A friend of mine sent me the following email - after reading about the ongoing travails of Patrick and his battle with miscreants on Wall Street, and reviewing some of the newer breaking news.
Apparently, it has all been thought and done before, and those who would enslave an entire nation have been at it for quite some time. This speaks to the human nature argument I frequently advance, wherein I indicate that there has always existed a predilection for a few, powerful members of the financial sector to co-opt the power elite, and bend the rule of law (or the application thereof) to suit their purpose.
Apparently I'm not alone in this paranoid delusion.
Here's the email, referencing a book that chronicles the American Revolution and the personalities who put their lives and fortunes on the line, and created the United States:
The paragraph from Founding Brothers by Joseph J. Ellis on page 138 reads as follows:
"As Jefferson returned to the US in 1790 he began to harbor the foreboding sense that the American Revolution, as he understood it, had been captured by alien forces. As we have seen, the chief villain and core counterrevolutionary character in the Jefferson drama was Hamilton, and the most worrisome feature on the political landscape was Hamilton’s financial scheme, with its presumption of consolidated federal government possessing many of the powers over the states that parliament had exercised over the colonies. Under Hamilton’s diabolical leadership, the US was recreating the very political and economic institutions---the national bank became the most visible symbol of the accumulating corruption-----that the Revolution had been designed to destroy. Jefferson developed a full-blooded conspiracy theory in which bankers, speculators, federal officeholders, and a small but powerful congregation of closet Tories permanently alienated from the agrarian majority (“They all live in cities” he wrote) had captured the meaning of the Revolution and were now proceeding to strangle it to death behind closed doors of investment houses and within the faraway corridors of the Federalist government in New York and Philadelphia."
Emphasis added.
So, even way back when, the notion that a small cadre from the market centers had conspired with bankers and "speculators" and elected officials, to fleece the rest of the country, held some sway with some pretty smart folks.
We hear that refrain echoed today, in the current NSS crisis, as well as in the growing protest over the obvious corruption and larceny exhibited by our government. Could it be that what is described as a paranoid conspiracy is actually an accurate description of the evil that some men of power and wealth will do? And have done, for as long as there has been a disconnect between labor, and the fruits thereof?
It is striking that Jefferson's observations strongly resemble the observations made by those sounding the alarm over the dangerous and improper intersection of money and power evidenced by Wall Street and the Beltway's cozy little relationship.
I guess some things transcend time. Rich white guys on the Eastern Seaboard scheming to rob the rest of the country.
Hmmmm.
I knew I'd heard that somewhere before...