Maids, circa 1904 [Source]

A psychic told me I was a servant in a past life.  I strained to imagine a life at court.  Versailles, perhaps.  No, no, she said; nothing so grand.  Plus a karmic scar to go along with it too.  Something about being cruelly ravished by a footman on a back staircase. 

Well, that, I thought, would explain a great deal.

The current economic situation, you understand, is dire only if you think high unemployment is a bad thing; a matter of concern only if you imagine that the plight of the starving poor is worthy of your attention.  If on the other hand you believe in the importance of recreating a ruling class, then the last few years have been a breathtaking success.  We've seen the disparity between rich and poor grow by leaps and bounds.  It's been no easy task, either.  Hard fought battles have been waged to suppress the rights of the worker and to nurture and promote the freedom of corporate leaders to make vast profits.  Well, done!   Consequently, an ever increasing pool of unemployed labor is ready to take whatever they can get, slavery is back -- in the sex industry at least -- and training schools for "personal service" (butlers and maids) are being flooded with applicants.

Now days I give little toy irons as baby gifts.  I think it's important we begin early with the upcoming generation.    

"Milly has a position down in Mullingar, you know.
- Go away! Isn't that grand for her?" 

[Ulysses, Chapter 8 Lestrygonians, p. 206]

As David Harvey writes in A Brief History of Neoliberalism (Oxford, 2005), p. 153: "The upper classes preferred to crash the system [in 1929] rather than surrender any of their privileges and power... ruling classes rarely, if ever, voluntarily surrender any of their power."

Which goes a long way explaining the behavior of the Republicans these days, doesn't it.   The problem, as Harvey continues, is that the ruling elite's policy tends to be apres moi le deluge, so "then the deluge largely engulfs the powerless and the unsuspecting while elites have well-prepared arks in which they can, at least for a time, survive quite well."

Now I know you don't like it when I talk about upsetting things.  But I'm not trying to be gloomy.  Things could work out.  As Andrew Mellon once said, "In a depression assets return to their rightful owners."  He was, of course, thinking of himself.

And anyway, I actually like to iron.  I find it quite soothing, which could well be a carry-over from that past life.  I like to think that after the butler had his way with me -- although it could have been the master of the house, not all country life was violence perpetrated by servant on servant -- after he'd buttoned up and left me bruised and bloody on the stairs, I gathered myself up and slipped back down to the scullery, tried as best I could to clean up -- perhaps Cook gave me a nice cuppa, you know, with a kind word and a pat on my tear-stained cheek, and off I went to lose myself in some useful mindless work, a mountain of table linens perhaps that needed pressing for the Hunt Ball, or his lordship's shirts or his sheets still damp from the wash... the simple monotonous routine of the labor a kind of balm and solace.