Nichevo,
I sympathize, and in fact I am a peer with your sensibilities, regarding your point of view when you ask who is more deserving of a liver, Mickey Mantle or Steve Jobs? I rather doubt Mr. Jobs would have anything to do with your question. His answer would most likely be, “Deserve’s got nothing to do with it.” He by the way does have a valid point with this observation. Supposedly livers are doled out on the basis of need to those who are deemed deserve them most and who would make the best fit with them, there is certainly not a free market in them. But all this is a sham as anyone with enough money and prestige, as Mr. Jobs and Mr. Mantle both have proven, easily end-runs around the rules.
Josh,
Progressivism and Communism are cousins, both variants of socialist utopianism. The endgame is to create a heaven on earth; there is an eschatology. Immanetizing the eschlaton, and all that. They do present as competing versions of Christianity, and they draw on familiarity with Christian doctrine and tradition to fuel their acceptance. It is no surprise Marxism (along with all the other 19th century utopian visions) were born in Europe at a time Christendom was experiencing a crisis of faith. It severs the Promised Land from God and grafts it onto the promise of humans.
I apologize for coming on very strong and impolitely with my expressions of disgust for Steve Jobs. Obviously he is not a man I admire, to say the least, so my reaction to the question of “Why do the good die young?” was a hot and hastily emoting of, “Why are we discussing Steve Jobs on this one?” To give the man his due, he was a force in bringing the PC to the masses, long ago. His work at Pixar was inspired. I do admire these two achievements of his.
To his detriment, Steve re-took Apple and turned it into a boutique that designs overpriced SWPL. Apple is in fact a frivolous company anymore, a design house that ought to be located in Paris, France next to Christian Dior, not Silicon Valley. Among corporate CEO’s you’re hard pressed to find a more ruthless, uncaring S.O.B. than Steve Jobs was. This is a source of wonderment. Gawker aggregated all the Twitter feeds asking, “Where were you? (when you heard the news of Steve Jobs death)?” It was incredible to behold all the Apple fanboys competing to pour out their sense of utter devastation and loss for the man who epitomized exactly the kind of thing they profess to despise the most: the heartless capitalist. The Occupiers were leaving their self-erected Obamavilles to head down the Apple stores and burn votive candles around hastily constructed shrines. This is madness. This is a mental disease.
Meanwhile you’ve got Alan Mullaly in the news, CEO of Ford Motor Company, and the Koch brothers, who have done more to provide good work and income to Americans than Steve Jobs or Apple ever did or ever will. And they’ve funded charitable trusts, educational trusts, fine arts trusts, and sought many ways to do something that would have had Steve Jobs sneering: give back to the community. The whole point of the Apple fanboys’ protests out on their Obamavilles is premised on this very idea. Fat cats must pay their fair share. You’ve got to give it up for the less-privileged. They aim to structure the whole of American society around these redistributive notions based on fairness, based on who “deserves” a helping hand.
They say as much every other minute, as they tweet from their iPads, interspersed with other tweets telling us of their profound sense of loss at over Mr. Jobs, their hero. They seek to out-do each other on greater expressions of hate for Mullaly, the Kochs, etc. Those evil capitalists! Jobs, who firmly opposed lending a helping hand to anybody at any time, on principle, is their fanboy hero. It is unbelievable to behold.
