"Let them eat cake"

"Let them eat cake"

A thought that sprang to mind recently is the Top 1% saying in unison, “Let them eat cake,” bread in its sweetened form. The only problem with that allusion is (to pirate the old Burger King ad), “Where’s the cake?” The “circus” is obvious: the unending election process itself, which is a juggling act involving an occasional fact tossed skyward with unfounded assertions.

As much as the public voices its disgust with the process, at the end of the day, when its members retreat to their polarized opinion caves, whether via Fox News or MSNBC, most gaze with rapt attention. The fact that bread, or cake, rises in price, like dough resting beneath a cloth, while the wherewithal to purchase it becomes more difficult, demands that the circus aspect step up its activity a notch. Thus the unending election process.

Lost, of course, is the concept of the “common good,” which for all sides sounds socialist, or worse, communist. In our earlier nation days, this was not so and was reified under the concept of the “general welfare.” Today, only the particular (the individual’s) welfare matters, “welfare” in this instance meaning personal possessions, comfort, and amusements.

I’ve been struck by the renewed interest shown over Charles Dickens and his great corpus of novels. Then I thought further about that interest and wondered how many Americans had even read the Cliff’s Notes versions. I’m sure the percentage of adult readers that have tackled even one is somewhere in the single digits. His works require a long attention span followed by reflection, two characteristics lacking in all of society’s segments. Our temperaments today require instant visual satisfaction while simultaneously chomping on a bowl of Fritos.

Again, lost in all of this is the common good. Our collective outlook is short-term and feeds, not on cake, but on the spectacle, the circus, which finds us a few millennia later a nation of declining Romans. Marching bands are too dull; now we must have Madonna grinding her way through her version of pornography lite.