The alpha monkeys are playing dumb. If they’d studied evolutionary psychology they’d know that equality is in our blood. The protests are not going to stop.
Writing for The New York Times, Nelson Schwartz and Eric Dash report:
“Most people view it as a ragtag group looking for sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll,” said one top hedge fund manager.
“It’s not a middle-class uprising,” adds another veteran bank executive. “It’s fringe groups. It’s people who have the time to do this.”
Well of course they have time, you fool, you destroyed their jobs playing king of the hill with their pension fund money, their 401K money, and their mortgages! Here’s another one of these self-deluded buffoons!
“Who do you think pays the taxes?” said one longtime money manager. “Financial services are one of the last things we do in this country and do it well. Let’s embrace it. If you want to keep having jobs outsourced, keep attacking financial services. This is just disgruntled people.”
Well, do YOU pay taxes? Warren Buffett says he pays at a lower rate than his secretary. What about you? And just what do you mean this country does financial services well? You guys just blew up the WELL three years ago! What you do well, very well, is get the government to pay you for all the destruction you’ve wrought!
This Midas goes on to say:
He added that he was disappointed that members of Congress from New York, especially Senator Charles E. Schumer and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, had not come out swinging for an industry that donates heavily to their campaigns. “They need to understand who their constituency is,” he said.
Yep, that’s it! He bought the government and he wants it to stay bought. And I’ll just bet that Schumer and Gillibrand want to stay bought, too. Maybe that’s why this chump was talking to a Times reporter, so he could get in a shout out to his homies/lackies in Congress, reminding them to keep in their place and mind their betters.
“Wall Street continues to underestimate the degree of anger among citizens and voters,” said Douglas J. Elliott, a former investment banker who is now a fellow at the Brookings Institution. For the most part, bankers say that they see the protests as a reaction to the high unemployment and slow growth that has plagued the American economy since the recession and the financial crisis of 2008. Despite all the placards and chants plainly indicating otherwise, some bankers suggest that deep down, the protesters are not really all that mad at them.
Well, of course they’re mad about not having jobs. But anger over jobs has reminded us of something that goes deeper than that, much much deeper. These guys are out of touch; they don’t have a clue.
Equality is in Our Blood
You see, a sense of economic justice is part of human nature. That’s what evolutionary psychologist Christopher Boehm argued in Hierarchy in the Forest: The Evolution of Egalitarian Behavior. Yes, we’ve got status hierarchies in our blood too. We respect the Alpha monkey. But that old old monkey stuff is overlaid with egalitarian human behavior, and that’s what turned clever apes into human being.
It’s equality that makes us human. When these bankers do their Alpha monkey act, asserting their superiority over us, well, that’s precisely what they’re doing, acting like animals. And now that their cover is blown – the emperor has no clothes! – we’re going to keep on their case, asserting our equality and our humanity.
The injustice has ALWAYS bothered us, ALWAYS. But we didn’t say anything because we figured maybe the jobs would return and, secretly, real secretly, we’ve been hoping that one day we too would hit the BIG ONE and get invited into the luxury condos in the Tall Towers. But no more. The kids have sounded the alarm: the emperor has no clothes! the emperor has no clothes!
Do the Right Thing
We may be poor, but we’re as good as you! Pay attention!
Do the right thing, pay your taxes, stop playing with our money, and, you know, actually lend some of that money to small businesses. Instead of buying crappy art for millions of dollars, why don’t you buy nutritious lunches for some school kids? How about investing some of that money in permaculture, or sustainable energy.
Make no mistake, though, we aren’t going to stop. Now that we see and hear how angry we all are, we aren’t going to stop. Not until we’ve changed the direction of history.
