8/13/2011/Representative Democracy
“Who are you?”
“I represent you.”
“No, you don’t. I represent myself.”
“Not so. I officially represent you. In all official capacities, I am you. The very best of you, in fact!”
“I don’t even know you.”
“Well, I don’t know you, either, so that makes us even.”
“No, it doesn’t. You can’t represent anyone other than yourself.”
“Sure I can! I do it all the time.”
“No. You can’t and you don’t. You only say you do. You don’t know anything about me or my life or what I need or want. No one can decide for me. No one knows my mind but me. No one. You can’t even represent someone you do know, let alone someone you don’t. There is no delegating authority. There is only deciding to stop making decisions. And that is not something I have decided.”
“Then why did you choose me to be your representative?”
“I didn’t. I didn’t choose you for anything. I have no idea who you are or what you’re talking about.”
“Doesn’t matter. You chose me. You chose me to represent your interests when I authorize murder. You chose me to represent your interests when I give the order to steal people’s money and property. You chose me to represent your interests when secretly sanctioning surveillance. You chose me to represent your interests when I secretly command the abduction of innocent people from their homes in the middle of the night and their imprisonment and their torture and their death. You chose me to represent your interests when I say it’s all right to pollute the air and the water, the medicine and the food. You chose me to represent you in everything. Whether you know it or not. And that’s exactly what I do.”
“I never chose to do any of that let alone chose to have anyone do it on my behalf!”
“Now, when I say ‘you,’ I mean the people.”
“The people?! Are you insane?! What people could possibly want you to do any of that?!”
“The people I know who know me and put me into office and then handsomely paid me to authorize those things so they could make a fuckload of money having them done.”
8/14/2011/On The Floor
Why did you just cough?
(“Uh, didn’t you just cough?”)
Yes, Rachel, I did, I have a bad cold, but that doesn’t answer my question. Are you feeling okay? Are you stuffed up? If you’re stuffed up, then you need to adjust the volume in your earpiece we supplied you. You remember how to do that?
“The house recognizes the Honorable Rachel Burgin!”
(“I’m perfectly all right. Oh—I’ve just been recognized by the speaker. I’m approaching the floor to deliver your bill. I just heard you cough, all right? God.”)
Signal me if you need further assistance by excusing yourself to blow your nose. We’ll use that cough as a set-up since you established plausibility. All right, I see you. Cue—Ladies and gentlemen of the Florida House of Representatives.
“Ladies and gentlemen of the Florida House Of Representatives!”
Cue—I have before me a bill urging Congress to cut the federal corporate tax rate.
“I have before me a bill urging Congress to cut the federal corporate tax rate!”
Excellent. All right, dramatic pause, and—oh, this is just our in-house preamble, our eyes only boilerplate—Whereas, it is the mission blah blah blah of ALEC blah blah to advance Jeffersonian principles of free markets, limited government, federalism, and individual liberty, blah blah, okay: here’s—
“Whereas, it is the mission blah blah blah of ALEC blah blah to advance Jeffersonian principles of free markets, limited government, federalism, and individual liberty, blah blah!”
Fuck.
“Fuck!”
8/16/2011/Congress
“I’m a Republican!”
“And I’m a Democrat.”
“I think what our country needs to do right now is bail out Wall Street!”
“I agree! Let’s bail out Wall Street!”
“I disagree! Bailing out Wall Street would destroy jobs!”
“But you just said you wanted to bail out Wall Street.”
“I disagree! Don’t put words in my mouth! I said we should regulate Wall Street!”
“All right. Then let us regulate Wall Street.”
“I disagree! Regulating Wall Street would destroy jobs!”
“But you literally just now said to regulate Wall Street.”
“I disagree! I never said anything of the kind! Do you hate your country?!”
“No! I’m only trying to do what you want!”
“I disagree! You only do whatever you want!”
“I only want to make you happy!”
“I disagree! You only want to make me unhappy!”
“I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to make you unhappy!”
“I disagree! You’re not sorry and you always mean to make me unhappy!”
“Well, just tell me what you want me to do and I’ll do it! Anything! I swear, I’m your bitch, you can fuck me up the ass without a condom, without lube and without a reach around!”
