The 99 per centers and the Quislings

I guess I'm a ninety nine per center-I mean, who isn't, when their next paycheck or contract job contains a soupcon of doubt-and that's assuming that there's some sort of opportunity to get paid in the immediate future?

Not to mention a student loan overhang the size of Mount Rushmore, either. It's not just for twentysomethings any more. If it wasn't for President Bush and his pen back in 2007, I'd be in a lot worse shape than I am now. There's some comfort in knowing that the balance of my student loan debt will be forgiven when I'm 87.

Where was I? Oh, I remember. Too much parallel thinking this morning, which is how I tend to roll.

We've all seen the "I am not the 99 per cent" screed that was allegedly written by some college student somewhere, which has become a focus point for the credulous, kind of like a psychic bug zapper-it looks pretty, but get too close and Wall Street'll have your ass on a plate by lunch time.

There's no future in being a Quisling.

For those of you who've been out of the country, Vidkun Quisling was a Norwegian Nazi (there he is in the photo on the left, schmoozing with Himmler) who, when the Nazis had no more use for him because they'd become extinct, became extinct himself at the hands of a firing squad in late 1945.

The moral of this part of the story is, as my old man used to say "It is never a good idea to rise too far above your station in life." To that, because I'm the family patriarch (and what a thought THAT is) I would add it is never a good idea to forget where you came from and who your people were. Being Wall Street's bitch will inevitably bite you in the ass, just as being Hitler's bitch settled old Vidkun's hash for good.

The following illustrates the principle.

Back in slavery days, ole Massuh told the house negroes that they were better than the field hands because they slept in a bed, dressed in real clothes, and worked in the house instead of out in the field or the stable with the heat and the sweat and the stink. And a lot of the house negroes believed this gross canard, to their discredit. But when ole Massuh had lost his roll at the faro tables, having been righteously skinned by riverboat card sharps, all the negroes without exception, field hands, house negroes, and even some of old Massuh's progeny from his late night drunken rambles in the slave quarters went on the auction block to be sold to the highest bidder without exception.