So to riff a bit, off the concepts of instinctive anti-authoritarianism and trying to live fully within the context of being a citizen-subject of the empire …

There’s something very deep I’m feeling and trying to articulate right now, about … the horrific moral choices people are faced with, in the attempt to be Good in some basic sense, while at the same time trying to be a Success! in a spiritually broken place.

A big part of what’s broken about it is that we’re trained from embryos to believe that money is the measure of success. We’re capitalists as well as consumers in some very basic sense that’s hard to see in that fish-don’t-see-water way.

By extension, money becomes not only the highest good, but the only good. Maximize return to shareholders (including yourself) no matter what. Google, the company that used to have the slogan “Don’t be evil”, become the incarnation of evil via this mechanism. You can watch it happening in the headlines. They willfully violated the privacy of children for fuck’s sake, in order to better target the innocents on behalf of their advertising partners, knowing full well that there was a serious law that forbade exactly that.

They did it, and paid the puny fine, and put out a press release saying Oh God this isn’t our values, forgive us, we’re fixing it. Except that’s a giant cynical lie, and they have done the same sort of thing over and over, and lied about it, and profited, and they will do it over and over again until the end of time, every time they have the chance, and so will Apple and Microsoft and Amazon and Facebook. Because children don’t matter the way money does. NOTHING matters the way money does. Success is measured in money and ‘business ethics’ is the one true oxymoron.

This is old stale stuff, right? You know it too, don’t you?

But now comes a story not about how this is the way with giant faceless corporations (of course it is). This story is about how individual people end up the same. Not even evil orange people, or brick-stupid voters who put evil orange people in office.

No.

I’m talking about educated, articulate, and even super-bright people.

With shining liberal reputations.

Iconic feminist super-lawyers, for example.

Turned deep black evil for money.

Here’s the story in two forms:

‘She Said’ Reveals The People And Practices That Protected Weinstein (Forty minutes of audio via Fresh Air)

The Plan to Make Harvey Weinstein a Hero (a quick read at the Atlantic)

The anti-heroine of the story is named Lisa Bloom. She’s pretty, well-off, semi-famous, clearly brilliant and more than competent at her craft.

And just like the average cable anchorperson of similar qualities and means, even at MSNBC (see Jimmy Dore’s YouTube channel for endless rants on that) she will do and say anything that power wants her to do or say, as long as the price is right. As long as the mandate to succeed in spiritually bankrupt capitalist terms is met–so is the will of the God who art Mammon.

In legal terms, these people are champions of Justice in their own eyes. In journalistic terms, they see themselves as opinionated but ultimately objective, presenters and defenders of Truth.

I might say: may the one actual true Goddess rot their souls. But She doesn’t have to do it. It’s already done, by their own hands, deals with the devil signed and cashed in, the soul rot paved over with botox and hair implants and designer fashion so it doesn’t show enough to care about.

When I was in my twenties, I remember thinking specifically that I didn’t want to be famous, and even that I didn’t want to be rich.

What I wanted was to cut a deal with my society. I’ll do this, or that, as long as there’s no harm in it. In return you’ll pay me enough to survive and maybe eventually thrive in some marginal contingent way. I’ll do what I have to, within limits, so that I never again have to wake up in a public park inside a sleeping bag soaked through with the November rain.

When I wanted to try radio, I didn’t set out to become Howard Stern. I looked to public radio, where the pay was minimal (often laughably so), but the freedom was maximal. It didn’t work out. Just like my man Scott Carrier found out, by the time we were ready to make story happen in audio, the machine had taken over NPR. You couldn’t make the rent, not doing real work.

I spent a long time working in libraries, and why? Because even though the pay sucked, there was nothing immoral about the mission or anything I had to do to fulfill it faithfully.

Gradually the libraries led into colleges more generally. The zenith of my success came here. Look at the professor, making decent bank, and nothing to really argue about on the grounds of good and evil.

Slowly and gradually it became less and less of a good deal, both financially and philosophically. I’m still here, clinging by my nails to the splinters of that deal. And trying again to find a place to start all over, if it exists anywhere anymore.

When I was 27 I calculated that the break-even point was a little north of 20K a year.

Now it’s like 60K. Partly because of wage stagnation; partly because of choices I’ve made–I am no genius at all when it comes to cash and the way it flows.

And that means that to live the dream of finally saying fuck it to wage slavery forever on the terms I’d prefer, I need six figures at least, for three or four years, to get to the promised land at the promised time.

In a perfect world I’d make it easily, doing something I actually love, within the scope of the same old pension system and with no evil Blooming baggage. This is not a perfect world.

Maybe maybe there’s some relatively value-neutral option like driving a truck that would work.

Maybe maybe I’ll find something closer to perfection. A moderate success on my own modest terms. Or better than that. To live we must hope.