“I disagree! You’re just a cock tease!”
“Here, let’s compromise! We can bail out the banks and then we can firmly regulate banking so that if banks are again tempted into being disastrously irresponsible we can have strict rules and monitoring and enforcement in place to prevent another financial meltdown from ever happening again!”
“You see that, everybody?! You see?! You see what they’re trying to do to you?! They just said they want to reward big banks for gambling with your money! They actually want to reward them! Banks! They want to reward big banks and punish all of you hard-working tax-payers!”
“No, I said that we should regulate banking! Not reward irresponsible bankers! Why won’t you love me?!”
“Those miserable Big Government socialists are once again siding with the banks against all of you! You’ve been warned! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!”
“You’re not being fair or honest!”
“Finally, we agree—you’re not fair or honest! You heard it right here, folks—Democrats admit they’re never fair or honest! But we are fair and honest! And unlike those treasonous sickos, we love our country! That’s why we’re gonna bravely stand up to the majority of the public who demand new regulations and bail out Wall Street no-strings-attached against their will and settle this issue once and for all—because brazenly defying the voters is the defining act of political courage!”
“Well, I’m an Independent and I think you Republicans and Democrats represent the same money and are totally fucking useless. You’re just theater. No, not even—you’re just a puppet show!”
“I didn’t hear anything at all just now, did you, sweetie?”
“Nope!”
8/17/2011/The Daily Show With Jon Stewart
“Well, Jon, it’s ugly. Republicans shamelessly pose for photo ops taking credit for bills they vehemently opposed while democrats just watch them do it. For example, just a cursory look at some of the headlines here: ‘GOP Senate Candidate Representative Mike Castle takes credit for over five million dollars in stimulus funds he voted to kill’; next one says ‘In Kentucky, Senator McConnell brags about stimulus projects, requests more money; back in D.C., McConnell says the stimulus should end.’
“Next, ‘Republicans who opposed the stimulus continue to pan it as a “failure,” while also taking credit for its success,’ ah, ‘Governor Bobby Jindal tours Louisiana attacking “Washington spending” while handing out jumbo-sized stimulus checks,’ next we have ‘Representative Shuster bashes the stimulus as a failure while taking credit for its success,’ next is ‘Republicans who opposed the stimulus line up to criticize it publicly, request more money privately,’ next, ‘Senator Kit Bond touts effects of stimulus bill he voted against.’
“And here, lastly—’All in a day’s work: Representative Kingston smears the stimulus on TV, takes credit for stimulus jobs in his district,’ once more, all of this while democrats sat on their hands as it all unfolded right in front of them.
“All of this while republicans have tirelessly tried to drag down nearly every piece of legislation that’s brought to the floor for a vote, filibustering over middle class tax cuts, small business tax cuts, the healthcare reform bill, the recovery bill, military spending, unemployment benefits, all of it, all while democrats have floundered, uselessly trying to accommodate their every whim.”
“Wow, there—that last point really makes it strikingly obvious: Clearly, both sides are equal in holding this country hostage to obstructionist antics.”
8/18/2011/Republican
“We will tell you what we have chosen for you to do with your lives!”
8/18/2011/Democrat
“We will tell you what you have chosen for you to do with your lives.”
8/18/2011/Independent
“It’s the principle of the matter.”
8/18/2011/Partisan
“My position is whatever opposes yours.”
8/18/2011/Liberal
“The candle should be burned at only one end.”
8/18/2011/Conservative
“The candle ought to be burned at both ends, all along and around the middle and from inside out!”
8/18/2011/Progressive
“The candle must be extinguished and restored and replaced by sunlight.”
8/18/2011/Left
“We must take care of each other.”
8/18/2011/Right
“I must take care of myself!”
8/18/2011/Center
“You must take care of me.”
8/20/2011/Capitalism
“But, father, doesn’t financially destroying our base of laborers mean that we will also be destroying our ability to live off of them?”
“On the contrary, son. On the contrary—by wiping them out economically, you are, in fact, able to convince them that they are more deeply in our debt and live off of them indefinitely!”
