(
Cross-posted at My Left Wing)
Hillary's taking heat for suggesting the Republican leadership runs the House of Representatives like an ante-bellum tobacco plantation. I guess she meant the Republicans lord their authority over the Democrats in an over-the-top way squelching dissent and debate in a supposedly free society. I don't think she meant plantation master Tom Delay regularly rapes house slave Nancy Pelosi or field-slave Denny Kucinich was stripped naked and beaten to within an inch of his life.
I don't think Senator Clinton meant to be taken literally. Her words in front of a predominantly African/American audience were meant to make the point of GOP totalitarianism; not that Republicans believed in slavery; though the difference between the two is moot.
I guess Hillary should have said the Republicans run the House like Brezhnev ran the Politburo.
And really, when you look at it, the Republicans are being quite short-sighted. The comparison between the House and a Plantation is quite a compliment. Hillary didn't mean it that way because Hillary Clinton has the imagination of soap on a rope. But the reality is that the Plantation is a model of Capitalism at its most efficient and successful.
Remember the Company Store? Sure you do, if only from history books. Back in the day the Company provided a job, food and shelter. You paid the company for your food and shelter from the meager wages of your job. Most folks owed the company money because the food and shelter cost more than an average employee was paid. So back in the day, most companies held their employees hostage, sort of like indentured servants, while they slaved away to pay for the privilege of working themselves to death.
And they called that progress. After all, it wasn't slavery.
Human history has been the tale of one group of people getting another group of people to do what they're told.
The second oldest profession is prostitution. Guess the first?
Slavery is a human institution. The Master/Slave system built the Pyramids, Rome and the American South. I'm not saying its right; I'm saying the road from ignorance to enlightenment is a long one.
The `problem' with slavery is that it always leads to the enlightenment of the slave before the master. It doesn't take a slave long to understand the key to humanity is reciprocity. You scratch my back and I'll scratch yours. But the master, he can't see anything wrong for the longest time. The master enjoys long island iced teas and on-demand servicing of his perverse peccadilloes. The master watches the sunset over his domain, raises a toast to heaven and praises the Lord for His wisdom.
You know, I heard the other day; on Martin Luther King Day they were talking about how much progress African Americans had made in wage parity with whites over the years. Back in the 1950s African Americans made about 40% that of whites. And today? Well, golly, African Americans have worked themselves all the way up to 80% of a white man's pay.
And all I can think is in the last 150 years African Americans have gone from 3/5ths to 4/5ths of human being. Congratulations you guys! We're all looking forward to 2150 when we welcome you into full-fledged humanity with the secret handshake and decoder ring.
I guess it is no wonder folks become defensive when compared to a slaveholder. In spite of the proud tradition, slavery just isn't chic anymore. Slave wages are okay, but slavery is out. Working a ten-year old Salvadoran girl twelve hours a day for a dollar is all right. After all, it's not slavery. She was sent to work by her poor starving illiterate parents. It's not like they didn't have a choice in the matter.
Listen, the point of business is profit. And nothing cuts into profit more than overhead. Slavery is the labor ideal. Men are natural beasts of burden and easily prodded with the right amount of incentive. Slavery is natural. It is no accident Republicans always stand in the way of a minimum wage. They believe the market will set the wage at zero. History shows starving people will fight harder and harder for less and less until they are content to be kept in a cage and work for table scraps.
Hunger is a management tool.
That's why the Republicans are so furious with Hillary Clinton.
She told the truth.
Republicans are anti-union, anti-workers' rights, anti-employee protections and 100% in support of the rape, pillage and plunder of Big Business. Republicans love slavery. They see the virtue of free labor. It's good for the bottom line.
It's not enough Republicans have turned the House into a Whore House. It's not enough Republicans never met a bribe they didn't take. It's not enough Republicans have become the House Slaves for the Money Power.
It's not enough Republicans are fucking liars and hypocrites.
Don't you dare compare them to slave owners, because that hits a little too close to home.
It is quite obvious that Republicans consider themselves Masters of the Universe, but it is equally apparent Republicans are misguided knuckleheads whose only mastery is their delusions of grandeur.
As far as enlightenment is concerned, Republicans still have a long row to hoe.