KOCH-HEADS: The Worst Addiction Part II

[yoyossarian]

Great talent tends to skip a generation; for every Julian Lennon or Charlie Sheen, there are dozens
of not-so-special progeny of the talented who never make much of a mark, or not much of a decent mark,
at any rate. If you doubt what I say, just look at Hank Williams, then look at Hank Williams Jr.

Genius is even rarer, and simply doesn't repeat in the same bloodline; it is too complex an equation,
the rare mix of positive AND negative characteristics that somehow balance out in a crazy, unexpected
harmony and result in someone with immense gifts to share with the world. Genius simply CANNOT be inherited.

However, a LOT of the money a person of great talent or even genius can accumulate through the free
exercise of such gifts in a society such as ours CAN be inherited. Unfortunately.



Old money is the bane of man's entire existence. It is the greatest source of mischief (and I mean
that in the darkest sense of the word, i.e. EVIL) that we have ever been prey to.

Old money is vested in incompetent hands, again and again, through inheritance, down through the generations...
and the damage this does to world culture is simply incalculable.

To inherit vast wealth is to receive great power that one has done NOTHING of merit to deserve.

I don't really know much about the Koch Brothers' Daddy... perhaps he wasn't such a nice guy himself. Maybe
he inherited much of his own startup capital from HIS dad... I don't know, and it doesn't much matter in
this discussion.

What DOES matter, what is absolutely de rigeur here is a basic recognition of the basic and quite universal fact
that the guy who FIRST creates and accumulates great wealth through his own creativity or intelligence or
diligent effort is usually NOT a total dick; usually he's an entrepeneur of some sort, with a strong will to find a way
to share something of value with the world... but sadly, he has NO WAY to pass down the vision, insight, capacity for
hard work, hard-learned patience or hard-won mastery of some important discipline that made his own fortune possible
in the first place, to his beloved children.

No matter how he tries, he cannot pass on whatever combination of talents or virtues or specialized vision possessed,
along with fortunate winds and Swiss timing that somehow came together in him, in that indefinable frisson of Fate, of
kismet, and enabled that vast fortune to take seed and grow.

In the future, if there is a future, we really should think about setting the inheritance tax a LOT higher.
Like maybe 99.9% in the case of huge fortunes.

Evil trust fund babies are devouring our world. The Kochs are only two of the biggest and most obnoxious of these
creatures currently murdering all life on earth...

Hell, they probably don't even mean to. They're just ignorant. They know not what they do. They're tiny children
flying about in rocket cars, simply because Daddy left the keys in the ignition when he passed away.

It's obvious. Just look at it. Everything they touch turns to shit. Too much power, in the hands of people
who never had any necessity to develop talent or vision or true mastery of any difficult discipline. And why
would they? They are utterly insulated from life's necessities, from any real need to learn or grow through
pain and difficulty... and necessity is the mother of invention, as has so often been observed.

10 years ago I wrote an article for the Duluth Reader called The Worst Addiction,
which is now more timely than ever. You might want to check it out, if further elaboration is needed--and there's a
lotta good yoks and larfs interspersed within the overall cold-and-black-as-deep-space prophetic apocalyptic narrative.

Everything I wrote there seemed so obvious to me, even back then... yet still I hear the same old memes about how we have to
give the markets greater certainty by ending all taxation of the wealthy, now and forevermore. That the only way to fix everything
now is to spoil the super-spoiled even further, until they destroy all life on earth--and sure, THAT oughta fix it!

And still I hear regular folks say, "Why would you stand in the way of people leaving their loved ones their fortune?
If I could, I'd leave my kids TRILLIONS! You're MEAN! You fucker! NO ONE should have to suffer in this world!"... but if you
think about it even a LITTLE, actually, a little suffering is good for the soul, y'know? REALLY. It builds character,
it helps develop strong bodies and minds, it is absolutely necessary for the development of true empathy--cuz you can't feel
others' suffering if you've never known any of your own.

The middle class has gotten so soft and thoughtless in these last 40 years or so... not spoiled like the rich,
but spoiled enough to have lost sight of the most basic fundamentals of living... and now, since no one in America
wants to acknowledge the other end of the dynamic, no one sees the obvious staring them in the face, and it is this:

Anyone waiting for the super-rich to come to their senses, anyone asking "Why won't they realize the great
injustice of what they're doing? When will they wake up?", anyone with ANY HOPE remaining that these power-people
can EVER be reasoned with is in for a long, LONG, LONNNNNNNNG wait.

Because the wealthy know almost NOTHING about pain, or struggle, or the need for patience or understanding or real
cooperation between equals with shared goals in a difficult world. They have NO IDEA what we're talking about.

Power is the Worst Addiction, because you just can't do an effective intervention on a madman in a titanium robot suit, hopped
up on his own titanic ego and good fortune, one who has NEVER known hunger or cold or rejection or challenge or real want or real fear,
one who owns everything and knows NOTHING, one who has NEVER had to commiserate or compromise or lose badly or struggle
to understand another's viewpoint...

And, very likely nowadays, at least with SOME of these guys, one who has long ago hidden small nuclear weapons in key
spots all over their own country, just in case someone somewhere SOMEHOW actually DOES manage to get the drop on them at
any given instant.

Y'know. Like Cheney did.

Cheney doesn't have a heart anymore, not even a Jarvik. He's got a RED BUTTON implanted in his chest.

Cuz if he can't have EVERYTHING, then NO ONE can have ANYTHING. EVER AGAIN.

GAME OVER, MAN. GAME OVER.

Goddammit. I'm GLAD about OWS, I really am. A breath of fresh air, for the first time in years and years. And I do try to
be hopeful, I always try... but shit, I dunno anymore.

I sure wish we'd started fightin' these guys about three decades ago, when we still had the tiniest little sliver of
an actual chance in hell.

[randr]

1. Kochroaches--All of them

[dtexdem]

2. Ooh, birth defects:

those silver spoons were supposed to be in their mouths. No wonder they became Koch addicts. ;-)

[yoyossarian]

4. Haha! I hadn't thought of it that way!

I was thinkin' they were born the usual way, spoons in mouth, but that they switched 'em just to show
the world how "creative" they are, just like Daddy; I mean, note how proud they look, especially Davey-Boy...

But that's about as truly creative as these two lucky lil' losers will ever get...

Then again, I shouldn't say that... I mean, who knows what OTHER orifices those spoons have explored???

Yeeks!

[dogknob]

3. K & R

[yoyossarian]

5. Kick

n/t