Thursday, December 27, 2007

The Classlessness of Classless Classes

Dear George,

The day will come, far off in the foggy future, when you will be heralded as the man who brought to completion America’s democratic revolution. Currently, you are reviled as a destroyer of democracy by those who do not understand what contemporary democracy is all about. Your critics still cling to the idea that in a democracy, the government reflects and responds to the will of the people.

That is wrong, wrong, wrong!

The democracy we practice is one that celebrates our freedom of consumption. We are a land where people are free to acquire as many goods as their lines of credit will allow. Bathed in the light of this most perfect freedom, the public has neither the need nor the desire for political freedom. Civic participation cuts into the public’s mall time and is actually counterproductive because the time spent at town meetings and working on campaigns adversely affects retail sales.

The classless classes of a consumer society are what give it its democratic gloss even though the classless classes are as stratified as ever. Console lights blink equally for the rich and the poor, and each console is uniformly worthless, regardless of individual income. This is why the classes in a consumptive society are classless and why such a society is a perfect democracy no matter how authoritarian it is.

Besides, there are no classes in America, only diverse levels of income. Roughly speaking, there are three. Those with a deficit income can barely keep food on their tables or roofs over their heads. Those with a sufficient income are able to do so provided nobody gets sick. Those with a surplus income have more than enough.

There you have it, George, a numb-nutted outline of America’s classless system created by a numb-nutted simpleton for other numb-nutted simpletons. With a stroke of the pen, poverty in America is no more. Now there are only those who are able to get by on a deficit income. It is all in the numbers.

Besides, what meaning can class have in a society where every man, no matter how deficit his income, can have his toy. Our freedom is defined by our consumer debt. It doesn’t get much freer than that.

Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones

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