Democracy Gone Astray

Democracy, being a human construct, needs to be thought of as directionality rather than an object. As such, to understand it requires not so much a description of existing structures and/or other related phenomena but a declaration of intentionality.
This blog aims at creating labeled lists of published infringements of such intentionality, of points in time where democracy strays from its intended directionality. In addition to outright infringements, this blog also collects important contemporary information and/or discussions that impact our socio-political landscape.

All the posts here were published in the electronic media – main-stream as well as fringe, and maintain links to the original texts.

[NOTE: Due to changes I haven't caught on time in the blogging software, all of the 'Original Article' links were nullified between September 11, 2012 and December 11, 2012. My apologies.]

Friday, January 31, 2014

Rich Man Doubles Down On Warning That Poor People Are Basically Nazis

Maybe you thought rich maniac Thomas Perkins was kidding or drunk when he wrote that the Poors were basically Nazis preparing to Holocaust him to death. But no: He has doubled down on this claim in a new email to Bloomberg.

“In the Nazi area it was racial demonization, now it is class demonization,” typed Perkins, according to a Bloomberg article on Monday.

Perkins is also having difficulty understanding why the media is not more concerned about Occupy Wall Street protestors -- who break windows at luxury-car dealerships and Wells Fargo branches, which is exactly like Kristallnacht! -- than about brave wealthy people who discuss important issues, such as whether poor people are really Nazis.

Perkins, co-founder of Silicon Valley venture-capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers, was responding to the uproar he sparked last week when he first wondered out loud -- on the op-ed page of The Wall Street Journal, naturally -- whether the Poors might not all be Nazis.

His comments were so outrageous that even Perkins' fellow rich people recoiled. The firm he founded, Kleiner Perkins, tweeted:

Tom Perkins has not been involved in KPCB in years. We were shocked by his views expressed today in the WSJ and do not agree.

— Kleiner Perkins (@kpcb) January 25, 2014
Perkins did his old firm a giant solid by confirming to Bloomberg that he had long ago left their reservation, emailing that their "philosophies and strategies have drifted so far apart that now my name means little on the door.”

It is easy and fun to make fun of Perkins, whom a French court once convicted of committing manslaughter WITH HIS GODDAMN YACHT and who has written a bodice-ripper called Sex And The Single Zillionaire, which Rupert Murdoch hailed as “Fun, fast -- a great read!"

But to dismiss Perkins as a deranged lunatic is to overlook the fact that he is far from alone. As David Sirota pointed out at Pando Daily, Perkins is just the latest in a long line of rich people comparing progressives to Nazis, part of a widespread campaign to get us all to "pity the billionaire," as author Thomas Frank puts it.

Update: As further evidence that Perkins has lots of company in the Nazi-spotting game, another wealthy venture capitalist, Tim Draper, has ridden to Perkins' rescue, telling Business Insider that Perkins "is a brilliant man, and he is identifying schadenfreude, something that continues to be a thorn in humanity’s side. The bitter taste of envy brings us all down."

Original Article
Source: huffingtonpost.com/
Author: The Huffington Post  |  By Mark Gongloff

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