“I don’t understand! If they are impoverished, and we barely pay them, then how can we milk them for the vast sums of tax money we feed off of?!”
“Pay attention, lad. Trust your father. You are my eldest. You need to understand the way of things. This will all be yours one day, yours and your heirs, both this land, the resources upon it, and the countless lands beyond where ever more of our resources lay yet undiscovered by us and likely unused or underused by foolish dark-skinned natives lazing about. With great power, comes great privilege—but also great cruelty to maintain it! Heavy is the hand that holds the back scratcher, son. Are you paying attention?”
“I am, sir.”
“Good. Now listen. You understand that we must convince the livestock that they need us, yes?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good. And you understand that by convincing them that they need us, they’re being convinced they must depend on us to take care of them, even though it’s entirely they who support us, yes?”
“I understand that. But what I don’t get is why we can’t just keep beating them and killing them to keep squeezing them for more! If they lose everything to us, they must be forced to find more!”
“I agree! You’re right! Very good!”
“I’m right?”
“You are! But you can’t just randomly kill and maim them into action, son. That works fine when they think they have a future they must protect, but, son, when you periodically wish to increase production by temporarily removing all illusions of hope and getting them to blame themselves for their destruction wrought by our own parasitic profligacy, you must avoid such tactics or they will begin to question the personal accountability narrative we feed them, and actually start to resist!
“I’ve seen it! Whether brought about by natural disaster, by manufactured disaster, or by market forces we manipulate or not, they start to notice that being unable to weather our inevitable economic downturns due to having no savings comes not from their overspending—which we pound into their heads is the cause—but from our increasing taxes and from inflating basic costs they can no longer fully cover due to stagnant wages we keep stagnant so they can’t save. And this realization gets them angry and into the streets. You’re too young to remember, but we’ve suffered terrible insurrections many times that had to be put down, their peasant leaders publicly burned alive, their followers impaled on stakes, naked bodies skewered a dozen high—all to keep the majority who’d yet to join in from coming to their senses. Afterward, we came to ours. And we promised concessions!”
“You mean you actually gave them what they wanted?!”
“Oh, no! No, no, no! No, son, no—we merely promised to. That’s what we did. We made promises. Many promises! And that made them happy. In the meantime, instead of actually paying them anything of actual value and thereby depriving ourselves, we simply extended credit to them to help ease the difficulty of paying us for what they owed us for allowing them to labor on our behalf.
“Do you see? We wrecked their lives, got them to blame themselves, and immediately stepped in to play hero by courageously ramming new restrictions down their throats that benefited only us, but doing it all in their name! They applauded our making such hard decisions during a crisis! A crisis we intentionally caused precisely to give us cover so we could make those hard decisions!
“Understand? All right—all right, here: They couldn’t pay us back, not at all, they were totally destroyed economically as planned—but! By ultimately extending credit to them, and by praising them for having succeeded in acquiring this meaningless credit that would only enslave them to us further when they inevitably exceeded it, too, they were actually thankful! They were thankful to us for giving them what they thought was a fighting chance along with the not inconsiderable social status of being considered creditworthy!”
“But you weren’t giving them anything but more debt.”
“Yes! Exactly! You get it!”
“No, I don’t! How does giving them such a false reprieve at our expense make it possible to squeeze them further?!”
“Son. Debt is imaginary. You know this, right?”
“Of course, father.”
“You see, then, that since debt is imaginary, so is credit, yes?”
“Oh. Oh, wait!”
“My boy sees the light!”
“So, you can give them all the credit they need forever!”
“Yes, son! That’s right! You can! There is no expense!”
“But. Wait.”
“Yes?”
“But what happens when their real non-imaginary labor depletes all of our real non-imaginary resources when attempting to pay off imaginary debt that demands even more than was ever there in the first place? Isn’t that an expense? What will we use to convince them to continue serving us when there is nothing left?”
“Why, we simply claim our neighbors are an immediate threat to everyone—and threaten everything everyone loves—thus terrifying the livestock into invading yet another territory in self-defense!”
“Ah! As when we set fire to the granary and placed the blame upon our neighbor!”
