PaganSquare.com - WitchesAndPagans.com

American Kleptocracy

Why has Luigi Mangione, slayer of healthcare CEO what's-his-name, become a modern-day folk-hero?

Easily told.

He's cute.

Yes, Americans really are this superficial. So were the ancient Greeks.

People love the beautiful. Studies show again and again that the good-looking regularly receive better grades and lighter sentences than the rest of us.

Is this really news to anyone?

People hate the American healthcare industry.

We hate its greed, we hate its unfairness, we hate its untouchability. Get sick, risk financial ruin.

We're sick of a so-called “healthcare” industry that actually prioritizes profit over care.

With its uncaring, (literal) life-and-death power over us all, why in the world wouldn't we?

People hate the corporate takeover of America.

Corporations run America, and we hate it. Why in the world wouldn't we?

It's even official, now that the president elect, himself a convicted criminal, is appointing his fellow kleptocrats to “legally” run things.

Even supposed left-leaning billionaires like Mark Zuckerberg are now lining up to—you'll pardon my Yiddish—lekh Trump im tukhis.*

Of course we hate it.

People are sick of having no recourse.

Americans have lost confidence in a bought-and-paid-for “justice” system from which the wealthy can buy any verdict they like.

When even the Supreme Court is corrupt, what other recourse is there?

@BenjySarlin is right:  Although today Mitt Romney told a crowd in Las Vegas that, "I'm convinced that the path [Obama's] put us on is the path to Europe.  Or, I jokingly say...to California," it's difficult to imagine Obama telling a crowd, even jokingly, that, "I'm convinced that the path Romney would put us on is the path to Mississippi."  And if he did, the outrage would be unending.

Old Dr. Jung was onto something when he wrote about shadows and projection.  For decades, the political Right has loudly insisted that the political Left holds "regular Americans" in contempt.  (They've been admirably vague about precisely who is a "real" American; allows everyone to image that they must be insulting someone else.)  Spiro Agnew announced that Americans who opposed the war in Viet Nam were an "an effete corps of impudent snobs who characterize themselves as intellectuals."  The Moral Majority whipped up lower-income, white Christians by implying that an "immoral minority" of snobby liberals looked down on the "moral majority" as it eroded "American values."  George W. Bush, a child of generations of financial and educational privilege, ran as a brush-clearing Texas rancher with whom you'd love to have a beer, against John Kerry as a rich, "French," jet-skiing (apparently, only rich liberals jet ski) liberal.  (We'll just ignore the fact that Bush bought that ranch just before beginning his political campaign, cleared brush only in front of the media, and sold the ranch immediately upon leaving the White House.)  Despite decades of economic policies that hurt working-class Americans, the Right has been able to paint the Left as made up of arugula-eating, latte-drinking, snobs.

In my last article I proposed to discuss an expression of Loki which tries to avoid the pitfall of declaring to be either for or against this complex and provocative figure. Unfortunately this will entail a bit of self-promotion on my part, because I intend to present and discuss the lyrics to a musical release called Loki Bound, which was released by Milam Records earlier in 2012. Loki Bound was performed by Greed & Rapacity, a band of which I am one half.

Loki Bound is a one-song 30-minute funeral doom metal descent into Loki’s stream of consciousness during his imprisonment by the Aesir, the primary Norse pantheon, for misdeeds real and (possibly) imagined. He lies chained by his son’s intestines to a deeply buried boulder, while a serpent drips venom upon him. His loyal wife, Sigyn, catches the poison in a cup, but when she goes to empty the cup, the poison falls on Loki’s skin. His agonized convulsions are the root of earthquakes, and it is fair to say that Loki is a deity of psychological tectonics.