ROFL. This has got to be the funniest shit The Gadfly has heard emanating from the gaping maw of the conservative noise machine in quite some time. Essentially - some uber wealthy venture/vulture (no difference these days) capitalist went whining to Rupert Murdoch about how the mean and nasty old unwashed masses are treating him and his fellow parasite billionaires and so being the sympathetic, charitable demigod that he is, ol' Uncle Rupert granted the poor, aggrieved fellow some chicken-scratching space on the editorial pages of his rag the Wall Street Journal.
Predictably, paranoid/delusional hilarity ensues:
Thomas Perkins is a hyper-wealthy venture capitalist. Beyond his enormous success in business, he may be best known as the man who was profiled by “60 Minutes” for owning The Maltese Falcon, one of the largest privately owned sailing yachts in the world (he’s since sold it). He’s the former husband of Danielle Steel, one of the most successful authors ever, and he owns many mansions all over the world. All in all, it’s pretty good to be Tom Perkins.
Or so you would think! Yet according to a letter to the editor he wrote to the Wall Street Journal, the reality of being Tom Perkins isn’t so much defined by extravagant wealth, luxury, comfort, and power, but rather a growing sense of fear and dread. It’s so bad, Perkins says, that being a member of the American 1% today is actually comparable to being a Jew in Nazi Germany.
Seriously. He wrote this:
Writing from the epicenter of progressive thought, San Francisco, I would call attention to the parallels of fascist Nazi Germany to its war on its “one percent,” namely its Jews, to the progressive war on the American one percent, namely the “rich.”
From the Occupy movement to the demonization of the rich embedded in virtually every word of our local newspaper, the San Francisco Chronicle, I perceive a rising tide of hatred of the successful one percent. There is outraged public reaction to the Google buses carrying technology workers from the city to the peninsula high-tech companies which employ them. We have outrage over the rising real-estate prices which these “techno geeks” can pay. We have, for example, libelous and cruel attacks in the Chronicle on our number-one celebrity, the author Danielle Steel, alleging that she is a “snob” despite the millions she has spent on our city’s homeless and mentally ill over the past decades.
This is a very dangerous drift in our American thinking. Kristallnacht was unthinkable in 1930; is its descendent “progressive” radicalism unthinkable now?http://www.salon.com/2014/01/25/wealthy_venture_capitalist_tom_perkins_says_the_1_in_america_are_treated_like_jews_in_nazi_germany/
For those of you dear readers who are not up to speed on your history of how Adolph Hitler and the Nazi party came to power in pre-WWII Germany, "Kristallnacht" was a series of vicious and coordinated attacks carried out over a few days period in late 1938 (he couldn't even get the date correct) Germany. It was perpetrated by Nazi party paramilitary groups and civilian fascists and targeted at Jewish citizens and their properties. It was, arguably, also the genesis of the Nazi's final solution of rounding up and slaughtering Jews, liberals, academia, artists, journalists, and anyone else who didn't fit in their new world order of Aryan purity and blind devotion to Der Fuhrer and his demented Nazi vision.
So basically what this drama queen vulture capitalist is saying is that anyone daring to speak publicly about issues such as ever expanding income inequality, undeserved tax cuts for the wealthy, offshore tax havens, corporate welfare, lobbying and campaign finance reform, Wall Street excess and criminality, etc., are the equivalent of Hitler's Stormtroopers dragging Jews out of their shops, burning the shops down and throwing those Jews on to trains to be shipped off to concentration camps and eventual mass slaughter by poison gas.
And The Gadfly is awed even further that this gutless little pecker had the nerve to name-drop his former wife, author Danielle Steele, as an example of a wealthy elitist who is upset at being picked on by the dirty hippie 99%ers, especially since she apparently is a prolific donor to charity.
The Gadfly is awed, because a recent CBO report shows that the largest portion of charitable money given by the 1% crowd, actually are donations to "culture palaces" -- namely to operas, art museums, symphonies and theaters -- in other words to organizations where they themselves spend a good deal of time hobnobbing with other wealthy elitists just like themselves. To put it bluntly, most of their donations go not to the downtrodden, the unemployed, the sick and impoverished children, but right back in to the wealth bubble that they inhabit with the other parasite plutocrats of the world.
LOL!
The Gadfly is just constantly amused by the pathetic mewling and whimpering of these privileged assholes -- think about it dear readers -- they fucking own everything, even our democracy - and yet it just never is enough for them. Just 85 of them own as much wealth as half of the entire fucking planet's population for God's sake!! And yet they are constantly wallowing in their own self-constructed persecution complex, and quite frankly if you ask The Gadfly's opinion, it is becoming pretty goddamn irritating.
In The Gadfly's not-so humble view, it sounds like what is bothering Mr. Vulture Capitalist more than anything are the barely measurable gasps of guilt that reside deep inside of his own frail conscience. Because really - how can anyone honestly and morally justify and defend just 85 individuals possessing half of the planet's wealth? And The Gadfly swears, the first jackass that says "they earned it" is going to get a size 10, steel-toed motorcycle boot planted upside your gluteus-maximus.
As such, The Gadfly would humbly advise the Mr. Vulture Capitalist, instead of crying crocodile tears and wringing his well manicured, never worked a day in his life hands on the pages of the Wall Street Journal, he could be actually doing something a bit more productive - you know - like perhaps helping to relieve the unemployment crisis, or the child hunger and poverty situation, or environmental issues, or, god forbid, even the health care debacle that has nearly a third of his fellow countrymen lacking access to basic, affordable health care.
But that would require one to spend some of that "earned" wealth on something other than personal pleasure and luxury items - wouldn't it? It would entail actually having to meet with and possibly even having to touch the scary flesh of the dirty unwashed masses and listen to their plights. It very well could require one to experience feelings of empathy and sadness and perhaps even outrage over the unnecessary suffering of others.
It basically would require one to be - - - you know - a decent human being. Imagine that huh?
----TFG
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