“Our former neighbor, yes. But you see? The land is infinite! There will always be new countries to conquer!”
“So, then, we just have to keep extending credit as needed.”
“Precisely. It’s part of an established and well-regulated methodology of control: To regularly relieve their sense of utter helplessness, we periodically allow the livestock to participate in their enslavement by letting them choose—of course, from among whom we give them to choose—whom to directly supervise them. It is through these puppets that we command and console them—such as by extending them credit. Or declaring who is their enemy. Or whatever strikes our fancy.
“These elected supervisors answer only to us, and whatever ill befalls the livestock, incredibly, they blame themselves for having poorly chosen who supervises them into doing what we want, and the livestock then plots their revenge by participating in the same game again next election time to unseat one of our hand-picked supervisors for yet another one! Round and round it goes!
“The addition of two political factions—one that is the illusion of compassion and one that is the illusion of strength—only further complicates their choice and distracts them from the true power which is us. It is these two factions that periodically plunge them into the debt that enriches us.”
“Why those two factions, father? Why not worker factions and management factions? Or rich factions and poor factions?”
“Good question, son. In fact, these two factions envelop all of these characteristics and much more—from what kind of work is done, to what magic they wish to be true, to what skin color and sexual behavior should be embraced or despised. Those who find the illusion of strength to be appealing favor themselves over all, which is sensible, but to sell this to whose leanings are unclear, they dilute their position into more palatable language. This is why their strength is only illusory—true strength would simply destroy potential opposition!”
“As we do!”
“Yes! As we do!”
“But how is it they make their position palatable? What is their position, anyway?”
“Their position is our position—they are all about power. Getting it and keeping it for its own sake. Of the two factions, they are most like us and, since we know their minds so well, are much more easily manipulated. But to understand how we shape them, we must first understand their opposition—the illusion of compassion faction. The compassion faction attracts those who consider everyone to be inherently equal and worthy of respect and dignity and life—which is, of course, absurd as even a casual survey of nature reveals a world of savagery and horror and death full of obviously greater and lesser beings! Yet, while this is how these brain damaged fools truly feel, it is not these fools who direct the compassion faction!”
“No?”
“No, not at all! The compassion faction is controlled by those whose ambitions match adherents of the strength faction! No truly compassionate individual aspires to rule. This is indisputable! Truly compassionate people simply want everyone to participate equally in decision making, not to personally monopolize it. I do not know why they are like this, but I accept it and so must you—knowing what they want is the key to getting what you want from them.
“But never forget that who directs the compassion faction is no different from who is attracted to the strength faction. There is, however, a subtle difference—those who rule the compassion faction must wield their words with consummate care! Those who are attracted to compassion are often much more keenly aware of deviations from that which they feel is just. Telling them lies is seen less as a strategy by them and more as an offense. This is why compassion faction leadership, regardless of its stated goal of transparency, invariably prefers and actually practices secrecy—it reduces the likelihood of their being discovered and rejected for likewise pursuing the personal enrichment both factions are truly all about.
“The compassion faction thus promises everything and delivers nothing different from the strength faction except the kindly worded message of perpetual regret which eloquently precedes each and every betrayal—which they forever blame on external factors unrelated to themselves while claiming they were simply being practical. Similarly, strength faction operates with those who are uncertain by using carefully phrased declarations that camouflage genuine intent.”
“Why? If there is affinity for strength, isn’t honesty sufficient?”
“Of course! But this is the illusion of strength, son, remember? Just like it’s the illusion of compassion. Please don’t make me endlessly repeat the word ‘illusion’ each time I refer to these fictional factions.”
“I’m sorry, father.”
“Because it’s safe to assume when I speak of these groups, I speak of them as lies.”
“Yes, father.”
“Now, the reason both factions lie is to win whom they are unsure about—and they are unsure about everyone they encounter! They never really know who is who, not at first. Who runs these factions has no ability to know, unlike those genuinely attracted to compassion who sometimes display a disturbing discernment. So, in regards to the strength faction in particular, because they are never sure who is who, they play with language in ways that will appeal to whom may well be attracted to strength as they themselves are.
