patrick.net

Excellent essay!

We are looking more and more like France on the eve of its revolution in 1789. Our classes are distributed differently, but the inequity is just as sharp. America’s “aristocracy,” once based strictly on bank accounts, acts increasingly hereditary as the vapid offspring and relations of “stars” (in politics, showbiz, business, and the arts) assert their prerogatives to fame, power, and riches — think the voters didn’t grok the sinister import of Hillary’s “it’s my turn” message?

What’s especially striking in similarity to the court of the Bourbons is the utter cluelessness of America’s entitled power elite to the agony of the moiling masses below them and mainly away from the coastal cities. Just about everything meaningful has been taken away from them, even though many of the material trappings of existence remain: a roof, stuff that resembles food, cars, and screens of various sizes.

But the places they are supposed to call home are either wrecked — the original small towns and cities of America — or replaced by new “developments” so devoid of artistry, history, thought, care, and charm that they don’t add up to communities, and are so obviously unworthy of affection, that the very idea of “home” becomes a cruel joke.

rando says

Excellent essay!

Sometimes he's very close to center target.

Not immortality but it guaranties a bunker and an always fueled jet near you.
They wouldn't flee in a carriage like Louis XVI.

Also: a militarized police and the willingness to use it.

Heraclitusstudent says

a militarized police and the willingness to use it.

300,000,000 guns in this country?
Are they ready to fight & die for the rich
while there is no way to protect their families
that live in the midst of the pissed-off?