Thursday, June 03, 2010

You Can't Have Your Life Back

I've been reading this odd little detective novel from 1908 -- The Man Who Was Thursday. I came across this passage, and well, the more things change, the more they stay screwed up:
"Mere mobs!" repeated his new friend with a snort of scorn. "So you talk about mobs and the working classes as if they were the question. You've got that eternal idiotic idea that if anarchy came it would come from the poor. Why should it? The poor have been rebels, but they have never been anarchists; they have more interest than anyone else in there being some decent government. The poor man really has a stake in the country. The rich man hasn't; he can go away to New Guinea in a yacht. The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all. Aristocrats were always anarchists, as you can see from the barons' wars."

Now I think of the whiny-ass rant from BP CEO Tony Hayward and I imagine that he's planning an escape to New Guinea or wherever, but probably not in a yacht -- he wouldn't want anything to remind him of oceans:
"There’s no one who wants this over more than I do. I would like my life back."
Hayward wants his life back? How much does he make? Five million a year or something? Wow, he certainly benefited from anarchy in the form of chummy EPA officials letting BP get away with crimes.

And as always, it's the working class who will suffer the most. Louisiana fishermen are feeling desperate as they see their livelihoods destroyed. They're the ones who can't have their lives back.

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