Contempt

Only a people filled with contempt for others could march in and seize a territory, then expel or Working people have died by the millions – and are still dying – in unsafe mines and factories and the boss-classes wars. Only rulers filled with contempt for working people could do such a thing. Of course, this contempt is rationalized with verbiage about “survival of the fittest”, “national interest” and self-aggrandizing prattle about “expertise” and “leadership.”

Latin America was pillaged first by British companies and now by US corporate and governmental interests, the latter with their death squads and torture schools having introduced an unprecedented level of sadism. For the Imperial Masters to commit such crimes, they must feel the deepest contempt for the people they persecute and exploit. All callously written off with, “Well, they are only Indians, anyway,” or they are “communists” or have “an inferior culture.”

For several thousand years (at least) women and children have been humiliated, degraded, abused, beaten and raped by patriarchal society. Only men (and female Quislings) full of contempt (self-contempt for the later) would treat their sisters, mothers, wives and offspring in this manner. All the silly self-serving rationalizations are trotted out - “women are less intelligent”, children are “ignorant”, “their place is to obey.”

The fact is, the folks held in contempt by the Masters are actually SUPERIOR to them, (1) and maintaining that contempt is an unending task. What a constant struggle it is to prop up this facade! In spite of “inferiority”, the “natives” know the country and teach the arrogant, stupid white man how to live there, the workers keep things running and produce the wealth, not their inept and parasitic bosses, Latin Americans possess a history and culture that makes the Gringos look like poor uncultured wretches, women are usually wiser than men and children easily see through the adult's childish ideologically-rooted obsessions.

Now you might well ask that if contempt is a mask, a cover-up for exploitation and bullying, what is it about the dominators that makes them wish to commit these crimes? In part, we are dealing with deep-rooted insecurity. The need to trample over others to become “someone”, the overweening lust for power, all speak of people who need to bolster their egos in an obsessive manner. In reading the lives of the ruling classes, we often discover a family life of cold, distant parents and authoritarian schooling or upbringing. These are common roots of emotional insecurity.. We also read of the many “Little Caligulas”, the sociopathic spoiled brats of the ruling class. They have no empathy for the ordinary person, and if they have to kill a hundred thousand of them to pursue a political or economic goal, it is no more than stepping on a bug. Neurotics and sociopaths, our Masters are emotionally sick. Rather than, when the time comes, putting them up against the wall – as emotionally satisfying as that might be – they ought instead to be placed in institutions for the criminally insane.

1. True enough, during a class system's “Heroic Period” the rulers are quite often people of intelligence and character, however, during a time of decline, such as the present, the lesser types take charge. Compare Washington and Bush, Gladstone and Blair, and you get the idea.