How Social Darwinism ACTUALLY Works: Detail from PSN#7:OccupyOakland

The following is based on an excerpt from Pepperspray Nation Chapter 7: Occupy Oakland. http://donquixokie.blogspot.com/2011/12/pepperspray-nation-chapter-7-occupy.html There was an idea I had expressed there that I felt needed special attention and perhaps elaboration. Call it the "Parable of Reaganomics and the Dinosaurs."

(P)eople are not content or inclined to quietly starve to death. There could be a parallel found in the mass extinction of the dinosaurs and the effect of Reagan economic and social policies...especially in what became the Inner City.



The earth was struck by an asteroid that caused, among other multitudinous disruptions, a quasi-nuclear winter which killed off all the growing plants at the time. Plants form the basis of the food chain. When the plants died out, the herbivores - plant eaters - followed. When the herbivores died out, the carnivores followed.-
Manufacturing had been slowly off-shored ever since it was discovered how profitable it was after the Marshall Plan was enacted in Europe and Reconstruction in Japan after World War 2. Through off-shoring, corporate profits climbed as the closing of factories in the US raised unemployment. Under Reagan this process was accelerated as unions were busted. Especially hard hit were urban area, large cities, which had already been re-segregated by White Flight to the suburbs in response to the federal order desegregating public schools in Brown v Board of Education. Concurrent to the busting of unions and the shuttering of factories, Reagan waged war on The Welfare Queen, or the welfare state which was the legacy of the LBJ Great Society/War on Poverty program. With this as his banner and social doctrine, Reagan gutted the social safety net as millions were forced on to it because of the exodus of manufacturing jobs from American shores. Without factory jobs or even public assistance, legitimate businesses died because nobody had money for goods or services. Especially in what was now the Inner City. A situation being replicated in many ways today by the Great Recession today.
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But not all life on earth is dependent on plants or meat. Insects survive on any form of organic matter and survive in nearly every environment. Animals that thrive on insects, though marginal, are very durable. Cockroach vitality, hardy as a rat. Insects became the new base for the food chain.
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When legitimate commerce died in the inner city, the economies of last resort...criminal enterprises; drug dealing, prostitution, other peoples' property, and violence...stepped in to take its place out of necessity. People don't quietly starve.
Unfortunately, right at this time, a new product appeared.
A product that could make people wealthy, but at the cost of living their lives in dog years and almost guaranteeing either a violent death, or spending the rest of their lives in prison and the weight of knowing they were poisoning their own communities. Who wouldn't jump at that when the alternative is grinding poverty and degradation? You don't even need a high school diploma! [Dave Chappel Inside Actors Studio, 2:20 Impact of Crack Epidemic]
What product was this? It was crack cocaine.
The Reagan ad Morning in America would have been accurate only if it included the screams of crack babies and the sound of machine gun fire from the drive-bys of competing gangs.
Everything here, from the exportation of jobs to the shredding of the social safety net to the appearance of the crack cocaine economy and the gang warfare it fostered were all the products of classic Reagan era. These were the triumphs of Reagan economic and social policy.
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Those creatures that survived as insectivores were later able to diversify and fill the roles of mega fauna herbivores and carnivores left vacant by the destruction of the dinosaurs.
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The economic disruption of the inner city caused by Reagan policies was neither total, nor complete. The prosaic upward mobility of a factory job leading to security upon retirement with money to send the kids to college died with a stake in its heart, and not just for those in the inner city. It is THIS coincidentally, that has lead to the death of the Middle Class for ALL America.
And while the resulting deaths and hardships brought on by the Crack Epidemic should never allow anyone to rest comfortably...like mega fauna descended from insectivores, giants were born from this tragedy.
Some crack dealers escaped or survived addiction, gang violence and incarceration by commoditizing their exploits in gangster rap and hip hop; following in the proud tradition of their Delta and Chicago Blues Forefathers in the testimonial and honest portrayal of a dystopian Horatio Alger-style American Dream - one with bitches and hos and the popping of caps in asses and killing cops - and bridging their way back into legitimate enterprise and mainstream society. Changing it in the process.
Those who did took their money made selling crack and music and invested in record labels and studios; ultimately becoming top tier entrepreneurs, media moguls and tycoons. 

THAT is how Social Darwinism actually works. The multitude perish, but the meek survive on the margins (and there are none more meek that those on the margins surviving by recourse to criminal enterprise) first flourish then thrive. Leaving their print on the society that so nearly extinguished them.
People Do NOT starve and quietly die.









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