Reincarnation

Samsara, it is said, is the same thing happening again and again with the expectation of a different result. So perhaps it would clear some storm clouds over the current sorry state of the American union, anorexic now from tax starvation, to look back and see the egregious co-opting of egalitarian democracy by the nouveau riche is not new to American history. It is half of the cultural tug-of-war that is that history, starting in the 17^th Century when the wealthy investors in the Plymouth Company literally took pounds of flesh from the first indentured colonists shipped over here with a mandate to generate high profits. The cheapskate investors did not give the indentured the proper gear or advice to survive and when most of them died, the wealthy wrote off the poor survivors, moving on and leaving them to their own devices on the shore of Maine.

Although it is rarely mentioned, academic historians have not forgotten that the Boston Brahmins, moneymen whose names we have come to revere—Tufts, Bowdoin, Hancock, Brattle, were as highhanded and self-serving as today’s Wall Street bonus boys. Historian Gordon Kershaw put it this way: “The Proprietors (my note: that’s what these bigwigs liked to call themselves) operated almost as an independent force in Massachusetts politics during the 25 years from 1749-1774. They spent money freely, influenced the General Court and intrigued with the Royal Governors. …They battled individual farmers, rival land companies and the King’s agents. They evicted settlers and foreclosed on householders … Company lawyers were always before the bar and often won their cases thanks in part to proprietary influence in high places.”

Blinded by their money, this elite actually thought the Revolution had been fought simply to secure their personal stake on this side of the pond, and once it was over, they set about grabbing New England land through illegal and unconscionable foreclosures in order to establish their own lordly fiefdoms and estates. They had the money to buy the votes and judgments.

Here how Pulitzer Prize winning historian Alan Taylor explains what they did at war’s end: “The General Court could also have reduced settler anger if it had used the cheap sale of the remaining public lands to hold down the prices the Great Proprietors could charge. In March 1784 {penniless war veterans looking for homes}, the General Court enacted a democratic sales policy for the public lands to the north and east of mid-Maine. In most public townships buyers could purchase only 150 acres apiece and would not receive deeds unless they settled their lots within a year. … The policy favored actual settlers and discouraged land speculators. It did not last long. Four months later the General Court resolved to sell off the townships and group of townships at the highest possible price to wealthy speculators. The commonwealth’s staggering Revolutionary war debt and the popular discontent over high taxes dictated selling the public lands for immediate revenue. The Court maximized the short-term public income by selling to the one group that could afford down payments in cash. Ultimate payment would fall on the most powerless: on the marginal yeomen who most needed new lands. The new land policy entrusted profit-seeking middlemen with retailing lots to actual settlers, sparing the General Court the associated bureaucratic difficulties and administrative costs. By adopting a public land sales policy that favored the landed oligopoly, the commonwealth enhanced the Great Proprietors ability to charge premium prices for their lands in mid-Maine.”

Their yearning to emulate the old English aristocracy was no different from the current yen of the Wall Street bonus boys raised on Masterpiece theater productions of English manor life. If that is not the ideal to which Americans have always aspired, Ralph Lauren, who markets exactly that fantasy, would not now be a billionaire. And Obama would not have defended tax cuts for those with millions. It's the born again vision thing.

~Sandy Garson"Wordsmithing to attest how the Dharma saved me from myself!"
http://www.sandygarson.com
http://yoursinthedharma.blogspot.com/

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