Read the entire thing. But This is so, so much like Helengrad. This is the result of a long march through the institutions. VDH is on form
Note well the term “poor.” These are not Dickensian or Joads poor, but largely Americans who by the standards of the 1940s would be considered lucky. Partly because of globalized Chinese consumer goods, and partly redistributive practices of a half-century, our current “underclass” has access to clothes, electronics, entertainment, apartments, cell phones, transportation, etc., undreamed of by the middle class of the recent past. I live in one of the poorest areas of one of the poorest counties in a bankrupt state; and those I see poor are not like those I saw 40 years ago in the same locale.
No, the revolution is not one of the abject poor and starving storming the Bastille, but of the angry and self-righteous well-off— angry as hell that the less well-off are living lives quite differently from the very well-off. (A trodden down poor person today flies standby from San Francisco to LAX; a very rich person gets into his $50 million Gulfstream — but note modernism’s paradox: the poor person’s United Airlines pilots are as good, he gets there as safely and in some comfort, and not much later as well.)
via Works and Days » Reflections on the Revolution in America.
Now for the fruit. Helen was in power — power that would make Obama faint — for nine years. (NZ has one legislative chamber, and she ruled it). So–
- She lied about crown finances. We were deeply in debt and she denied it.
- Taxation became more progressive.
- There were more busybodies in Wellington micromanaging poorer services.
- We lost our strike air wing.
- We began to publicise specail forces — people who want to be in the shadows and defend us. In doing this, we betrayed our bravest men.
- We lost the privy council. By a mere majority. And the new supreme court is already embroiled in conflicts of interest.
And Helen derided the conventional morality, childrearing, educational prospects (zoning was a disaster. NCEA was a disaster. Losing proper apprenticeships was a disaster).
The elite do not understand workers. The project their ideas onto workers. This elite — who claims to work for the oppressed — is removing the reslienence from the nation to MAKE people oppressed.
Thus the Smart worker puts his head down, shuts up, and votes for the nationalist or the right. Because the left has betrayed him.