Baffling

[alice wellintown]

> why shouldn't these people - goldman, sachs, those dudes - why
> shouldn't they feel proud of themselves?

Most, I suppose, are proud of themselves, of the work they do. And
they should be.

There are a lot of ordinary people who work on Wall Street, that is,
both in what is called "The Street", which is not actually a physical
place in Manhattan, but, sort of like Silicone Valley, both a place
and a major sector of the economy that continues to attract, with
relatively high salaries and bonuses, the brightest and best educated
people in the world, and on Wall Street, the physical spaces, the
street named "Wall Street" and its neighborhood, its physical trading
spaces and so on, some of them in Mid-town Manhattan, some in New
Jersey,  and around the isle of Manhattan.

Many of these ordinary folk, who worked hard and earned an education,
and the debts that go with one these days, got a job on Wall Street
because they are smart and are willing to work long hours and take
risks; there are, for most, no guarentees salaries, no cost of living
adjustments, no collective bargaingning agreement, no defined pension
plans, no employee paid or state paid or government paid healthcare
plans;

These are the ordinary folk who jumped out of windows on 9-11 or were
saved by fire-fighters, who, many of them, lost everything on that
day, returned to those haunted and hallowed grounds with the
carpenters and cops and electricians and sandhogs and the
laborers....and have helped bring life and financial stability back to
the city and, I would argue, the world. It was, after all, not only
Wall Street that was attacked on 9-11, but the WTC, the World Trade
Center.  Then, Wall Street folk were not such greedy pigs, but victims
and even heroes. What a difference a Recession, a great one, I would
call it a Depression, but what do I know, makes.

With Sandy flooding Wall Street, burning down Breezy Point, I see, sad
as it may look in photographs, the city that never weeps. Yes, we are
known for our grit, our resiliance, our immigrant work ethic, our
subways, where, what is described in that Washington DC commute, an
executive with dogs and ponies, props and shame, doesn't happen
because we are New Yorkers.  The neutral turf is the subway, the
street, the cab, the hospitals, the schools, the deli lines, the
parks. Sure, the richer than rich don't stand in line, send their kids
to schools that ordinary wall streeters and immigrant cab drivers
don't even know exist, but these are the 1% if you prefer, and they
don't work on or in, or control, or direct, wall street of this great
city.

The theorists, the Chomsky deciples, the solopsistic boys and girls
who, from OWS, perhaps, met a Mulligan, who, for a moment, rocked them
from their inelectable modalities, should look to Chicago and the CTU
for a lesson on theory and practice. Or read Dewey, or some American
pragmatist. I don't know. But OWS was a carnival. Not a community. Not
a movement. It is and was, the bastard twin of Tea. The two are bound
together in and S&M love feast that is driven by the death instinct.

Thy are not as young and full of hope as you believe. I have great
love for the young in this city. The hope they give is equal to the
hope we need.

At the end of the essay the author falls into allusions; he is smart
and should read or re-read Wilson and maybe a little CLR James. Then,
Dewey. Then, go to Wall Street and take a job, if he can find one.