Tuesday, November 11, 2008

a cheap holiday in other people's misery

I'm not so sure about this; arsewit wingnut blogger runs out of money, goes bankrupt, various people who should know better jeer.

The whole point of everything from some way to the right of centre - Bismarck or thereabouts - leftwards is that IT CAN HAPPEN TO YOU. It doesn't matter if you're a good christian, a loyal subject, a committed rebel, if you work harder, if you're especially competent. Even if you're rich; European history is littered with the monuments of elites who thought they could buy their way out at the last. We survive if everyone else does.

Poverty and misfortune are not, generally, held up by individuals' decisions; they roll over the landscape, driven by shifts in huge statistical aggregates and channeled by tiny ripples of random chance, just as a flood begins with a rise in average rainfall and ruins one street that's six inches closer to the water. When you think that so-and-so went bust because of their own immorality, and therefore they join the undeserving poor, you're signing on with the other side. They will tell you that the system is entirely OK; it's the ones who failed it who are the problem. They didn't believe in it enough.

As the case of Kim du Toit makes clear, this won't help you one bit when it happens to you. Yes, he's an arse of the first water and a troll of epic proportions. No, mocking people because of their poverty is always and everywhere wrong.

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