{"id":376,"date":"2015-06-30T00:43:29","date_gmt":"2015-06-30T00:43:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mrbiggs.net\/ron\/?p=376"},"modified":"2017-01-05T20:23:20","modified_gmt":"2017-01-05T20:23:20","slug":"review-of-99-homes-or-on-ruling-class-radicalism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/mrbiggs.net\/ron\/?p=376","title":{"rendered":"Review of 99 Homes \u2013 or, on Ruling Class Radicalism"},"content":{"rendered":"

On a rare following of the advice of others, I went to see Fury Road.\u00a0 I hate reviews so much that I usually show up late just so I can miss them.\u00a0 But one review caught my eye: for 99 Homes<\/a>.\u00a0 I’ll save you the description.<\/p>\n

Even though it was the preview I\u2019d be most likely to see, it still bothered me.\u00a0 As I watched the family get kicked out of their home, I wondered: oh, is this a movie about how banks use shady legal tactics to foreclose on people who are actually paying their mortgages?\u00a0 No \u2026 well, is it a movie about how banks ignore the laws and just kick people out without notice?\u00a0 Is it about how people get mortgages they can\u2019t afford and are stuck in an untenable situation?<\/p>\n

No \u2026 well, what is wrong here?<\/p>\n

And then it dawned on me.\u00a0 The problem the movie is addressing isn\u2019t any of these.\u00a0 The problem is people have rules they have to follow.\u00a0 Rules themselves have become unjust.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the deal.\u00a0 And everyone who signs a mortgage understands it \u2013 or, they sign about 100 pages claiming they understand it.\u00a0 When you get a mortgage on your home, it is not YOUR home.\u00a0 The bank paid most of the money for it, and it is only your home provided you fulfill your end of the deal to pay them back their money according to a certain schedule.<\/p>\n

If you don\u2019t, and I fully understand there are plenty of people who don\u2019t \u2013 there\u2019s a whole legal framework the bank needs to follow before they can A) foreclose on the home B) evict you for living in what is now their home C) get a sheriff to come in and force you out of the house along with your furnishings.<\/p>\n

Every one of those steps involves plenty of notification, and after the crash of 2008 there\u2019s even more notification, and aid for those who face foreclosure.<\/p>\n

The very fact that when the sheriff showed up, and none of them had any idea what was happening, well that just blew my mind with BS.\u00a0 Did they not read their mail for the last year or two?\u00a0 Did they not notice in their checkbooks that no debit was made to the bank once a month?<\/p>\n

But I speak in vain here.\u00a0 Because, see, this reveals a greater problem with politics in America.\u00a0 I\u2019ve been involved in the left when I was younger on a deeper level than I would ever care to discuss here.\u00a0 But I was also well read about it.\u00a0 And my idea of being on the left was to actually go into working class neighborhoods and listen to their concerns.<\/p>\n

But time and again I saw people who came in and said all the fancy words to make themselves look cool.\u00a0 At first I thought I could have a discussion with people like that, but then I realized they were really speaking from a different perspective \u2013 that of the well-off, who only sees the world from their well-off perspective, and has no intention of risking that privilege.<\/p>\n

Marjane Satrapi echoed a similar concern in her book Persepolis.\u00a0 Hanging out with a bunch of anarchists, they told her they were going to some Anarchist event.\u00a0 Coming from an Iranian background of revolutionary communists and atheists, she thought she was going to some passionate demonstration against the injustices of the time.\u00a0 Instead, it was a bunch of kids playing in the woods.<\/p>\n

And that sums up the politics today \u2013 kids playing in the woods and fighting for a world where they have no duties or responsibilities.<\/p>\n

The police brutality issue is an interesting one.\u00a0 Remember Rodney King?\u00a0 That was police brutality.\u00a0 What are actual black people talking about?\u00a0 Actual police brutality.\u00a0 But what gets shown in the media?\u00a0 Somebody hassling a cop, giving cops a hard time, and then getting their ass kicked.<\/p>\n

This is not a fight for justice, it\u2019s a fight for not having consequences for your actions.\u00a0 And it\u2019s baiting blacks to be the rebel anarchists well off white people want them to be, to fulfill their rebel fantasies.\u00a0 Now, I\u2019d like to think I\u2019ve talked to enough black people in my life to know they\u2019re for law and order, just like anybody in shitty neighborhoods do.\u00a0 You meet a cop, they tell you what to do, do it.\u00a0 If you want to break a law you feel is unjust, don\u2019t resist arrest.<\/p>\n

Chris Rock<\/a>\u00a0and Dave Chapelle<\/a> can chime in a bit.<\/p>\n

Go to a poor neighborhood, and see how well behaved people generally are in front of cops.\u00a0 Yes, they know what happens if they don\u2019t, but it\u2019s also to distinguish themselves from the scum in their neighborhoods who so desperately need a baton shower.\u00a0\u00a0 Contrast that with somebody in a college town who gets pulled over, and they turn into Malcolm X.\u00a0 Of course the cop has to sit there and take it or he gets disciplined.<\/p>\n

I could keep on going \u2013 bitcoin, vaccines, Occupy, gay marriage, the Middle East …\u00a0 behind every one of these issues of the day is the shadow of an actual issue.\u00a0 But look more closely and what you\u2019ll see is well off people wanting to escape the laws of society, even\u00a0the laws of nature.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the disease of every decadent ruling class since those ancient times when they were looking for the secret to eternal life.\u00a0 And if you\u2019ve actually read your Marx \u2013 it is a class problem, not a rules problem.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On a rare following of the advice of others, I went to see Fury Road.\u00a0 I hate reviews so much that I usually show up late just so I can miss them.\u00a0 But one review caught my eye: for 99 Homes.\u00a0 I’ll save you the description. Even though it was the preview I\u2019d be most […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7,358],"tags":[229,230,231,232],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/mrbiggs.net\/ron\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/mrbiggs.net\/ron\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/mrbiggs.net\/ron\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mrbiggs.net\/ron\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mrbiggs.net\/ron\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=376"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/mrbiggs.net\/ron\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":379,"href":"http:\/\/mrbiggs.net\/ron\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376\/revisions\/379"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/mrbiggs.net\/ron\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mrbiggs.net\/ron\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mrbiggs.net\/ron\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}