No Tolerance for Richistans - Obscene Wealth is not victimless!
Writing in the Guardian, Madeline Bunting laments the growing inequities in Britain. Her powerful critique is not jut applicable to the British society…
June 26, 2007
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Not surprising though, this increased tolerance for Richistan. We have at least three channels here that are devoted to displaying the opulence and glamour of the rich and famous; lo and behold the channel has record breaking viewer statistics! People are ready to lap up all the glitz that they see and are still wanting for more! Little is this seen as a ’systemic failure” as Bunting puts it. We’ve developed an uncanny tolerance for excessive wealth like we have for obesity here in the USA. It is a relief that at least obesity is now recognized as a societal ill that has gained epidemic proportion. We can only hope that at some point the blinded middle class will awaken to the reality of ‘Richistan’ and stop pandering to it.
Comment by I Me My — June 26, 2007 @ 1:52 pm
IMM: thanks for the comment and pointing out some supporting evidence. I also hope that people wake up to this reality and say no to this culture of greed and enviable spectator sport.
Comment by RR — June 26, 2007 @ 3:15 pm
As I Me My point about the channels dedicated to lifestyles of the rich and famous, it is by design. By that I mean you are shown these people with this obscene wealth intermingled with the message that you can one day get there (99.99% of you never will). Also hidden in these features are marketing messages selling you “designer” stuff so penniless bastards like us pay $40 for a $2 shirt just because it has a Nike swoosh on it and somehow feel like we are somebodies wearing one. This leads to another fallacy — most people you talk to are certain they are part of the middle class when in reality only about 1-in-10 of them are — and I am being optimistic here. Just spending your 3 months salary on a new Nokia makes you so much poorer no matter how rich you feel flashing it around…but that my friend is the trick: You feel richer while getting poorer making the very rich richer and the gap between you and them getting even wider…
Comment by nota — June 27, 2007 @ 6:36 am
(The older I get, the more convinced I am that Douglas Adams was spot on with his assessment of our Glorious Planet Earth being somebody else’s science project.)
To those who blindly parrot the mantar of “Give me capitalism or give me death”, I raise my glass of Evian-watered Delta-Blue Label isskotch bhisky in a toast to your health and prosperity and pray that you die of natural causes and not a (terrorist?) revolutionary’s rusty knife blade across your throat.
It must be fun to dance a jig upon the grave of pseudo-Marxist ideals, chanting “Long Live the Death of the Revolution”, celebrating the benisons of “freedom” (of speech? of thought? of action? of spending?).
What we are seeing, friends, womans, and cuntrymen, is the inevitable pinnacle of human development within the context of the capitalist ideal. A hundred years ago, when every right (pun intended) minded individual was championing the cause of free enterprise, no one imagined the consequences of the massive influx of the destitute into the fold of above-the-poverty-line bourgeoisie. WTF do you do with hundreds of millions of punters with (almost) enough money and (almost) enough free time to (almost) enjoy the lifestyle that was once the exclusive property of the obscenely rich?
What else, but hold out the *promise* of fancy dildos (oops, sorry, I mean doo-dahs) that they can pretend to amuse themselves with.
I’m not a communist and never was (perhaps to my shame), but I have no doubt that the BIGGEST tragedy of the 20th century was the death of communism as a political system (I don’t believe that Marxist philosophy was ever truly put into practice anywhere in the world). This has left the world in a unipolar spin, with no competing ideology to the rampant, vicious, ultimately apocalyptic avarice of beneficent, liberty-championing capitalism. (Religion as political ideology? Don’t make me laugh.)
Now please excuse me while I decide which of my three ninety-inch plasma tvs to watch the Home Shopping Network on. There’s this to-die-for pair of heavy duty zircon encrusted tweezers up for grabs, once used on former Ms Milky Way, Ms Nandita Dynah Moe Humm. (In the immortal words of Frank “Al Pacino” Slade, “HOO-AH!”)
Comment by kinkminos — June 27, 2007 @ 8:16 am
Kinkminos, thanks for leaving your thoughtful and witty comment here. In fact you have raised many issues that surround this feeble post, that I am tempted to convert your entire comment as a post in itself.
Indeed the apparent death of ideology is a curse of this era. And the hydraheaded monster of consumerism and ‘puntering’ dream is what has become a cherished goal. Look at how dreams and self-realization packages are sold through credit cards, leased products and the over-arching envy of massive wealth - almost guilt free and bereft of the social context..
thanks again for visiting and making me think further. I need to digest some of the more nuanced stuff in your comment….
Comment by RR — June 27, 2007 @ 4:03 pm
In America, the middle class is dwendling quickly and what’s left of them are too far into debt to dig themselves out because they strive for this opulence that’s unobtainable - yet it’s still paraded around the media as the American dream. And what makes it even more difficult is that they changed the bankruptcy laws a couple years ago, so that it’s much harder to file bankruptcy, so in essense, the middle class in America are becoming surfs to the credit card companies and banks. Between this and the suppension of habeas corpus, it’s safe to say that the US is not a free country anymore. If it was, then individuals could drop out of the system that’s been handed to them and find a new path, a new rhythm of living.
Comment by jane — July 2, 2007 @ 5:04 am
What saddens me is that this may very well be the pinnacle of human spiritual development: the unbridled desire to acquire “things” of “value”.
Still hungover on the nano-second nineties, we want instant gratification. And those marketing types (call them what you will, they’re pretty smart cookies) are there to provide just that: gratification on demand.
Or as I had said a while back:
.
WHAT AN UTTERLY DIVINE PASTIME YOU HAVE
——
Speed thrilled
but ultimately killed off any
residual pleasure I still derived
from the act of
conducting the moving finger
as it went about the
soul-destroying business of
inserting life up the fundament
of a civilisation brain-dead
from gratification on demand
Comment by kinkminos — July 2, 2007 @ 6:32 am
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