There will be blowback
Even in the seconds before their heads were about to roll away form their bodies underneath the blade of the guillotine, it still puzzled the opulent Paris elite how this could be happening.
Just months before the storming of the Bastille in 1789, everything was peachy. The social order ran smooth. The poor paid their dues. The middle class kept their mouth shut. The aristocracy parties like it was 1999.
One day they were handing out orders and advice to adoring insiders like a mall Santa dispenses candy canes, and the next day they were being dragged through the streets by their frilly collars like common thieves. Surely they wept like babies, but by then it was too late to apologize.
It always follow the same pattern. The rich and privileged overstep their mark and trigger an almighty backlash of feeding-frenzy-like-violence and cruelty.
After the Russian Revolution, the Bolshevik’s looted the royal palace and executed the entire family even the children. During the Cultural Revolution in China, the intellectual elites were publicly humiliated and carted off to camps where they were forced to work like peasants. In the 1970s, Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge had child soldiers kill every privileged Cambodian, even those with eye glasses.
Today we are living through another one of those moments, though this time it’s not the royalty, not the land owners nor the intellectual elite … but the financial 1% running around making money off money off money off the backs of the 99% and being very arrogant and remorseless about it.
For the masses, when honest work no longer pays, the more sinister side of survival begins to take hold.
So here’s some advice to the Lloyd Blankfeins, Rex Tillersons, Jamie Dimons, Donald Trumps and Hugh Grants … Watch out! … you might be triggering something that will engulf you.
Editor’s note: While I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for an organized revolutionary movement in this country, it’s a reminder that massive social upheaval can occur relatively quickly in a variety of different political contexts. In the U.S. I think we’re more likely to see an implosion due to top-down corruption, dysfunction and an irremediable economic situation. But the end result may be the same: systemic collapse and a vengeful backlash against those perceived as being the cause of the problems.
Desultory Heroics 