‘Look both ways before crossing the street.’
The common man lives with ghosts. They’re the ghosts of parents whose children didn’t look both ways.
They whisper the lessons of the dead:
Don’t spend more than you earn.
Say please and thank you.
Mind your own business.
Never eat yellow snow.
The difference between the common man and the elite is that the former believes in following rules; the latter believes it can make them up as it goes along.
We have been exploring a grim subject — the destruction of the middle class. So far, we’ve seen that the elites use inflation like a thief uses a crowbar — to get what belongs to someone else.
It’s not exactly ‘intentional’. A wolf does not eat a lamb with malice aforethought; that’s just the way it works. Inflation wrecks the economy and ‘The People’ who depend on it. So much the better, say the elites; they prefer the poor, who are more easily manipulated…and their votes more cheaply bought.
But there’s more to it than just money. The ruling class has ideas…programs…campaigns. ‘Middle-class values’ often get in the way.
No gains without pains
Yes, the drum to which the common man marches is beaten by the shades, not by the Establishment. The drumbeat of the dead rocks his soul and is imprinted — as common sense — on his instincts. He is a natural ‘conservative’, reluctant to change.
He gets up early. (‘The early bird catches the worm’, he says.)
He gets to work. (‘I learned the value of hard work by working hard’, he explains.)
He saves his money. (‘A penny saved is a penny earned.’)
He is careful not to spend too much. (‘Waste not, want not.’)
He follows the rules, but he can be a threat to the rulers. His ‘common sense’ is often at odds with the elite’s uncommon nonsense. It is common sense to him that ‘you can’t get something for nothing’ and ‘you have to work for what you get’. And yet, the elites offer billions in ‘printing press money’ to tempt him onto the dole. In the COVID hysteria, for example, millions of people earned more from not working than they did on the job.
The deciders believe that the painful lessons of the past no longer matter. Today, we are smarter, or…so they believe, better educated…and more ‘woke’ to the challenges and realities of life in 2022. We know right from wrong…good from bad…Heaven from Hell. Nor do we doubt which side we’re on — we’re always on the side of the angels. No need to ask questions.
The Heaven of today’s ruling classes — for the common man, not for themselves — is a small, energy-efficient apartment in a tight, modern community where you can walk or ride a bicycle to essential services…call each other ‘they’ or another personal pronoun of their choice…and go to great lengths to make sure everyone is equal to everyone else. The swift, for example, shoot themselves in the foot so they can hobble along with the cripples…the smartwatch CNN and FOX News to lower their IQs…and pretty women put bags over their heads so no one gets the wrong idea. Everyone, of course, agrees with everyone else on everything; they call it ‘diversity’.
Modern discomforts
The trouble with the common man is that he doesn’t ‘get it’. He clings to his habits and customs…he looks both ways before crossing the street but doesn’t like being told where to go.
And that is what the elites do.
At Davos — where the rich and famous go in their private jets to shame the common people for using too much fuel — the World Economic Forum has already made it clear where it is headed; in the future, says one of its key videos, ‘you will own nothing, and you will be happy’.
Last week, France’s Finance Minister Elisabeth Borne let ‘The People’ know that they would ‘live better’ once they said ‘au revoir’ to that awful fossil fuel.
In Europe, too, politicians have already proposed to ban single-family homes. They’re not ‘energy efficient’; saving the planet has become a goal far surpassing the comfort of individual families.
But the common man — deplorable! — may not be on the same page. He may not bow his head to Gaia or get on his knees before the diversity gods. Follow him out to the parking lot, and you may find him getting into a big, diesel-gulping pick-up truck rather than a small electric car.
So, if you’re among the elites, you can’t let the common man vote without guidance. His candidates must be chosen for him — carefully nurturing one with money and favourable press…while starving another for funds and making him look like a dangerous moron. Then, just to be sure, make sure the candidates are all dumb rascals so the voter has no real choice. Turn the contest into an idea-free slap-fest. And watch out; he may still vote the ‘wrong’ way.
Be careful taking him out in public, too. He may say the wrong thing!
Doers and shakers
Words evolve with the fads and fantasies of the time. ‘Bum’ is used to describe someone who lived on the streets. It suggested a moral failing — the man had not followed the rules. It was his own damned fault. Then, the term was replaced, in polite, elite society, by ‘homeless person’. It suggested a failing too — but it was not judgmental; he may have had some bad luck. But now, the proper term is ‘unhoused person’ — which suggests that it’s someone else’s fault. Someone somehow had failed to give the man a proper house.
The common man knows a bum when he sees him. And he smells a rat. He digs in his heels from time to time and refuses to go along with the elite’s program. His ‘common sense’ gets in the way of the great improvements the thinkers and do-gooders want to make.
Without the media’s non-stop propaganda, would he want to send his money to keep the war going on in Ukraine? Probably not.
Would he approve of trillion-dollar US deficits and US$31 trillion of debt? Nobody asks.
‘The People’ are easily bamboozled and readily suckered into foolishness. Wave the flag, and they march to murder with nary a doubt. But left alone, they stick to age-old rules. Theirs is a world guided by common civility, common decency, and common sense. You give so that you can take. You drive on the right side of the road. Each man follows the same ‘rules of the road’ but chooses his own destination.
The elite, on the other hand, think they know where he OUGHT to go. The doers and shakers of today have the Truth…the here-and-now, never-before-known Truth about what is important and what is not. They believe they have the right to write new rules…and they’re not going to let any old truths get in their way…or the people who cling to them.
The Middle-Class Delenda Est.
Regards,
 |
Bill Bonner,
For The Daily Reckoning Australia
