But now, back to the regular grind and armed with a fresh freelancedness, I am going to blog. But what about? It occurs to me that I have not exhausted the supply of topics I was allotted for the year 2018! So it is with great rejoicing that I unpack the fresh list of stale topics that I will re-varnish for the new year! Today's topic will have a familiar ring of novelty to it, no doubt.
I've recently been reading Aristophanes. No kidding. I read in spurts. I go a few months hardly reading anything, then I suddenly read a book in a couple of days. I re-re-read Slaughterhouse Five, so I will most likely allude to that classic before this post is dead. So it goes...
But back to Aristophanes, this is something I plucked from the pages of a Penguin Classic reprint of stuff he was writing 400 years before Christ for crying out loud:
Oh bee that so often in search of more honey
Alights upon flowers all teeming with money,
I wish that as fast as you suck the cash up
You would puke it all out so the People could sup.
This was taken from his play, "The Knights," which is a political satire, which most comedies of the era had to be. So he's not talking about bees. This COULD more accurately be applied to a PEE, (Pee OTIS (the nickname a favourite witticist of mine gave to Trump after the hookers and the peeing and the paying and the glavin...)). A description of the early Greek dribble, trickle, chuckle down effect I suppose. The political "trickle-down effect" was given 2500 years or so to marinate before the US republicans re-subjected the People to it and it shouldn't be long before it is rightfully abandoned, mocked and satirized all over again. Despite the support Trump still manages to get for his efforts to keep it on life support.
It puts me in mind of a book I recently read called Slaughterhouse Five. (ALREADY two references!) Failed sci-fi author of the book, Kilgore Trout, who I wish wasn't fictional, wrote about a money tree to which people flocked and fought to the death in order to harvest it's "leaves." The dead bodies of the unsuccessful proved to be excellent fertilizer for the money tree.
I'm not so sure my work here qualifies as a good example of the trickle-down effect since I write the lessons and I teach them as well. My employer doesn't do much I couldn't easily and in most cases more efficiently do myself but they get almost all the money for it. So maybe I AM the money tree or the money flower. I think I'd choose to be the tree. At least I'd get the nourishing entertainment of seeing the greedy murdered. A few would steal my leaves, but many MANY more would suffer ghastly deaths at my roots. So I'd have that goin' for me.
Not to Trumpishly flog a dying horse like he's been cropping the reverse Robin Hood political strategy, but there was an interesting theory put forward in a book I recently read in two days called Slaughterhouse Five. Let me give a direct quote:
"American inward blame for being poor is a treasure for their rich who do less for their poor than any other ruling class."
Since it was written before the explosion of Chinese capitalism, we can forgive its inaccuracy. The Chinese have left America in the dust in this regard. But could this be the mental anguish, the clinical pathology, the psychosis that leads to such abhorrent behaviour in our world? More to my point today, could social shame heaped so high on the poor (and accolades, respect and reverence so lavished upon the rich) be the impetus (impeti?) behind individual efforts to rise or stay out of poverty even if it requires outlandishly poor life decisions?
Why don't we examine some recent examples of such life decisions?
Maybe the best would be this joker:
Robert Lloyd Schellenberg thought, "I know how to make my fortune - drugs in China!" "Zero drug toleration policy China!" Now he's getting the death penalty. The illegal drug trade hadn't been working for him in Canada. 11 times convicted and twice incarcerated for drug charges, the Canadian cops were onto him. "In China," he may have thought, "they probably aren't such buzz kills." He might have heard about making meth for thousands in China and selling it for millions in some nearby, first world country like, for instance, Australia. Or maybe he went for some other reason. He didn't seem to have put much thought into the actual transfer of the meth... two hundred and twenty fucking two kilos of it... out of the country and then into another. My understanding is he and some "translator" friends were trying to hide it in tires? Well one of them actually did some translating. He understood that narking on his cohorts translated into NOT getting the death penalty for himself. So they all got busted and Schellenberg was sentenced to 15 years in prison and a $22,000 fine.
Now even if his lawyer was into the Baijiu the night before, he would have recognized that this is about the lightest sentence he could have possibly hoped for. Do the time and shut your mouth would be a wise counsel's advice. But maybe his lawyer was Rudi Giuliani because nobody advised him against appealing. So he did. This was not just a bad life decision, it could end up being a life-ending choice.
Because the daughter of King Huawei the Irritable of China is not subject to the same laws as regular old Bob Schellenberg, China will kill this guy rather than allow Princess Huawei's highly revered and respected (and filthy rich) ass to touch the defendant's chair of any American courtroom.
I am going to ask you something impossible, but do your best: Try to imagine this story from the point of view of the average Chinese person. A Canadian, and I mean ANY Canadian, is considered rich by a huge majority of Chinese people. To give you some idea, I'll share an absolutely hilarious stat that is probably roundly accepted in China: Xi Jin Ping's yearly salary is, coincidentally, $22,000. While that may truthfully be what he declares on his tax forms, ain't no way Emperor for Life Xi is slummin' outside the bills! By "bills" I mean billions. But I bet there are many Chinese who believe he makes 22 grand a year because that's WAY more than they pull down.
