by Peter A. Belmont / 2011-12-07
© 2011 Peter Belmont
Thornton Wilder was a great author. “Our Town” was the least of it. How about “Hello, Dolly!”? Better yet, “The Eighth Day” and “The Bridge of San Luis Rey” and “The Alcestiad”.
But if any of his writing was mere fun, much was of utmost seriousness. He had something serious to say to the economic situation in the USA of his time (1910-1920) which is pertinent to today and might well be a slogan for today’s OCCUPY Movement.
In Wilder’s own journal,[1] he wrote: Veblen missed the point about conspicuous waste; it is a repressive strategy. It is designed to cow the less fortunate into believing that the privileged rich are of a different order of man and are mysteriously entitled to their out-sized possessions.
We are told, same Introduction, that Wilder wrote to his nephew, “I am becoming a crypto-Marxian . . . The unequal distribution of wealth vitiates against all exchange of ideas. Like the cuttlefish it exudes a black secretion.”
We are also told, same Introduction, that he wrote in a semi-autobiographical sketch, “Private wealth arrests the advance of civilization; great wealth reverses it.”
To return to the chief concern of this blog, consider how thoroughly and how long the almost unimaginable wealth of the USA’s Zionist biggies (whom I often call BIG-ZION, comparing them to BIG-BANKs and BIG-OIL, and BIG-ARMs, etc.) have suppressed any thought, any discussion of the USA’s foreign-policy w.r.t. Israel/Palestine! Maybe this is coming to an end, but I doubt the end will be entirely clear during my lifetime.
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[1] Christopher Buckley’s Introduction, pp.xv11-xviii, to “Theophilus North”, Perennial paperback
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