Class: Just laying it out there - La Cueva
Re World Cup Final: it could've been much worse when viewing it from the perspective of redistribution of the wealth. Spain, a team that had never been to the finals before, defeating Netherlands, a team that had reached them but never won...
Joe Bageant is an animal the way he lays bare class in the article above. I don't think I've ever described a writer in this jockish way. Even his abundant use of profanity is kind of refreshing considering the gobbledygook we normally get in mainstream economic pieces. Take the opening paragraph.
As an Anglo European white guy from a very long line of white guys, I want to thank all the brown, black, yellow and red people for a marvelous three-century joy ride. During the past 300 years of the industrial age, as Europeans, and later as Americans, we have managed to consume infinitely more than we ever produced, thanks to colonialism, crooked deals with despotic potentates and good old gunboats and grapeshot. Yes, we have lived, and still live, extravagant lifestyles far above the rest of you. And so, my sincere thanks to all of you folks around the world working in sweatshops, or living on two bucks a day, even though you sit on vast oil deposits. And to those outside my window here in Mexico this morning, the two guys pruning the retired gringo's hedges with what look like pocket knives, I say, keep up the good work. It's the world's cheap labor guys like you -- the black, brown and yellow folks who take it up the shorts -- who make capitalism look like it actually works. So keep on humping. Remember: We've got predator drones.
He spares no one and takes no prisoners when it comes to sizing up the current economic situation, even capitalism, although he saves most of his criticism for the financial types, Wall Street. What he doesn't do, though, is suggest what activists can do. But the article is long--about 10 pages--and maybe he'll come back with an equally long article packed with such advice...
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