From America the Great … Police State. Gore Vidal. A more simple, brilliant summing up I cannot imagine.

So let me mention the real issue. The real issue is class. We have the greatest divide between the very rich and the very poor of any country on Earth, surpassing even France. And this division gets wider and wider as financial disasters overwhelm us. We were already in pretty bad shape before things began to fall apart a year or two ago. We must acknowledge that our character, never much good in these matters, is now reprehensible, and the police seem to have taken it upon themselves to exact revenge for a full professor and his—plainly, in their view—insulting income, which they figure must be considerable. The days of greed through which we all lived now have not done us much good, nor have they taught us any lessons, but you cannot live long with such divisions, which in my view as an outsider overlooking the scene seems to be a nation of total liars. Everybody is lying. Television lies, candidates lie. And everyone says, “Oh they always have.” I love that excuse. Well they haven’t always done that. Sometimes lying to the people is a great mistake. And it is well-known that the rich will tell almost any lie to avoid paying taxes.

Funny. (They will.) Sad. Then I came across this—

There is one thing we do know: that we are here for the sake of each other — Albert Einstein

and I thought, Do we? Old man? Were you old when you said this, does it have the slightest relevancy to how we live our lives today?

I hope so, but the real issue—thank you, Ronald Reagan—was and is the creation of the Underclass. The permanent establishment of the lowest group in society, for whom the American dream has no hope of ever coming true, not one bit of it. Ah, the Eighties. Tax loopholes you could drive a tank through, years in which only fools and the poor failed to get rich. The system opened up for manipulation, the rich cemented their place and the great American yearning took on a different tone. How shall I lie, cheat, steal and otherwise cook my books … how shall I become the Goldman-Sachs of my own little world.

And they did. And the world became a so much poorer place. Depending on how you measure poverty. I always thought that poverty of soul failed to trouble only sociopaths and their ilk.

Hey. If the shoe fits …

Tags: gore vidal, reaganomics, the underclass, the wealthy

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