Ruminations

Dear Tiger,

Oh, the classic mistake, the one I make every day. I have an idea I wish to express (today it was a letter to you), so I sit at my computer with the idea fresh in my mind, and WHAM get hit by a storm of emails. The focus is gone, the emails demand my attention, and by the time they are gone, one wonders where the idea has gone to.

I have thought to turn my letters to you into a blog, starting with this one, and hoping you do not mind.

The main idea was to continue our ruminations on current events, both at home and abroad. I am listening to Hobbes/Leviathan on my commute, and reading a bit of Marx over my lunch breaks. The communists were so wrong (fortunately this is now a dead issue, the terrorists having taken over the role as bogiemen), but Marx, the more I read, seems more and more correct. I wish I still had my Karl Marx T-shirt (it was red, of course); only now I would wear it in understanding, and not in protest against I don't know what.

But there has been a fundamental change, which he did not seem to anticipate (or perhaps I have not read enough).

In the French revolution, the people were happy to kill the aristocracy because the arisocrats gave the people very little. In the American revolution, the Brittish were extracting too high a price for the protection they provided against foreign invasion-- (this threat becoming less credible with every passing year), so again the people had an easy target for the evils of the rulers.

But in the US of today, and this is the fundamental change, the new rulers are the heads of large companies. And these companies are large because they give people what they want (sure, there are other factors, corruption, old-boy networks, etc, but still). So are the people going to use their iphones to organize a revolution against Steve Jobs? Drive their cars to the rally against higher oil prices?

Our policy makers have been trying to prevent revolution by making the populance stake-holders. Put everyone in a house, get everyone to invest in the stock market. I think this ploy will end badly (or rather, is in the process of a nasty end). But despite the current darkness, our love of stuff may prove the salvation of our society.

Today's favorite triumph-over-tradgedy story is that Miss Colorado was evicted from her house the other week. She was living with her mom, whose insurance company denied her coverage, leading to huge medical bills and eventually loosing their home. Tragic story, but it happened to a celeb, which might get the problem some attention.

Turning to world events. You once told me that when a movement turns to extreme violence, it means it is near its death. You used the Anarchists as an example. It wasn't them who toppled the Russians, even though they were able to kill the Tsar.

We see this again, as all the talking heads are saying that the people's revolution in North Africa is bad for islamic fundamentalists. Let's hope the heads are right.

I look forward to a day when all the people of the (i)Book can live in peace.

Until then, if all that is solid melts into air, well, at least know that the air is fresh and free for all to breath.