George Orwell was a very insightful man. Who had a gift of taking complex or confusing rhetoric and boiling it down to the bare essentials so that even the most obtuse of us could understand it. Or maybe not. He wrote 2 novels about the evils of government, 1984 and my favorite, Animal Farm.
The quick and dirty of Animal Farm is that the animals on a farm revolt against the farmer and take over. At first, there is an egalitarian type of society formed, but very soon, the pigs, acknowledged to be the most intelligent, take over and the farm reverts back to its old ways under Farmer Jones. One of my favorite passages is when they take the old horse, Boxer, to the glue factory and of course the pigs, Napoleon (who has ousted the other head pug by this point, Snowball) have the other animals singing the praise of Napoleon even as he makes the same cold hearted decisions that Farmer Jones had made. The animals (people) were the perfect tools and dupes for the "super intelligent" leaders.
Recently we had Orwell gone wrong. Over a year ago, Obama took over 2/3 of the US auto industry. To attain this socialist agenda, he enlisted the unions and made them part owners. What could be more Utopian? Now the workers are running the show and the big bad bond holders (owners) have been banished! Right?
A funny thing happened on the way to utopia. The union appears to be splitting between barnyard critters (the workers) and the pigs (the union bosses). It seems recently the pigs tried to go in and force a new contract down the throats of the critters that would cut the starting salary in half (along with other concessions). And the critters revolted! This time chasing the pigs out of the farmyard!
There is hope for American workers. for in reality the only difference between Union bosses (pigs) and Corporate Management (Farmer Jones) is who has the power. The intent and actions are the same once the former has the power. The worker is merely a pawn to be used, abused and sent to the glue factory once their usefulness is done. And the utopia of a workers paradise is just an illusion as the 6 figure salaried pigs still slop up the gravy at the expense of the workers. Except this time, they are even more brutal than before because they have nothing invested in the company. Indeed, their power does not derive from an investment of their toil, but simply how fast they can bleed the assets of the company to fatten their pockets with more money.
The development of this situation gives me hope that perhaps the rhetoric of the "super smart" that want to tell us one thing while doing the opposite is no longer sweet music to the ears of American workers. Now that they can tell the difference, perhaps we can actually start educating them about true economics, and not socialist policies that only grab OPM - until the OPM runs out.