July 14, 2011
Thessaloniki, Greece
Last night I had quite an unexpected surprise.
You see, at my hotel here in Thessaloniki, there’s a delegation from some group of the European Parliament called the Committee on Regional Development. They’re here to help… Hey, isn’t that what they always say? The Committee wants to supervise Greece working its way out of the debt crisis and make sure that Greece’s poor are getting the support they need.
The hotel’s restaurant was filled with these sycophantic parasites last night– an entire room full of people with a superiority complex who think that they are entitled to make decisions about other people’s lives and money.
They sat at dinner drinking fine wine and polishing up steak tartare making proud, bombastic proclamations about the virtues of foreign aid, the democratic process, and the great progress of Greece’s austerity measures.
Coincidentally, not 300 meters down the road, a campsite has been gathering for economic refugees, Thessaloniki’s former middle class that has been vanquished by the crisis. Some of the children swung by the restaurant’s outdoor terrace begging for change, only to be waved off by one of the delegate’s extended pinkie fingers as he sipped his wine.
It couldn’t have been more ironic… the perfect image of what passes for democracy today, right here in the country that invented it.
Today’s democracy is nothing more that pseudo-authoritarian rule by an elite few, executed by legions of self-deluding freeloaders who have convinced themselves that their current bureaucratic roles are both necessary and honorable… as well as a stepping stone into the next job which will be even more necessary and honorable.
With each successive position up the bureaucratic ladder comes more power, more privilege… until they actually expect to be called “The Honorable…” so and so, or “His Excellency” so and so, etc.
My dictionary suggests a few definitions for ‘honor’. One of them refers to a person’s chastity… and I doubt it applies in this case given the political establishment’s Twitter record. The other definition says, “conferred as a distinction, especially an official award for bravery or achievement.”
In the United States, they must be confusing the term ‘achievement’ with ‘destroying the economy and culture of the formerly most powerful nation on earth.’ President Obama is apparently so honorable that he can’t even be bothered to hold negotiations anymore about debt compromise, arguing that Ronald Reagan wouldn’t be doing that…
He seems more concerned about his esteem and rank being respected than facing the grim facts of economic reality.
Simultaneous on Capitol Hill, Comrade Bernanke sent the dollar plummeting once again. Just to put things in perspective, the entire eurozone is on the precipice of a meltdown, and the euro had been falling for days. The second this man opened his mouth, the dollar plunged… indicating that investors would rather take a chance on European insolvency than Bernanke.
It was truly pathetic… and yet another example of what passes for democracy today: One man who has never been elected is essentially given control of the money supply to do with it as he deems best in his sole discretion.
All in all, as usual, it’s going to come down to the taxpayers. The bureaucrats will go on enjoying their steak tartare and ignoring the huddled masses. The politicians will go on posturing over title. The central bankers will keep making interest free loans to their friends and destroying their currencies. We get stuck with the fallout.
In the end, the governments will make it a matter of national security and patriotism, ensuring that we ‘do our duty to the nation’ by coughing up more of our livelihood. I stumbled across this WW2 propaganda video a few days ago in which Daffy Duck tells us all that it’s our patriotic duty to give as much as possible to the government.
Should we expect a new video soon suggesting that it’s our patriotic duty to buy Treasury bonds…? In what passes for democracy today, you can bet on it.
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