An Elegant Contrast

Broken record time: Wealth gets the state its possessors want. Wealth concentrates. It does not do so by laws of nature or economy. The invisible hand is a fiction, however useful. Wealth concentrates, because those who have it use force and fraud to acquire it, directly with violence and intimidation, or indirectly with law, religion and education. That is its consistency. Having wealth means having the ability to keep and expand it. To protect it. To give the retention and protection of it the sanction of God, civilization and moral authority.

Power's form is stable over time. Its justifications vary. Its interactions with captive populations change, evolve, devolve and periodically need to be reset. Populations change, though the form of power has proven remarkably stable. The core of the state is consistent. It's application varies. Its lies and fabrications are offered to suit the alteration of years and ages, or the primacy of factions. They are not monoliths, or monographs.

Our American state is possessed by the wealthy. It is organized and run for their benefit. A simple proposition, and despite its elegance, nonetheless true.

Which is why Congressional members, for all their pretend inefficiencies and alleged partisan divides, can swiftly come to agree on extending the Patriot Act, yet again.

Or on the need to cut spending and the "deficit," meaning those programs which benefit, however negligibly, the poor and the needy (whether or not they've yet agreed on how to do it).

Or on the largest military expenditures in human history.

Or on handing over the Commons to bankers to cover the losses of their ruthless speculations.

But - figuring out how to extend a flea's pittance of the budget of a continent bestriding, permanent warfare state, for the meager and temporary benefit of laid off workers?

Well, the fuckers still cannot agree on how or when to do that.

I'm sure they'll find it as difficult to agree, when it comes to re-re-re-opening the Gulf of Mexico to future devastating oil disasters...