----- Original Message ----- From: "Chuck Grimes" <c123grimes at att.net>
George Kennan after his dismissal from the State Department found himself in Pasadina in 1953, late in the year standing on a fancy deck overlooking the LA basin west toward the ocean. I know the view, it was pink and gray and brown from the smog, and the glittering Pacific beyond. He wondered in Sketches of a Life, whatever will become of these people, speaking of me (at ten) and the great mass of Angelino humanity he surveyed.
Guess what George. You class ridden asshole. You think because you went to school, the rest of us didn`t. You think that because you could see the world, the rest of us couldn`t? I love the regret and implied darkness of the early post-war, Graham Green and so, but I have a hard time with the class arrogance. -------
One thing we can be grateful to the neo-liberals for: making this class arrogance impossible. The ruling class might be rich as Croesus, but they have no culture whatsoever. I'm not saying they're not arrogant and I'm not saying that they don't feel an infinite entitlement to everything -- but there is no virtu to base this on: no battle scars, no resdient artists, no fluorishing arts, no architecture... nothing, nothing, nothing.
Joanna