This is just an instinct that probably requires more study, but the frantic desperation w which both parties smother anything that makes life easier for us before we get a taste for it makes me think it actually wouldn’t take much to topple the whole thing, once we get started

the Democrats are so easily persuaded to means test, tax break, discipline labor, etc., that even if you believe “their hearts in the right place” their reptile brain instinct is an aversion to making life easier—there has to be “worthiness”

Which to me suggests not strength but an insecurity and instinctual fear of just how precarious their hold is on the lavish and comfortable lives they lead. Comfortable people can do noblesse oblige, at least

Right, there are so many things where it’s common sense and wouldn’t really even harm the rich, but there is almost a fervor from the ruling classes to keep from us anything that that would relieve the immense pressure of surviving https://twitter.com/derzquist/status/1296305520844976128?s=20

Like, a generous Covid UBI would have goosed aggregate demand, placated millions of people, helped landlords & retailers, not rebalanced social power (like unions do) & made heroes the administration but they couldn’t bring themselves to do it

They’re not a hive mind or conspiracy so part of it is just the collective effect of greed, but the instinctual almost suicidal intransigence has to rest on a deep insecurity, they feel like they have the wolf by the ears and they can’t let go for a second

That was Jefferson’s extremely telling metaphor for his opposition to the Tallmadge Amendment which would have prohibited slavery in Missouri—“justice” was on the side of letting go of the wolf (slavery), but “self-preservation” was on the side of holding on.

Thank you for tuning in to my nightly column, Musings.

Oh also if you read that whole letter, Jefferson is saying (you see a snippet of it) “yeah I agree w abolition in principle, but getting there gradually,” it’s a similar instinct—terror of what’ll happen to the ruling classes if any modicum of justice is allowed to leak through