Jay Fox - THE WALLS

“I love that book.”

“Me too. But you see what I'm saying, right? The media will convey any attempt to deny the claim as an attempt to cover up the truth because the media is really just the PR department of the corporate oligarchy. Even if the allegations are completely false, they will tarnish the character of the individual. The charges don't even have to dominate public opinion. The fact of the matter is that that individual will never be fully trusted by the majority of Americans because that person will always be on the defensive — and, consequently, this will make him seem to be guilty.”

Nod.

“Look, I used to be of the opinion that libertarians have something useful to offer to discourse, but I quickly realized that their beliefs are…well, stupid. Perhaps naive. For one, they are typically the first to point out that public workers — city employees and such — are incredibly stupid, lazy, and horribly incompetent. They say we should privatize. Are you going to tell me that suddenly these people will become adept and helpful? You've been to Rite-Aid — it's a private company with a privatized workforce. Are the people there more astute, more proactive?” He grunts. “If you want to make the argument that they are, be my guest, but I'll be the first one, and certainly not the last one, to tell you that…I don't really know. I was trying to think of something witty, and my mind just went totally blank.”

“It's okay; I get where you were going.”

“Okay, look, the point here is that it's not public work that makes people complacent with their own laziness and inadequacies. It's inherent within the capitalist system. The reason for this is that the people on the bottom, the have-nots as they are called, are considered outsiders. Furthermore, these outsiders are presumed to have inherently criminal elements in their character — this is why they are so often thought to be guilty until proven innocent. This now gives you two classes: the member class and the criminal class. Now, let me ask you a question: Do you want a smart criminal, or do you want a dumb criminal? Smart criminals are difficult to catch; they can learn the vulnerabilities of the system, and, if they score, they typically score big. Dumb criminals, on the other hand, are easy to catch, they don't bother studying the system, and most of their crimes are committed because they appear easy or convenient, as opposed to difficult or capable of producing a high yield. The matter is simple: You want dumb criminals, and, therefore, you want a dumb criminal class that will fill up that big space at the bottom of the economy as unemployed, since you need unemployed people in order to keep wages low — more people without a job, more people who will take yours if you think you deserve more money. The way to get this is simple: cut funding to inner city schools, watch test scores plummet, and then demand that more funding needs to be cut in order to give to schools that perform better. You end up with a group of uneducated people, who are lazy because they live in horribly squalid surroundings and have been brainwashed by a media that glamorizes criminal activity, easy money, and, at the same time, sticking it to the man while buying all of the shit the man tells you to — on credit!

“But what really bothers me isn't just the fact that there are more and more people in this class of criminal have-nots; it's rather the fact that the super-rich just keep getting bigger and bigger slices of the pie. And the more problems that come as a result of this process, the more adamant the acolytes of the Chicago School get. Reagan deregulates, Bush deregulates, Clinton deregulates, Bush the Second deregulates. What happens? We keep getting bubble economies, which produce huge yields for some; then, when the bubble bursts, we end up with a greater recession than the one we had before. Do they ask for some type of regulation or restraint to keep this type of shit from happening? No. They demand more deregulation. They're like the priests of Cahokia and Tenochtitlán demanding more sacrifices in order to appease the silent harvest goddess. Just look at the numbers. The more the government deregulates or privatizes what used to be public services, the more severe the gap between the rich and poor gets. Furthermore, the number of rich people actually diminishes. What does that tell you? They're conditionally linked. The more the government privatizes or deregulates, the greater the number of people in this country who get screwed. The rich tell the population wonderful lies — of a society of owners or a society with more freedom — but, in the end, the people who prosper from this type of paradigm, with rare exception, are those who are already on top.

“See, what the oligarchy wants is simple: the continued exploitation of the environment and those who are not within their ranks. The reason for this is very simple: they benefit from this system immensely. And though this trend may be more obvious in terms of the world, in terms of imperialism and the disparities of wealth between first- and third-world nations, it is becoming increasingly evident within the domestic realm, too: the middle class is evaporating; the wealthy not only have more wealth, but more power; the poor not only have less wealth, but less power. So we do not live in a democracy or a republic. The accoutrement of power into the hands of a limited minority is an oligarchy. And when wealth determines the chairs of the oligarchy, it is called a plutocracy.

“Lenin believed that the so-called vanguard of the proletariat would serve as the leadership against the powerful minority, but the majority of radicals in today's society exist within the insular culture of the university, a culture which prides itself on being leftist and progressive, but fails to mention the obvious fact that it is elitist, and the less obvious fact that its pacifism is nothing more than apathy in drag.

“So they are not the vanguard; they are their own class with their own class interests. This is the difference between an academic and an intellectual. An intellectual lives outside of the university. And such people have become harder and harder to come by. You can forget this, living in New York, but it's true. According to Rushdie, they all went into marketing and advertising. I’m hoping it’s a joke, what Rushdie said, but I can’t help but notice that, ever since the sixties, it keeps getting worse. So there's fewer independent intellectuals, the academic community has become stagnant, and the student movement contains nothing but students.” He notices a look. “The students used to be a huge political force. During the Russian revolutions — the one in nineteen-oh-five, especially — the students played a primary role in organizing strikes and demonstrations in the factories. The American student movement, however, abandoned the workers in the sixties because they considered, and still do consider, the workers to be socially regressive — we have done nothing to repair the Wallace/McGovern divide that existed thirty-five years ago. And the movement suffered as a consequence. They are no longer taken seriously because they are a demographic so distinct from the one whose interests they claim to be fighting for. It's not that I'm saying that student radicalism is completely impotent; an active, radical underground does still exist. The problem is that it's influence, even on college campuses, has diminished significantly, and its inadequacies were very obvious after the invasion of Iraq, when virtually all of the kids simply threw out their NO BLOOD FOR OIL signs, and went back to class.

“The labor movement, on the other hand, has not only diminished in strength, it has pretty much imploded on itself because it lacks competent, uncorrupted leadership. Just look to Chicago. The place is a fucking cesspool of corruption, and it seriously hinders the credibility of leftists or anyone claiming to be pro-union.