I have an old friend, an individual who expresses his disdain for “socialism.”  He speaks of “force collectivism” with condescension.  His point, policies to help the majority, those under-employed, individuals and families unable to “help themselves” are contemptible.  I and others, react to his aversion to public funding of services targeted to persons, who by circumstance and nature are on the lowest rung of society.  Sure, I have sound reasons for objecting to  a heartless opinion…

On the other hand…

Oddly,
submission to powerful, frightening, even terrible persons,
like tyrants and generals, is not experienced
as nearly so painful as is this submission
to unknown and uninteresting persons,
which is what
all the luminaries of industry are.

What the workers see in the
employer is usually only
a cunning, bloodsucking dog of a man
who speculates on all misery;
and the employer’s name, shape,
manner, and reputation
are a matter of complete indifference
to them.

…If the nobility of birth showed in their eyes and gestures,
there might not be any socialism of the masses.

For at bottom the masses
are willing to submit to slavery of any kind,
if only the higher-ups
constantly legitimize themselves as higher,
as born to command by having noble manners.

…the lack of higher manners
and the notorious vulgarity of manufacturers
with their ruddy, fat hands
give him the idea that
it is only accident and luck
that have elevated one person above another.

Well, then, he reasons:
let us try accident and luck!
let us throw
the dice!

And thus socialism is born

–excerpt The Gay Science, Book 1, Section 40 by Friedrich Nietzsche

I am reminded of the Kennedy administration which I barely remember.  John F. Kennedy was assassinated on November 22nd, 1963.  His presidency is remembered as “American Camelot.”  This is a term of myth, a reference to the Arthurian legend.  Was 1960’s America idyllic? Was the marriage of the President and first lady untroubled, to be emulated ?  Hardly.

There is another reason for the idealization of those years…