Schellenberg had worked in the Alberta oil patch so the 22 grand was probably paid immediately. Plus when you consider how much it would cost, even in China, to produce 222 kilos of meth... not to mention the tires... this dude is outlandishly wealthy to the dollar-a-day workers of China. 2420 yuan a month works out to $11.86 a day folks. That's minimum wage. And the Chinese don't work our luxurious 8-hour days. Like most stats from China, it's hugely exaggerated in favour of China. There are still a lot of people (in the country where you'd be a bad businessman to pay minimum wage) making a dollar a day, not a dollar an hour. China has tons of money, but it's nowhere near a rich country yet.
Their money is all concentrated in a few bank accounts, and the people who have Huawei-type money are god-like in the eyes of the average Chinese person. Even Schellenberg is rich! A billion people probably found out about this story and said, "If only I had the resources to cook up 222 kg. of meth, then I'd show society I'm not the mangy dog they think I am!" "Why, by selling 222 kg. of meth I'll kill people and destroy lives but I'll get mad respect like Sabrina Meng Wanzhou. I might even get married and have 20 kids."
Strangely enough, Schellenberg, who is super rich in China, was probably thinking, "By selling the 222 kg. of meth I cooked up I'll kill people and destroy lives, but I'll get mad respect like Sabrina Meng Wanzhou. I might even get laid." Yes, even in Canada there are still a lot of the if-yer-not-rich-yer-not-trying-hard-enough people loads of whom did NOT get rich by trying hard. And for some reason, I think because they're rich, people still give a rat's ass what these patrician shitheads think. So people like Schellenberg get down on themselves, even in Canada, and make insane mistakes because they are desperate to escape the ignominy of poverty or at least what they perceive as such. He should have had me for his lawyer! If there's any place they'd go for the "inward blame" defence, surely it'd be China!
Now just think of how much more intense the depression and desperation of poverty is in really poor countries! And now, imagine the exponentially worse situation in China.
In response to the mysterious arrests of a Canadian diplomat and businessman and this kangaroo court that swiftly (and without even viewing new evidence in the case I've heard) issued the death penalty to Schellenberg, Justin Trudeau issued a travel warning for Canadians in China to beware of their arbitrarily enforced (or not enforced) laws. I can tell you from personal experience that this warning is long overdue. But it appears the arbitrary nature of what laws some corrupt individuals choose to enforce or ignore at their pleasure extends into internationally agreed upon restrictions as well.
Meng Wanzhou was arrested for violating international sanctions against Iran. She lied to some banks. I'm sure she'll get a fine that amounts to chump change for her and be on her way back to China if she ever ends up being tried for her crime. But what about this guy:
Dr. He Jiankui decided that internationally imposed laws against genetic editing, the fact that the process he used, known as CRISPR, is nowhere even close to fully tested, and it's Franken-dangerous, were not reasons enough to stop him from doing what he knew to be unethical and wrong. Now, there may be some who believe his removal of the CCR5 gene, which is a doorway for the HIV virus to find its way into the human genome, could be considered a humanitarian or even moral crime. Considering the father of the twins, Lulu and Nana, had the virus, and the parents gave permission, was this some kind of a genetic mercy killing? ((and very parenthetically, since the killing of a human is homicide, and the killing of a baby is infanticide, then is the killing of the CCR5 gene to be considered genocide?))
I briefly gave that some thought, but then my cynical mind wandered into the astronomical. I calculated how much a parent with any disease, virus or negative trait that is transferable to their child, who wanted a healthy child like all parents do, would pay to the one known man in the WHOLE WORLD who has the ability to ensure their baby's health. CHA CHING! (that will be the name of the OTHER Frankenbaby Dr. He hath wrought)
Now Dr. He is not a poor Chinese, dollar-a-day guy. He's a doctor. And he said his secret work was all personally funded. But he's not super rich and he was, until now, totally unknown in his field. Whether legit or not, he can certainly make a piles of money now! And was his motivation to escape the mediocrity of the unexceptionally rich? He certainly wouldn't be considered poor in China, and surely as a doctor he got respect, but nowhere NEAR the idol worship an underground designer baby business could get you! Not to mention the Niagara Falls of cash that would wipe away any inward blame he might have felt for not measuring up on some scale of wealth.
Anyway, it's getting close to bed time for me so I have to wrap this up abruptly. My final word on the matter is simply, the rich are destroying the world for more and more of the earth's resources that they need the least of anyone. So before anyone dedicates (wastes) his/her life trying to join the ranks of the super rich, hear this: If people look down on me or you for not being rich, they should know this: it is far better to feel an unwarranted guilt or shame of poverty than the justified guilt and shame of greed. And no amount of money can diminish it. Why do you think so many rich people are miserable and so many poor people aren't?
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