brainpanhandler wrote:Is it possible that the portion of the middle and working classes that support the plutarchy and their puppets do so because they want to make sure that when they are on top they have just as many perks as the assholes that are already there or have gone before?
"Jesus, don't start the socialism until I've had my chance to exploit the system" Really?
Of course! Come on, are you serious?
Fuck Horatio Alger. This is the American dream.It's not so much that they're thinking of having the same perks as the rich. Their imagination of being rich is not usually specific. It isn't an accurate view of how the real rich live.
A large part of the lower class is simply enraptured with the idea, the fantasy of being rich.
Do you know how many of these fucking poker shows there are?Producer character in Quiz Show, set in the 1950s wrote:You see, the audience didn't tune in to watch some amazing display of intellectual ability. They just wanted to watch the money.
Great fucking Hollywood movie. Rent it.This is not just a right-wing thing. Many on the right believe everyone earns what they get, including the rich. They are genuinely conservative, happy with their lot, and believe the social order is natural.
This is the most interesting guy in the world, right?This is much more general. The majority of consumption in consumer society is vicarious. It is enacted by watching actors playing rich folk consuming things on TV.
Him, Blake Carrington, Tony Soprano, whatever.Extravagance. Killing things, fucking things, it's all the same show really.
It doesn't matter if they don't have a clue how they're going to get rich. It's the American religion that they will, somehow. Dreaming it passes the time.
If you're not a winner, you're a loser. If you're a loser, it's because you didn't wanna be a winner. If you want it bad enough, you will be a winner.
Are you a loser or a winner? 
Anyone complaining about it is jealous. They're losers. Losers!
You'd all do the same thing, if you could. How dare you disparage them for GIVING?!
Rand Paul wrote:"Well, the thing is, we're all interconnected. There are no rich. There are no middle class. There are no poor. You remember a few years ago, when they tried to tax the yachts, that didn’t work. You know who lost their jobs? The people making the boats, the guys making 50,000 and 60,000 dollars a year lost their jobs. We all either work for rich people or we sell stuff to rich people. So just punishing rich people is as bad for the economy as punishing anyone. Let’s not punish anyone. Let’s keep taxes low and let’s cut spending."
Why do you think there are so many of these? Why do the elaborate heists work, but usually meet a sudden reversal at the end, a kind of tacked-on extra ending to deliver the moral that crime doesn't pay, even though you just watched it pay?While we're at it: Why do so many movies revolve about the shifting possession of two containers? Boxes, suitcases, cars, doesn't matter. One contains a powerful MacGuffin: gold, technology, magic, the missing princess, whatever. The other one has two million dollars in untraceable cash. The original plan goes awry. Several factions worth of characters play musical containers until everyone is shot full of holes. Except the doofus nice guy, who ends up, quasi accidentally, with both suitcases and the girl.
It's funny you said what you did, bph, because until now in the sorry history of the US working class, until this moment of greatly increased crisis and risk for all since the crash, I've thought this factor, this love of the fantasy of being rich completely removed from one's actual chances (whatever they may be for most people: something between Minus One and Absolute Zero), this opportunity to feel riches vicariously through lotteries and gambling and TV shows and visits to Disneyworld and periodic binge spending sprees, has been just as important in tying people to the system as the facts of real life, as the job-income-spending-children-credit-debt-fear treadmill.
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