“Compassion faction simply lies outright—about how they care about the poor, the hungry and the downtrodden, and about how they demand equality for all races and genders and sexual orientations. But strength faction must be wily or risk losing all interest! To outright declare their hatred of the poor, the hungry and the downtrodden, the dark skinned, gender equality and the queer would frighten off most of the population! It would frighten off the compassion oriented at once for obviously being counter to their values—but it would also frighten off much of the strength oriented because they are cowards who fear being publicly revealed to the compassionate they would no longer be able to manipulate and who would shun them.
“Therefore, the directors of the strength faction indirectly ease into non-threatening abstractions. They very carefully consider the circumstances of each of these groups they hate and then cautiously formulate what may be said that will instill ideas that lead to behaviors which will obliquely damage their targets.”
“I’m sorry, father, but I don’t think I grasp this.”
“Son, I’m talking about using language to stage indirect attacks on hated targets so as to attract who admires strength and at most only confusing—and not only not angering, but possibly even recruiting—the compassionate! Here: Instead of crudely saying we should kill all the niggers, who are worthless and lazy anyway, in order to gut the power of the compassion faction that depends on them for support—which would instantly alienate all of the soft-headed bleeding heart idiots attracted to compassion—suppose I consider that Black folk are the poorest in the land and that even the poorest Whites are more socially advantaged by the laws we’ve instituted and the culture we’ve created. And you really need to ingratiate yourselves with Whites because we will always be the majority population—win our hearts and minds and you win everything every time forever!
“Now, to do this, instead of directly naming my target—the niggers—and attracting unwanted hostility toward myself, I quietly work to corrode the underpinnings of their community by innocently saying I strongly feel that we need to cut taxes on the rich, we need to deregulate the market, we need to respect the rights of private landholders, we need to respect all speech, we need to cut spending on lazy people who don’t work or own homes or pay for healthcare or food or have babies they can’t afford to support—we need smaller government and greater liberty.
“You see, son? These political positions are all economically devastating! Fiscal conservatism is social conservatism! By constantly increasing our already gigantic military while steadily reducing social support and regulation of resource consumption, these positions lay waste to an economy! The population is plunged into that delightful debt and desirable desperation that serves us so well as I noted earlier! BUT, these excruciating conditions hurt Blacks far more than they hurt Whites. For as poor as some Whites are, the Black population is poorer than the White population and the White population all knows this even as they adamantly deny it—by continuously spreading these ideas, the strength faction is hoping to remain strong by keeping the compassion faction weak since so many who are attracted to compassion are either Black or those who see Blacks as equals.
“In addition, this ploy plays so well to bring aboard those attracted to strength since such folk despise the different, which Blacks most clearly are. Finally, such a talking point tactic on occasion attracts even those attracted to compassion should they have been raised in a strength oriented household where attraction to strength is the norm, or where a compassion oriented individual simply finds certain aspects of strong speech to be intellectually appealing—regardless, agreeing in part reinforces the whole and pushes the totality of compassion down. Does any of this make any more sense to you?”
“It does! I understand! It’s like cancer! Blacks are like cancer! If you want to treat cancer, you use poisons that are harmful to you, but fatal to cancer—and you hope that the cancer dies before you do!”
“Oh, son—you make me proud! Yes! Yes, that’s a perfect analogy! That’s exactly what is achieved by such speech. Such speech leads to apparently counter-intuitive behavior on the part of certain groups of individuals who appear to be acting against their own self-interest, but only if you don’t recognize that it’s seen by most of them as a valid strategy of sacrifice to bring greater harm to a hated rival! But such speech must be crafted with great care—and this is why the strength faction manipulates language into more palatable forms. Where the illusion of compassion may lie with ease, the illusion of strength must rhetorically tease! Remember that!”
“I shall, father!”
“Good, boy. Very good. Now listen, I didn’t use Blacks as a random example. It’s very important you understand the function of race in politics. Race, creed, sexuality, and socioeconomic rank are cards to be played in the Great Game. But race is by far the most important of these since it cannot be hidden. Therefore use it liberally. For, by constantly hammering racial differences between individuals, you may keep entire groups separate from one another—and you may keep all of these groups in constant conflict and this may keep them from paying undue attention to whom is actually wielding power over them all while they piss about with status, which pissing about reinforces the notion that status—which is really only our approval—actually means something. And this my boy, this is how we shape those attracted to strength!
