Brothers in Arms

There are dots to connect here. First, this post from Gaius Publius at AmericaBlog, on the rich and the way they see the world, based on this piece by Chris Hedges. Hedges writes:

“The rich are different from us,” F. Scott Fitzgerald is said to have remarked to Ernest Hemingway, to which Hemingway allegedly replied, “Yes, they have more money.”

The exchange, although it never actually took place, sums up a wisdom Fitzgerald had that eluded Hemingway. The rich are different. The cocoon of wealth and privilege permits the rich to turn those around them into compliant workers, hangers-on, servants, flatterers and sycophants. Wealth breeds, as Fitzgerald illustrated in “The Great Gatsby” and his short story “The Rich Boy,” a class of people for whom human beings are disposable commodities. Colleagues, associates, employees, kitchen staff, servants, gardeners, tutors, personal trainers, even friends and family, bend to the whims of the wealthy or disappear. Once oligarchs achieve unchecked economic and political power, as they have in the United States, the citizens too become disposable.

See also this piece by digby.

My own experience is somewhat different, but not very. At one point I worked at an art museum as the executive secretary to the director, which meant working closely with the board. I raised eyebrows and caused comment all over the institution early on in my tenure because I dared to argue with the president of the board, who in retrospect, fits fairly neatly within the paradigm described by Hedges -- and this was one of Chicago's "lakefront liberals." For most of my tenure there, however, I worked with his successor, a woman of great charm and intelligence to took me into the fold, so to speak -- she learned to value my judgment and intelligence (and my political acumen), and when I followed her to another job, I had great input into policy and had the day-do-day operations left entirely in my hands. But there was always an underlying attitude that came out when she started talking about people's social standing -- including mine: I just wasn't in her class.

It didn't help matters that I simply refused to recognize the "superiority" of the people I was dealing with. It wasn't rebellion -- it just never occurred to me that they were superior, except that they had more money. They didn't share that opinion.

Now, some connecting, with this piece by Rob Tisinai at Box Turtle Bulletin.

Thomas Peters, NOM’s communications director, shows us the limits of empathy.

Peters suffered a diving accident that left him with a fractured fifth vertebrae, a severe spinal cord injury, and doubtful prospects for recovery. Fortunately, it seems, he’s doing better than most with this kind of injury, though he still may never walk and has limited use of his upper body. Recently, on NOM’s website, he posted “Reflections on my Time Away.”

. . .

The accident has taught me more about the incredible gift of marriage. My father, during his speech at my wedding reception, said the sacrament of marriage gives us the grace to do the impossible. I have met people during these months who think it is incredible, even impossible, that my wife and I survived a trauma like this having been married only three months. I tell them it helps to marry the right woman and get married the right way, the way the Church taught the two of us what marriage is and why it should be honored. People have told us that they are inspired and receive hope from the witness of our marriage – it inspires us too, I respond! We feel it is possible to face anything, even a future of me paralyzed, so long as we cling to each other, to God, and to our marriage vows.

I think the connection is somewhere in the comment I left at Tisinai's post, to the effect that ideology trumps humanity: Peters is not capable of independent thought and has to rely on what the Church has told him to think, especially, in this case, about marriage and gay people. (In my comment I noted that, in my opinion, it's a morally and intellectually stunted outlook.)

It comes down to the Other -- for the rich, everyone else is the Other, to be kept in their place; for Peters and his cohorts, those who don't follow their ideology, and especially LGBTs, are the Other, to be fought at every turn -- and to be kept in their place, preferably out of sight and, consequently, out of mind.

There's an element of pathology in both, and I suspect it's the same, or a very similar, pathology: lack of ability to connect with others, lack of empathy, and consequently, a lack of social consciousness. In some cases, I hesitate to go so far as to call it sociopathy, but it's at least the seeds of it: it's an outlook that is totally self-referential and self-absorbed. (By way of illustration, I'm reminded of the story about one of NOM's interns who went to a rally of some sort or other and was "saddened" by the preponderance of marriage equality demonstrators and the relative paucity of the "pro-marriage" contingent. Her reaction was that allowing same-sex marriage "diminished" her relationship with God, and "demeaned" her own -- future, and therefore hypothetical -- marriage vows. So it was all about her, and not about the people -- not really people, mind you, but abstractions -- whose rights, and whose essential humanity, she was working to deny.)

And also common to both the anti-marriage activists, as exemplified by Peters, and the rich is the element of control: they must be the ones controlling others.

The sobering part is that the rich are succeeding. The NOMbots, happily, not so much.