bayonets at the ready. Do you really think a few flags and chanting will cause them to say, “You’re right, we don’t deserve all this while you have nothing; here, take my BMW and my house in the country, we’ll make do with just the Jag and the London flat.” Ha! They won’t give you the moldy cheese in their expansive larders. They look down on the lower classes and think that they merit all this while you deserve nothing more than basics, and those hard-won. They have lived like this from birth and cannot understand what it is like to suffer in the three-room council flat, driving a ten-year-old Ford and grabbing a few days in Margate one summer weekend.
What’s more, they don’t care how dismal your life is, because to worry about you is to admit they need to share more of the things of value they control.
Once this country had a Labor government made up with ministers and back benchers who came from poor backgrounds themselves. Then, the poor and disenfranchised had a chance. Strikes by unions made huge gains in pay and conditions for their members. We had a vast manufacturing base with dignified jobs for all.
Then along came the grocer’s daughter, Margaret Thatcher, who shuddered at the thought of her mediocre background, despising others who had not escaped into more rarified air. She was wined and dined by the privileged all over the world and she saw the good life as the one to which she had always been entitled. She was taken in by the capitalist creed and the money ethic; she saw the bankers as the bearers of the chalice and supported the moneyed classes all the way. She wanted (she said) to “empower” the poor into becoming part of the capitalist dream. She dismembered Britain’s wonderful council housing scheme, allowing the homes to be bought and sold. The prices zoomed and the property bubble encouraged by the banks and greedy owners, began. The banks began lending like there was no tomorrow, lending up to 120 percent on a property’s value. The bullet began to return to Earth when people defaulted on their impossibly high mortgages and tried to sell property where the equity was negative by thousands of pounds. The banks repossessed the properties, losing billions as they had to sell on a static market and eat the overage of the unwise lending….and now this besotted fool of a woman is going to receive a pension of some 400 thousand pounds a year in perpetuity! Yes, the moneyed classes look after their own - witness the government blind-eye being turned to bankers bonuses still being paid by banks themselves still in billions of debt!
We can only hope some savior emerges from the ranks of the Labor government in time for the next election. A revolution would never work in Britain and no one seriously wants all that violence and bloodshed. A strong man or woman is needed, but one who understands fairness and is not caught up in the Capitalist culture him/herself. Such a person has been missing in British politics for more than 80 years, so don’t lose any sleep hoping.
With one stroke of a pen this unequal situation could be addressed. It would amend taxation and redistribute wealth overnight. Then, a lifestyle would depend more on choice and vocation for all classes, not on how much money is received. We would all be much happier if we got this loathsome monkey, money, off our backs..