“The watchword is traditional! Those attracted to strength want a traditional life—a traditional marriage, a traditional job, a traditional community! And ‘traditional’ here means ‘unequal’! We founded upon this land a constitutionally unequal hierarchy which placed our family and our kind at the very top! It is our tradition to give approval unequally to maintain this essential imbalance, extravagantly rewarding a select few of our kind attracted to strength for mere loyalty while depriving the great majority attracted to compassion of the ability to easily satisfy their most basic needs, thus tilting our empire toward ever greater productivity.
“And if there is ever a time whilst periodically depriving that great majority when we don’t see the signs that resistance is on the horizon, as sometimes happens when being licked by the silken tongue of luxury, we have even managed to cushion that.”
“How?”
“Nonviolent resistance!”
“What’s that?”
“That is what we’ve convinced them works to achieve positive change: being passive. That it’s brave to be passive, even. You see, where they used to naturally recognize that judiciously applied violence is the only thing that actually achieves anything—I mean, lest we forget, it’s how we got here and how we stay!—we have long since instilled in them through years of conditioning that if they want a change—that is, if they want us to reinforce the illusion that they have a future and meaningful lives—all they need do is gather in groups like the cattle they are and wander round the public square until we pretend we at last hear their mooing and know we must make them further promises. This satisfies them. Once we’ve satisfied them, we delay doing anything until they become so frustrated that when we finally do anything in what appears to be their favor, they are grateful that anything has happened at all. You see? They moo, we milk; they gratefully grumble. Simple.”
“You are a genius.”
“And you are my son! But never forget son, that all of this I now share with you is crucial! When the time comes—and the time always comes—you must make those concessions! That’s the take home lesson here.”
“You mean I need only appear to make those concessions, don’t you?”
“Just so! Good lad! Yes, you need not make any real concessions, you need only put on the appearance. But my point here is that you must put on a good show! You must never immediately concede or they shall insist on more! This will not do—because that might lead to a loss of power—no, you must drag the process on once it has begun as though you were going to great pains to make just the right choice, tirelessly reminding them as they wait of how impossibly complicated and beyond their comprehension is the awesome magnitude of making their decisions for them.
“Theater is everything! For if they suspect that you are having them on, which, of course, you are, well, their protests will actually grow in numbers even we can’t easily manage. Which brings me to the most fundamental truth. No matter how agitated the livestock may become, in the end, you may rely on full bellies to keep their greatest number docile. Food is the key to keeping order. Never withhold food from the masses! And never allow the price of food to rise out of the majority’s reach! For if they see we have easy access to plenty whilst they themselves fear starvation, all is lost to the unthinkable.”
“The unthinkable?”
“Revolution, son. Revolution is the end of the world as we know it. And revolution only happens when there is food on store shelves, but too few have the money to buy it. Revolution is the great destroyer and it feeds on hunger. Hunger pushes so many out and into the streets that all resources must be mustered to put them down.
“Do not allow hunger to grow larger than fear of your regime! For if you do, oh, lad, then we will be forced to cut them down yet again. And that is a precarious time! Because if they are out in so great a number, the strike must be overwhelming and quick. If it isn’t, then this hitherto nonviolent herd will finally be awakened into violent action. And this we can not withstand. They outnumber us. We would be lost.”
“I don’t believe you. We of Clan Bear are the greatest and most powerful clan in all the land!”
“No, son. They are. They just don’t know it. Nor can they ever be allowed to know it. What words you’ve just spoken? They are the words we put into their ears from birth, and through their ears into their minds, and through their minds into their mouths for all to hear and believe and repeat all their lives. But it is simply a lie. A lie that serves us. A lie that convinces them of the futility of resisting us. Son, you need to understand this and accept it: We are weak. We are small. We are nothing. We need them. They do not need us. What they think of as nonviolence is merely the threat of violence. Do you understand?”
