Gluttony still exists while going rather unrecognized and unnamed. There is a food tv channel. On many a restaurant show, we see obese cooks and obese patrons stuffing themselves. Yesterday, it was a hamburger that uses 2 one-pound slabs of hamburger and then adds cheese. This huge thing takes an assistant to hold while the eater bites off chunks. This gluttonous concoction was celebrated by the show.
Vote buying used to be an open practice in America. Has it disappeared? Not on your life. Politicians regularly buy votes in our age using “programs”. First they extort taxes or borrow money. Then they use the funds to attract voters. Extortion, robbery, venality and massive vote buying all occur under our very noses, while going relatively unrecognized and unnamed. These practices in fact are celebrated by the officials and press as being democratic (small d).
This is an age of naming and labeling bad practices so that they won’t seem bad, and naming and labeling good practices as bad.
Fiat money becomes “good”. It’s elastic, while gold money becomes “bad”. It’s inelastic in supply. Wasteful government spending becomes “investment”. A bailout becomes a “stabilization measure”.
The rebranding of anything and everything is the name of the game. There is almost no corner of the vocabulary that is not, cannot, or will not be subject to this corruption.
9:12 am on March 27, 2014
