The whole my life I've being feeling miserable: not worthy of the Great Society we all live in. I lie. I've been faking. On purpose, though: that made people around me so much more happy about themselves, that they largely decided to leave me alone.

It is if the people do not care as much as how they feel, as they care to make sure that other people feel worse than them. First I thought that behavior is inherent pattern to the morally corrupted and economically unhealthy communist society in which I grew up, and that once I move away, or once that society become trashed to its destiny at the junkyards of history, I would not see that behavior any more. I was wrong.

There is a distinct and distinguished class of people who would "go places" in any society: those who are able to cash in on their ability to delegate their misery to others around them, thus, temporarily, making themselves feeling good. We may call them spineless, assholes, shitheads, but they will still be well paid and their underlings, employees or simply followers will fly around them chirping in flattery, sucking in their misery happily like a sponge. Are sponges happy animals?

The same kind of guy, or a woman, who would in our high school in old (now, even former) Yugoslavia become a member of the Communist party, and go to the Socialist Youth power meetings, and snitch upon his or her friends religious, drugs, dresscode or music habits, to become later in his or her miserable life a functionary with great responsibilities, possible a war criminal - would here in the land of the free, home of the brave, perhaps become a Young Republican (or a Democrat, this is a land of choice, after all) developing the same productive habits of snitching upon his or her friends, just to make tomorrow a brilliant upwardly mobile career in the Corporate world.

Even the societies are not so much different: Corporate capitalism is actually very similar to Self-management socialism of Yugoslavia, and it has probably the same destination in history. In self-management socialism State was not the owner of everything, like it was in a plain Bolshevik concept of socialism. Ownership was rather public: EVERYBODY was owner of EVERYTHING. Sounds fantastic (and the left around the globe worshiped the system uncritically for long years), but it just doesn't work. Because nobody cares. The real power rested with the middlemen - those who positioned themselves skillfully to stay between the people (owners) and the means of production (owned property) and have the information (knowledge) how to make it all work together. Of course, their purses went unchecked (since they were checking each others purses). In Yugoslavia there were three separate castes of "middlemen": factory directors, party bosses and military brass. Technocracy and bureaucracy were often at odds and army was there to ensure that one or the other never wins. Communist Party was the weakest link in the Yugoslav chain: it did not have the economic clout of technocracy, nor the raw power of military - as a self-proclaimed vanguard of history it was more like a church in 16th century - dependent on illusions: as soon as people decided not to give a damn any more whether their immortal souls would burn eternally in hell, the power was lost forever.

In Corporate capitalism the ownership is indeed more defined: instead of everybody owning everything, a selected few owns a selected number of stocks of selected number of companies. This makes the system mathematically more stable, because at least the stakes in the produced values can be quantified and traced. That's why all the numbers continue to add up while the society from the perspective of an average Joe and Jane goes down the smelly sewer full of fat rats.

In a big corporation the real owners have limited power, because their stakes are small. For comparison: in self-managed socialism the real owners had no actual power, because their stakes were nominal (the most pleasant mid-summer dream of any multi-national CEO). The real power therefore rests with the middlemen: the corporate management and its political and military extensions, which makes the current U.S. model similar to the late Yugoslav model. The bipartisan political model is however far more stable than one-party model: first - it shields the bureaucracy behind the illusion of democracy and second - it provides more circuses for the masses (first=second). So, we don't have to fear that the U.S. would just suddenly go Yugoslavia.

Still it doesn't make for a much different life for the miserable majority. The rich are going to be rich beyond belief. They'd probably not be considered human in next century. Masses would be led to believe the rich are from outer space and should not be disturbed. The poor will be left out of statistics and exits from highways to their neighborhoods will be shut down. The rest of society would consist of managers and suckers: the managers being the ones with the ability to make themselves feel less miserable by making their underlings (i.e. suckers) feel more miserable. The suckers will take Prozac daily, as recommended by their physician.

Aside of the revolution, which requires a lot of people to get organized, on a more individual level, wouldn't it be easier if everybody deals with his or hers misery internally? Yes, but most of the ways and means that make you feel less miserable are declared illegal, and you go to prison if you are caught in possession of them. The Great Society does not want you just to feel less miserable. The Great Society offers you to make others feel more miserable as the only legal way to make yourself feel less miserable. The Great Society needs people to feel miserable, because then they'd want to achieve, and the society (i.e. impersonal corporations) is more productive (and the rich are getting richer and the managers' coffers are more stuffed; and your eternal coffin will cost less, because by that time you'd be sucked dry, sucker).