Capitalist Idea
Yesterday, my Webmaster posted an article by George Jonas on my website:
I read it because I enjoy George Jonas. For some reason, his egregious perspective doesn't raise my hackles the way, say, Mark Steyn's or David Warren's does. And I usually come away from the column knowing some historical nugget about Eastern Europe I wouldn't otherwise know.
Also, one of my best friends is Hungarian, as is George Jonas, and she recently completed her Doctorate on Modern Pornography - so I'm used to that sort of fatalistic, matter of nasty fact, oppressive reality, unbearable lightness of being perspective on all things life, sex and death. Not necessarily in that order, either...
In fact, being of Scottish Presbyterian stock, myself, I find it mildly comforting. Happy, fun people burden me with despair for the future and make me feel like I'm living life all wrong and ass backwards and that it might be about more than just "Work Hard, Then Die" - even if it shouldn't be, as John Knox would most certainly remind me if here were here and not burning hard and fast and forever down in Hell for pointing his finger at everybody else, thereby breaking the Commandment that says, "Thou Shalt Not Point Thy Finger For It Is Rude".
That kind of pressure I do not need, thank you very much. I'm good with "Work Hard, Then Die". Finally. And it's taken half a lifetime to get to that level of joy and acceptance in being alive and well and living wherever.
Indeed, my Hungarian friend is so reliably stalwart in the face of hope, and so completely takes the edge off optimism, (leaving a comfortable "so be ittedness" for us to bask in during our all too rare these days get togethers), that George Jonas doesn't quite cut if for me sometimes. It's like he's gone giddy in old age, or something. Heck, my friend's father was one of very few people in the world to actually die from Mad Cow disease. So unless George Jonas can manage to spontaneously combust - she's ahead in the "what are you going to do except suck it up and keep on grinding" department.
By the by, she's a socialist and votes NDP.
Yes indeed, I can react to George Jonas with a certain joie de vivre that I can't muster for other rightwing lunatics in our midst.
Certainly, though, he comes by his understanding of totalitarian regimes honestly. But, I know another Hungarian refugee who votes Liberal for the same honest understanding of totalitarian regimes. Albeit, she's a she. And a feminist. An environmentalist, too - to complete the axis of evil.
Yup. She escaped Hungary only to become George Jonas' 2nd worst fear - a Liberal voter in Canada. (An NDP voter in Canada being his worst fear, I guess. Someone like me - not that I pay much attention to environmentalists, as I'll point out later in my entry. Someone like my other Hungarian friend, too - who does pay attention to environmentalists.)
Anyway after I read through the column (and seriously, why must our columnists keep on pumping it out until they die?) - just for fun, I played "word switch-a-roo". Just take any sentence at random and replace George Jonas' pet peeves with your own pet peeves. For instance, I did it with this sentence:
"Both matriarchy and environmentalism combined mysticism with a quasi-scientific stance, much like fascism and communism did. Like the older totalitarian ideologies, they were based on partial truths and appealed not only to the worst but also to the best side of our nature."
And now here it is with the words switch-a-rooed:
Both patriarchy and capitalism combined religion with a quasi-scientific stance, much like fascism and communism did. Like the newer totalitarian ideologies, they were based on partial truths and appealed not only to the worst but also to the best side of our nature.
Fun, eh? Anyway, the piece really did get me thinking about the preachiness (not to mention - wealth) of environmentalists - all of a sudden - and I have to admit I find it almost as egregious as the preachiness of most rightwing lunatics, which, alarmingly enough, puts me in agreement with George Jonas. I mean, if they're not preaching to the converted, they're preaching to people who don't live nearly the environmentally devastating lifestyles that they do, as witness Exhibit A and the only exhibit necessary to drown out anything anybody who flies anywhere has to say about the environment to those of us who confine ourselves to telling our kids to cut down their showing times from 45 minutes to 5 or we'll have to move to a van down by the river:
See, THAT'S where I would take issue with the monied class telling the rest of us how we need to reduce our carbon footprints to save the environment. Totalitarianism? Sorry, George. It's plain old, same old capitalism that's the bossy boots here. Wealthy people will make money from hedge funds and carbon credit trading WHILE FLYING ALL OVER THE WORLD TO DO IT - and it won't matter what the rest of us do in between because those flights undo it all anyway and we'll be stuck buying our way out of their pile of carbon emissions because that's what we've always done - clean up the messes of wealthy capitalists.
It's capitalism without consequences for capitalists, George. Like I said: Plain old, same old. That's the problem here. Besides, if feminism and environmentalism were really at fault, there wouldn't be all kinds of money to be made by already rich people all of a sudden from environmentalism - now would there?
That's right - no. No there wouldn't. You can tell the absence of both REAL feminism and REAL environmentalism by the absence of money. So, relax, dude. It's still your Peeps in charge of it all.
