Pity the Poor Rich

 

One of the more grotesque of the peculiarities of these sad times is the sympathy being shown for the enormously rich we like to call "Billionaires" to avoid the need to specify. It's claimed they're inappropriately being criticized for not paying enough taxes. It's claimed that they're hated, unfairly because their vast wealth has generated jobs and lowered the cost of various products.

If we make them pay more taxes or otherwise annoy them or belittle them, we're told, bad things will happen.  They'll go away. We'll no longer benefit from their accumulation and possession of more money and assets than they or anyone else coild possibly need.

Personally, I doubt that Billionaires constantly provide jobs and lower costs.  Assuming they do, I suspect this takes place while they make their billions.  After they make them, my guess is that they spend them and in spending don't do so pro bono publico. 

So I don't think it can be maintained that we should have Billionaires or should cater to them or love them because they do so much for us.  Nor do I think we should admire or favor them because they are Billionaires.

I have no doubt that many people envy Billionaires. But I believe that it's reasonable to dislike them and have no respect for them for a simple and sensible reason: in a time of limited and diminishing resources, where many even in better off nations are having difficulties making ends meet or live in poverty, those who obtain, consume, or possess more resources than they or any reasonable person will ever need, when most struggle to live, are not admirable, moral or virtuous people. In fact, they're unworthy.

That's why I've compared them more than once to gluttons and hoarders in this blog. It makes no more sense to claim they deserve to be Billionaires or should be Billionaires than it does to claim that any person deserves to be or should be a glutton or a hoarder.

Should a glutton have the right to consume huge quantities food neither he nor any one else could possibly need where food is scarce and others are starving?  In a time of limited resources, should a hoarder have the right to possess more assets or resources than he or anyone else could possibly use where others need resources to survive?

I think these are questions which should be addressed in considering whether Billionaires should pay more taxes or contribute more to society.  The libertarian view that a person should be able to do and have anything provided no harm results to others takes on an untraditional meaning as resources grow scarce 

Sex and Sensibility

/

The cartoon above is one of a series drawn by the great American humorist James Thurber called The War Between Men and Women.  The idea of such a War has been around for quite some time, of course, whether in fantasy or as an actuality, but it seemed to take on a more virulent character in the 20th century as women acquired and exercised the right to vote and with the advent of feminism.

More recently, disputes regarding gender and its relation to sex and sexuality have further complicated matters.  Complicated them to such an extent that they may be beyond the understanding of an aged fellow like me, alas.  But, being shameless, I'll expound on them nonetheless.

Our endless fascination with sex has generated what seem to be significant and perhaps disturbing concerns regarding masculinity--what it is to be a man, how men should act, how they should behave, particularly where women are concerned.  In some cases, these concerns have had results I think peculiar.  The so-called "incels" strike me as particularly odd.  As I understand it, they're young men who've made a kind of lifestyle out of resentment against women for not satisfying their emotional expectations and physical needs.  It's a sadly unworthy to blame others for your perceived failures; sadder still to take a kind of perverse pride in doing so.

In addition, it seems that there's a new psychological or social condition called 'bigorexia" which is supposed to be taking over the lives of young men.  It's an obsession regarding muscularity, which apparently compels them to attend gymnasiums and workout constantly in order to develop as many muscles as possible, and so become more "manly."

Perhaps as part of the unfortunate resurgence of the Abrahamic religions, there's an increasing demand that women conform to "traditional" female roles.  One sect in particular champions "family voting."  The wife and mother, it's proposed, shouldn't vote.  Her role is that of homemaker and mother. The father and husband should vote on her behalf, and apparently on behalf of the children.   It seems to resurrect, as it were, the ideal of the pater familias.

As may be expected, those who think their masculinity and the masculinity of others are threatened, or being diminished, find disputes regarding gender roles and the existence of transgenders especially alarming; almost as alarming as the existence of gay people.  As a result, they actually fear that they may be exposed to them.  They especially fear that children will be.  They evidently think that it stands to reason that if they are exposed, they'll 

"turn."

Misogyny thrives in such a climate.  So does outrage.  So does pandering, particularly by politicians and pundits.  

Kipling wrote a curious poem titled If which it seems he meant to express what Victorians thought it was to be a man. If it does, a man was, to them, so extraordinary as not to exist, except perhaps as a Medieval knight and hero in fairy tales.  I wonder if he really thought he was a man as described in the poem. 

In our Great Republic, we have a love/hate relationship with the sexual act--more accurately with sexual conduct of any kind.  We love to have sex (or most of us do, in any case).  But we hate having to acknowledge it, or address it, except in limited circumstances, and most of all seek to judge the sexuality of others.  If we had any sense, though, when it comes to sex we wouldn't care what consenting adults do, or how they look or act, or what others may think about our sexuality and sexual conduct.