{"id":16545,"date":"2015-05-04T14:16:41","date_gmt":"2015-05-04T21:16:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=16545"},"modified":"2015-05-04T14:16:41","modified_gmt":"2015-05-04T21:16:41","slug":"eat-the-rich-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=16545","title":{"rendered":"Eat the Rich"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/farm9.staticflickr.com\/8881\/17371212431_a84700360a_m.jpg\" alt=\"11209696_469926303166392_4190474518163375964_n\" width=\"219\" height=\"240\" \/>Don&#8217;t we wish. The joke is people <em>are<\/em> outraged\u00a0(rightly so IMO) over non-contributors getting something for nothing &#8230; so long as they&#8217;re poor or minorities. When it comes to trust fund babies, celebrities, royals, insanely overpaid CEOs, and the idle heirs of old money, outrage generally turns to acceptance, even admiration. Oh, sure, there are a few of us shouting &#8220;eat the rich,&#8221; but no one listens.<\/p>\n<p>Resentment is a powerful and basic human emotion, but it&#8217;s almost always directed downward toward those we perceive to be beneath us. And who does this benefit? Those at the top, the ones we <em>should<\/em> resent.<\/p>\n<p>I keep hoping the right kind of demagogic politician will come along,\u00a0harness our\u00a0natural resentment, and direct\u00a0it upwards. Unless this happens, we&#8217;ll never see the end of\u00a0outsourcing jobs and high unemployment. The one percent will take more and more of the pie, leaving us with less and less.<\/p>\n<p>Trouble is,\u00a0demagogic politicians almost always turn out to be Pol Pots or Hitlers. Maybe there&#8217;s just no changing human nature.<\/p>\n<p>We can, however, realistically hope to change other\u00a0things. Citizens United, for one. If we elect the right president and that president appoints the right justices to the US Supreme Court, we might be able to overturn that horrible, horrible ruling. And if we overturn Citizens United, we might eventually be able to make elections more fair. This could happen.<\/p>\n<p>Which is why I&#8217;m for Hillary Clinton. Shut up. Yes I am. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders can&#8217;t win against a Republican candidate. Hillary can win and probably will\u00a0&#8230; so long as Democrats\u00a0don&#8217;t throw their\u00a0votes away on some Ralph Naderish\u00a0independent candidate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Don&#8217;t we wish. The joke is people are outraged\u00a0(rightly so IMO) over non-contributors getting something for nothing &#8230; so long as they&#8217;re poor or minorities. When it comes to trust fund babies, celebrities, royals, insanely overpaid CEOs, and the idle heirs of old money, outrage generally turns to acceptance, even admiration. Oh, sure, there are [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,250,8,29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16545","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-class","category-culture-wars","category-politics","category-the-economy"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16545","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16545"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16545\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16548,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16545\/revisions\/16548"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}