Tag: exploitation capitalism

Exploitation Capitalism takes more forms than you can imagine. In writing “Clueless Class” I began to brush the surface of just how deep, just how ingrained our thinking is, so much so, that some on the “Left” went ballistic defending their well-to-do Investment Class Liberalism.

Skimming the quagmire that is all things I/P on dKos, and a few other putrid places I loathe to admit being an occasional voyeur to, I ran headlong into one of the biggest mental fortresses that both the left and right share.

In essence? It is the idea that “we” should be able to live where ever “we” want to, and look how much “better off” this place is because of us! It is about “enclaves” and “neighborhoods” and walls, both concrete and economic. It’s about cultural appropriation and cultural segregation. It’s about tourism and settlements, and the exceptionalism so ingrained in our psyches we cannot possibly objectively view the impact of our thinking. Its about gentrification by “cheap living” and ultimately about the colonialist mindset that we damn in history, but refuse to admit is still alive and thriving within our Western Mindset.

It’s mostly about melanin and birds of a feather and cages both illusory and real.

Sometimes the White Man’s Burden is just unbearable. Try explaining that to my Stockholders now. All they want is a bottom line of profit. They don’t understand at times, what we are up against.

Katrina wasn’t enough, you know those levees had to fail for it to be the Perfect Disaster for a nice white Capitalist takeover. It was almost done. Most of the tract houses and apartment buildings are still boarded and abandoned. There were “just enough” people of color left to play for the Tourists on Bourbon. Maybe a couple Chiefs who can still convince themselves that there is “pride on Bourbon” enough to create a second line or two here and there; while working two jobs and moonlighting at the strip clubs as musicians. But overall, the Blacks and the Creoles left en masse, and the Real Estate is there for  the picking. Like manna from the heavens, room for all the rich white people who love just a “tiny bit” of color in their lives. You know, the “cultural absorption” spectator sport that convinced them in the past that seeing Buffalo Bills traveling Indian Show made them experts in Lakota, and that on Prince Spaghetti day everyone is Italian. God knows, there was no culture there in the slums, anyway. Poor people and their poor English, and the scariest of them at least stay way-back in the deep bayous. Those people are crazy.

We had such plans. The Resorts. The Marinas. The theme parks with genuine Cajun shrimp kabobs, but not too spicy for the freckle faced kiddies from the corn belt. Gauhrunteeeeed. Its not like we weren’t planning on buying east coast shrimp, anyway; and no one swims in the ocean when you have a series of cascading pools, but the smell? Its not just the oil and dispersants, now its dead fish too.