So Dwayne "the Rock" Johnson appeared on Fox News and said he wasn't endorsing Joe Biden again for 2024. He said he's keeping his politics 'private'. He said that on Fox News. That uh, well, it kinda smells of something interesting Mr. Rock. It smells of cheap cologne, fake tan and dirty diapers.
There's some interesting stuff happening lately. Not so much with politics (which is always interesting stuff but also exhausting, frustrating and horrific stuff) but with celebrity culture. There's some backlash coming and it's really interesting.
When the billionaires imploded in the tuna can going down to see The Titanic, there was no sorrow online. The absolute disdain of people towards millionaires was almost joyful. And have you seen the vitriol aimed at J-Lo recently? Her little vanity project This Is Me... Now is not just a $20 million dollar self-funded flop but the internet's hate of Jenny from the Block (in Bel-Air) is epic. Nobody likes Jennifer Lopez and for great, good reason.
When I read that Jeff Bezos could solve world hunger and it would cost him nothing:
According to UN officials, "$30 billion per year is needed to end world hunger". There are 795 million undernourished people in the world today. That means one in nine people do not get enough food to lead an active and healthy life. Jeff Bezos could even end world hunger twice a year.
It wouldn't affect him at all. At all.
His ex-wife, on the other hand:
Scott has given away $16.5 billion from the fortune she came into after divorcing Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. Initially, she publicized the gifts in online blog posts, sometimes naming the organizations and sometimes not. She launched a database of her giving in December 2022, under the name Yield Giving.
By the way, McKenzie Scott still has billions. Because when you have billions of dollars (in real money, not Trump Bucks) you are never going to be poor. Your money makes money which makes money which doesn't stop making money.
Anyway, this post is going all over the place. But ... we've been taught that billionaires and celebrities and other entitled people have earned their entitlement. And in the past we treated them as though that was true. But not anymore. When the greatest acts of charity are performed so often by those who are humble, it makes the Rocks and J-Lo's look like the big entitled babies they are.
The Rock might be fine or he might discover that women don't feel kindly about a man who has announced he'll vote to strip their rights away. Jeff Bezos can continue his Lex Luthor cosplay but people are going to cheer at his death.
We often look at the changes around us and feel sad about the evolution (and de-evolution) of society. The change in tenor towards entitlement makes me feel enthusiastic. And it makes me feel like I want to start being more of the change in this world. Maybe the Rock will inspire more of us to get involved. Maybe the billionaires will be a catalyst for change because of how we're seeing them for what they really are.
If Dwayne is keeping his voting preferences private, why come out and say he's not voting for Biden? That kind of gives you the idea that he's voting for the orange one and if so, I've lost what little respect I had for him.
ReplyDeleteBillionaires suck. they COULD help but do they? really? A little here or there to make it seem like they do is nothing. they'd rather leave it to the rest of us, who struggle to survive ourselves while they take a ten minute ride into space. Should leave them there. fuckers.
I'm dreading the time the orange one gets back into power. He's in trouble with the law for all his money troubles and yet billionaires are funding his campaign. What the actual hell?
You need to move down here, babe. Our pollies are no better or worse but they're not as damaged as he is. I fear for you and your readers, once he's in.
xx
I have been thinking about this post since I first read it, because of how often we direct our resentment of the wealthy to the few ubiquitous names in the press, and among those, most often towards those who by comparison aren't all that wealthy. The Rock? Jennifer Lopez? They are probably worth a couple hundred million each. Meanwhile, Felon Husk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg are word hundreds of *billions* of dollars each.
ReplyDeleteAnd then, there are the many billionaires no one has heard off, who are busy directing how politics are played, both by "sponsoring" lobbying groups to pass bills that will guarantee them higher profits and lower taxes, but also by dropping millions behind candidates that are more likely to pass those bills for them.
An example of someone who should be burned in efify, that most people haven't even heard of even in his own state: Jeff Yass. (watch this More Perfect Union breakdown here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjNTa93fqkY) The fucker is worth 27.5 BILLION U.S. dollars, and says, which his whole chest, that the gap between poor and wealthy people "has never been smaller" because "both poor and rich people have iphones and watch Netflix" and both "have some form of health insurance".
So yeah The Rock is an asshole, who allows himself to be used by people like Yass--and Bezos and Zuckerberg and Musk--when he's closer to us than to them in terms of wealth *and* they see him as their inferior in every way, including ethnicity. Compared to the damage that these 'unknown' bilionaires do to democracy every day, he's literally no one.