“I think I do.”
“Let me explain further, just the same: Son, when they gather like cattle, they are flexing their numbers and, on a deep level of understanding that they are too stupid to be aware of, they know it. Their so-called nonviolent resistance is actually violent resistance restrained. They seek to intimidate us with their masses. And they do! Oh, yes, they most certainly do!
“But while we are weak, and small, and pathetic, we are clever and we are sneaky and we are ruthless! We will begin by mocking their movement. Our criers shall spread the word of their silliness. Should that fail, we shall target small groups of them for arrest and detention and beatings. Should that fail, we shall target ever larger groups for these things! But we must never kill them! Not at this stage! To kill them at this early stage would risk rousing them awake! No! Upon targeting these larger groups, we shall begin to label them as infiltrators from rival lands seeking only violence—the very violence the whole mass of them has been conditioned to reject! This labeling will sow confusion among their number who will seek to clarify their passive positions and so fragment and weaken, and, in contrast, such labeling will harden our own defenders by dehumanizing their victims making it easier and even emotionally fulfilling to commit acts of violent repression.
“Should the largest groups not be discouraged and dispersed by these things, well, this, son, this is the time to pretend to care—to pretend to hear their pitiful whining! This is the time to make all the promises needed to split them up and break them apart! For by making promises, we shall appeal to the weaker among them who have no taste for blood and who do not accept that freedom is not a gift to be given but a prize to be won—and they are the majority! Those willing to kill and to die for what is right? Well, they will be alienated from the larger group. And the larger group will deny them. And divided, they will fall apart into ever smaller groups—groups of particular demands, singular focus, no broad vision of any kind of change: This is the fate of the larger fraction. And ever more desperate measures to awaken the sleeping giant is the fate of the smaller fraction—whose escalating extremism will only further upset the weak, the weak who will in turn run straight into our arms and betray the strong, while the strong will make themselves more conspicuous to our spies, and thus be hunted down and erased.
“You see? The system, our system, our way of doing things, will remain the framework! Everything that we have conspired for and which crushes them under our boots will remain firmly and invisibly in place! They will never for a moment consider discarding it. Discarding us. This is what we have learned, what I have learned, through decades of careful and cunning observation and relentlessly merciless effort.
“The most ignorant among them will be grateful for recommencement of predictable labor. The most educated will be grateful to return to their abstract distractions while passing their time between work shifts. The most clever will continue to work believing they can get as rich as we who made our fortune robbing them. And these last? These last we might indeed reward—and indeed they well know it! Should they serve us, these last will be promoted. They will become part of the buffer between us and them. Their children receiving instruction much like you’re right this moment receiving from me.”
“You’re talking about Clan Eagle.”
“And Clan Wolf, Clan Cobra and Clan Ram, yes! While they each aspire to our position, these clever connivers attracted to strength, they will be kept in line by embracing the metaphor of the carrot and the stick and eagerly do Clan Bear’s bidding all their lives!”
“The carrot and the stick?”
“Yes, lad. The carrot and the stick.”
“But you never get to the carrot. The stick is forever in the way. The carrot and the stick is a metaphor about never fulfilling the promise of reward. We keep them in line by taunting them?”
“No, lad, no—that’s the metaphor as it actually is and as we actually mean it, but it’s not the metaphor as they interpret it while serving us. No, lad—to these ambitious social climbers who will never quite reach the summit they crave, the carrot is the reward they believe they will eventually get after tirelessly laboring to overcome the grueling ordeal of the stick.”
“They are imbeciles.”
“Yes, but they are our imbeciles! Without them acting as a middle class, we’d have no one to eagerly enforce our will! Our entire enterprise—where we the exceptional fewest use the sycophantical few to presently take from the many what the many need to survive and so extort the many’s labor in our glorious service for its meager return—would collapse into anarchy! We would lose this most efficient of all systems at generating our personal wealth!”
“I understand. But, father, I remain vexed.”
“Yes, son? Tell me what troubles you.”
“I wonder: How far is too far? How far can they be pushed before they begin to notice? Before they gather to resist?”
“You’d be amazed.”