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发帖数: 29846 | 1 October 07, 2011|By MARK STEYN
Michael Oher, offensive lineman for the Baltimore Ravens, was online
Wednesday night when his Twitter feed started filling up with tributes to
Steve Jobs. A bewildered Oher tweeted: "Can somebody help me out? Who was
Steve Jobs!"
He was on his iPhone at the time.
Who was Steve Jobs? Well, he was a guy who founded a corporation and spent
his life as a corporate executive manufacturing corporate products. So he
wouldn't have endeared himself to the "Occupy Wall Street" crowd, even
though, underneath the patchouli and lentils, most of them are abundantly
accessorized with iPhones and iPads and iPods loaded with iTunes, if only
for when the drum circle goes for a bathroom break.
The above is a somewhat obvious point, although the fact that it's not
obvious even to protesters with an industrial-strength lack of self-
awareness is a big part of the problem. But it goes beyond that: If you don'
t like to think of Jobs as a corporate exec (and a famously demanding one at
that), think of him as a guy who went to work, and worked hard. There's no
appetite for that among those "occupying" Zuccotti Park. In the old days,
the tribunes of the masses demanded an honest wage for honest work. Today,
the tribunes of America's leisured varsity class demand a world that puts "
people before profits." If the specifics of their "program" are somewhat
contradictory, the general vibe is consistent: They wish to enjoy an
advanced Western lifestyle without earning an advanced Western living. The
pampered, elderly children of a fin de civilisation overdeveloped world,
they appear to regard life as an unending vacation whose bill never comes
due.
So they are in favor of open borders, presumably so that exotic Third World
peasants can perform the labor to which they are noticeably averse. Of the
13 items on that "proposed list of demands," Demand Four calls for "free
college education," and Demand Eleven returns to the theme, demanding debt
forgiveness for all existing student loans. I yield to no one in my general
antipathy to the racket that is American college education, but it's
difficult to see why this is the fault of the mustache-twirling robber
barons who head up Global MegaCorp. Inc. One sympathizes, of course. It can'
t be easy finding yourself saddled with a six-figure debt and nothing to
show for it but some watery bromides from the "Transgender and Colonialism"
class. Americans collectively have north of a trillion dollars in personal
college debt. Say what you like about Enron and, er, Solyndra and all those
other evil corporations, but they didn't relieve you of a quarter-mil in
exchange for a Master's in Maya Angelou. So why not try occupying the Dean's
office at Shakedown U?
Ah, but the great advantage of mass moronization is that it leaves you too
dumb to figure out who to be mad at. At Liberty Square, one of the signs
reads: "F**k your unpaid internship!" Fair enough. But, to a casual observer
of the massed ranks of Big Sloth, it's not entirely clear what precisely
anyone would ever pay them to do.
Do you remember Van Jones? He was Obama's "green jobs" czar back before "
green jobs" had been exposed as a gazillion-dollar sinkhole for sluicing
taxpayer monies to the president's corporate cronies. Oh, don't worry. These
cronies aren't "corporate" in the sense of Steve Jobs. The corporations
they run put "people before profits": That's to say, they've figured out it'
s easier to take government money from you people than create a business
that makes a profit. In an amusing inversion of the Russian model, Van Jones
became a czar after he'd been a Communist. He became a Commie in the mid-
Nineties – i.e., after even the Soviet Union had given up on it. Needless
to say, a man who never saw a cobwebbed collectivist nostrum he didn't like
no matter how long past its sell-by date is hot for "Occupy Wall Street."
Indeed, Van Jones thinks that the protests are the start of an "American
Autumn."
In case you don't get it, that's the American version of the "Arab Spring."
Steve Jobs might have advised Van Jones he has a branding problem. Spring is
the season of new life, young buds and so forth. Autumn is leaves turning
brown and fluttering to the ground in a big dead heap. Even in my great
state of New Hampshire, where autumn is pretty darn impressive, we
understand what that blaze of red and orange leaves means: They burn
brightest before they fall and die, and the world turns chill and bare and
hard.
So Van Jones may be on to something! American Autumn. The days dwindle down
to a precious few, like in whatever that old book was called, "The Summer
And Fall Of The Roman Empire."
If you'll forgive a plug for my latest sellout to my corporate masters, in
my new book I quote H.G. Wells' Victorian Time-Traveler after encountering
far in the future the soft, effete Eloi: "These people were clothed in
pleasant fabrics that must at times need renewal, and their sandals, though
undecorated, were fairly complex specimens of metalwork. Somehow such things
must be made." And yet he saw "no workshops" or sign of any industry at all
. "They spent all their time in playing gently, in bathing in the river, in
making love in a half-playful fashion, in eating fruit and sleeping. I could
not see how things were kept going." The Time-Traveler might have felt much
the same upon landing in Liberty Square in the early 21st century, except
for the bit about bathing: It's increasingly hard in America to "see how
things are kept going," but it's pretty clear that the members of "Occupy
Wall Street" have no plans to contribute to keeping things going. Like
Michael Oher using his iPhone to announce his ignorance of Steve Jobs, in
the autumn of the republic the beneficiaries of American innovation seem not
only utterly disconnected from, but actively contemptuous of, the world
that sustains their comforts. |
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