iäve been up since five and im restless with a political consciousness. i have been struck with a sense that i should be involved in the governing of the united states. i have some passionate ideas about income inequality that are all the more passionate for their shallowness, and iäd like to deepen them. iäve been reading about progressive taxes and whether taxation actually slows economic growth and how 20% of the people in the united states have 85% of the wealth, and that the bottom 40% has .3%. this was an absurd thing to learn.

i have some doubts which iäd love to have explained. for one thing, i have this idea that there isnät enough money to go around. when we get excited about the top 20% because it makes for a spectacular statistic, that group bottoms out at around 100,000, which is a lot, iäm sure, but it doesnät seem astronomical, and redistributing a 100,000 downwards doesnät quite have the robinhood ring of rich to poor. jodi dean quickly dispatches with concerns about not enough money or something with snippets of CEO compensation, and if that is really all one needs to see then thatäs delightfully straightforward and let the robinhooding begin, but iäm not entirely sure about all that. more persuasive is her emphasis on the utter absence of a correlation between how well off the little people are with how profitable private business is, as manifest in the stockmarket.

basically iäve been reading that george orwell book and the thing is absolutely marvelous in that it describes a politically engaged person and makes that engagement the most obviously necessary thing. could there be anything more important than knowing what is up with your world (questionmark i cant find on this keyboard) no. and i love, LOVE his faith in people, or faith isnät the word, but his respect for the necessity of respecting them, of respecting their patriotism, their facts, his respect for democracy, in a word, and his disdain for the political isolationism and self loathing of the leftist intelligentsia of his age. gotta go with the people, respect them and nurture their allegiance instead of bemoaning the effectiveness of the monied competition. let the modern left wave the flag, reclaim the lapel pin, whatever. it doesnät serve any worldly purpose to do otherwise.