Secrets of the Wizard of Oz and our current economic crisis
GaelicGotham.com
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is a modern fairy tale published in 1900, that was written by Frank Baum who loved editorial cartoons from the newspaper. He used the universal symbols of his day to create a contemporary fable that explains our own financial crisis.Hurricanes (socio-economic upheaval like now), the Tin Man (working stiffs dependent on oil), the strawman (farmers), the Lion (populist leader), the wizard (the pinhead "in charge"), the Wicked Witch of the East (Wall Street banks), the Wicked Witch of the West (big oil & business) are but a few of the symbols Baum used from his imagination and the newspapers to create a fantasy where an American child could go into and fix the world of finance (Oz) that is causing her aunt and uncle such worry in the real world ("Main Street" or "Kansas"). Dorothy does this amazing thing by changing the way money is made. She kills the Wicked Witch of the East and takes her shoes. In the book the shoes are silver (money) and ruby in the movie for technicolor. The original is better.
If killing the witch seems extreme, in the context of American political cartoons it is not. The banking plutocrats were often depicted as vipers (in top hats) battling Andrew Jackson or populist heroes like him. ["The bank," Jackson told his vice president, "is trying to kill me, but I will kill it!,"--this captures the sentiment towards banks.] The vipers becames witches in Baum's fantasy of Oz.
Dorothy unmasks the wizard and helps him retire. This overthrow isn't violent. Our own system can be taken back on the back of the principles instituted after the original Revolutionary War. Nor does she kill the witches sadistically or even volitionally. White collar thieves are better "killed" with liquidation which is what "I'mm melting!" "I'm melting!" was all about.
Irish Americans have special access to the hidden meaning of the Wizard of Oz. Baum tells us the wizard's full name includes the first-name "Phadrig," Irish for Patrick. Irish Americans were central protagonists and pawns--on all sides--in the beginning of what is our modern oil-driven epoch that began around when Oz was written. By understanding our history and the foundations of our epoch, we can sort out the perrenial tricks that the establishment use to confuse, and thereby to steal our nations' wealth.Frank Baum tells us in Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz that the The Wizard's full real name is Oscar Zoroaster (OZ) Phadrig Isaac Norman Henkel Emmannuel Ambroise Diggs or O.Z.P.I.N.H.E.A.D. for short. The name reveals how the wizard who uses charms and fears and trickery and magesterium to keep the people working like little elves, also wears the mask of immortal heroic leaders. The Wizard is the shining knight (Norman), the corporate saleman (Henkel), the messiah(Emmanuel/Jesus), the father who would sacrifice his son for God (Isaac), the knickerbocker (Ambroise), the tycoon (digger). We are to learn, the fable teaches, to see through this wizard and discover our own heart, our own mind, our own courage as the allegorical figures Tin Man, Scarecrow and Cowardly Lion must do. With that selfhood, we can figure out how money and power should be regulated by elected government--not by unelected and secretive bankers--for the good of society and freedom of its citizens.
Phádrig is the shepherd of the Irish often invoked by men seeking Irish votes, using Irish charms in the phenomenon of urban Irish political machines. Tammany Hall in New York and other such machines were in Baum's day engines that had created in America, The Emerald City--a fusion of Emerald Isle romance and urban American opportunity: the mosaics of New York subway, the skyscraper spanning the East River between Brooklyn and Manhattan, the Emerald City and its leprechaun-like wizard were metaphors for that maligned ethnic institution of early democracy that fought to create an American middle class out of Dickensian poverty.Baum warns us that politicians will strip the mask of Patrick, as they do Jesus and the Texas cowboy and the Crusading knight, and wear this version of manly leadership to usher his flock to ends they will come to regret and should have predicted. The Irish politician in America will end up serving the plutocrats (as O'Reilly does Murdoch), and helping real authority--the witches.
