The Aristocracy and the Rest of Us

 

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"Greed is a bottomless pit which exhausts the person in an endless effort to satisfy the need without ever reaching satisfaction." --Erich Fromm

Fuck Congress.

A little dramatic? I suppose, but then, without drama, what? Treacle? There is always the danger of carrying drama into purple prose, but purple prose at least displays a level of effort and confidence. I'll have to watch out for that tendency to be heavy-handed, though. It comes, partly, from my current reading of James Joyce- now being tempered by John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces.

I once read of a prominent author (I have forgotten who he was) who avoided reading contemporary writers for fear of contaminating his work. Wouldn't reading only the classics put the author in danger of being influenced by them? Did he, for fear of sounding like Joan Didion, come across like Herman Melville?

We live in a litigious culture in which it seems everyone wants to get rich from everyone else's labor- a trait drilled into us by our elected officials and corporate executives. I suspect the author's reluctance to read copyrighted work came more from a fear of accusations of plagiarism than from concerns about influence on style and voice. A charge of plagiarism is a burdensome shame for a legitimate writer, though all of us carry phrases, voices, and styles in our hidden memories from works read, dramatizations seen, and music heard. All writers live with the danger of these suppressed memories coming to life on paper. I see in my own scribbles the influence of, say, Joyce's phraseology. Might I have also inadvertently used a phrase or a sentence? Modestly, I am not of the caliber of writer to work in the words of that kind of genius; but of a lesser writer or one who engages a more vernacular style, there is certainly the possibility of a string of words belonging to another showing up in my pages.

I like to believe that if I were to see a bit of prose rightfully mine but appearing in someone else's work might be handled- and corrected- without my resorting to the theft of his entire work through subpoenas and demands for obscene amounts of cash, but then, my Congress- votes to give themselves yet another pay increase, and I've got to pay That bill, don't I?

Members of my congress force their ever-increasing wealth on the public with no thought of the burden it places on others.

Pay for their insatiable need, I will; in the same spirit it was fostered onto me--with contempt for the greed of the officials who make themselves wealthy beyond the common working person’s imagination.

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Congressional Salaries and Allowances: In Brief

Updated November 3, 2021:

https://www.everycrsreport.com/files/2021-11-03_RL30064_302197ea1def9558e2ef1420c3d51c8957b4e526.pdf