The Mover - Part 3f

BIC was a lucky man in a lot of ways.  Sure, he was smart.  Yet he didn't hesitate to cut and paste other peoples writing, then rearrange it a bit and post it as his own.  He got called on a few times but he and everyone else shrugged it off. The people calling him on it didn't understand how many of his readers had done the same thing at some point in their lives. With them it was the thought that counted.  One of the little gems he stole that resonated with me was this one:

"From whatever angle you approach it, the present offers no way out. This is not the least of its virtues. From those who seek hope above all, it tears away every firm ground. Those who claim to have solutions are contradicted almost immediately. Everyone agrees that things can only get worse. “The future has no future” is the wisdom of an age that, for all its appearance of perfect normalcy...

There will be no social solution to the present situation. First, because the vague aggregate of social milieus, institutions, and individualized bubbles that is called ...“society,” has no consistency. Second, because there’s no longer any language for common experience. And we cannot share wealth if we do not share a language. 

...The questions of “pensions,” of “job security,” of “young people” and their “violence” can only be held in suspense while the situation these words serve to cover up is continually policed for signs of further unrest. Nothing can make it an attractive prospect to wipe the asses of pensioners for minimum wage.  Those who have found less humiliation and more advantage in a life of crime than in sweeping floors will not turn in their weapons, and prison won’t teach them to love society... And finally, no guaranteed income granted the day after a quasi-uprising will be able to lay the foundation of a new New Deal, a new pact, a new peace. The social feeling has already evaporated too much for that."

He rewrote it of course. Way too many big words in it for his average reader.  Hell, I had to read it twice. I liked the original better.

BIC caught the wave.  I knew there was a wave coming. I just hadn't figured out what I was going to do about. BIC had. Well, he had some ideas.  What happened was the economy went down the freaking toilet.  Every increase in the unemployment rate got him more eyeballs.  We were still in the first inning or two when I met him and I don't think anyone had an idea about how bad it was really going to get.  Nor how long it was going to take to get there.  The doomers expected an instantaneous crash. They wanted the economy to bake and then explode like a burrito left to long in a 7-11 microwave.  Instead it slow cooked. Real slow. That was fine. We needed the time. I needed the time.


source for the above quote.