Mostly, the politics of the U.S. is a measure of the public opinion of the upper 20 percent. For that cohort the U.S. has gone from strength to strength since Reagan's time. They live in a United States that we all recognize, since it is all we see. When we get a tv show about the 80 percent, it is usually cops or loveable comedies where the knockabout characters are just like us - played by millionaires.
Once upon a time, an actor playing a king or nobleman would have a status and assets much below that king or nobleman. Not now.
I would look with a less jaundiced eye at this history if I had been bathed in the waters of that prosperity, but alas, this was not my fate. Money has never blessed me. I attribute my money curse to a prank I played in the 9th grade, when before a group of friends I burned a couple of dollar bills to "prove" that money didn't really exist as a thing. The spirit of the bill took notice, and has since abundantly proved that money exists as more of a thing than I will ever be.
I mulled over these things in Felix's, a French cafe near the American embassy, yesterday. I am at present in Montpellier, but I had to visit our American embassy and prove who I am to the social security office there. Things went well. I even had pictures of myself, taken by authorized officials, showing I was who I said I was. It is a theology a bit more complex than that of the holy Trinity - I am my picture and my picture is me. There is something delightfully ancien regime about the social security card - there's no picture on it. For the state, though, there are only selfies, and no selves. So I nursed my gin and tonic, there, and thought of the life of my selfies.
In my retirement, I think I'll become an influencer. That was what the gin and tonic said.
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