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Coulda, Shoulda, Wouldn’tve: What Disasters Are We Creating Now?
No one could have known.
That’s what they always say after a disaster. Well, it’s what the establishment—a good ’60s word, let’s bring it back!—says. “No one could have known” is the perfect excuse. Don’t blame us, we did the best we could, but we’re not clairvoyant.
But it’s rarely true. Most of the time, the people in charge—the people responsible for what went wrong—were warned in advance. They simply chose to ignore the warnings.
Why? In the case of government officials and corporate executives, it’s typically because acting on such warnings would cost them money. Sometimes it’s because the man or woman who predicts the mayhem about to unfold doesn’t have the status, title or connections to make themselves heard.
Mostly it’s because scum rises to the top.
After hurricane Katrina destroyed New Orleans, Homeland Security secretary Michael Chertoff called the disaster “breathtaking in its surprise.”
“That ‘perfect storm’ of a combination of catastrophes exceeded the foresight of the planners, and maybe anybody’s foresight,” Chertoff said.
It didn’t surprise everyone. “We certainly understood the potential impact of a Category 4 or 5 hurricane” on New Orleans, Lt. General Carl Strock, chief of engineers for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers,” said the same week.
I had attended a journalists’ convention in New Orleans a few years before that. Probably half the New Orleans residents I met asked me to write about the “big one” that was sure to devastate their city someday.
Except for those who later claimed that nobody could have known, everybody knew.
Harry Markopolos, a Boston financial analyst, has a book out (title: “No One Would Listen”) detailing the eight years he spent trying to convince the SEC to go after Bernard Madoff, who was responsible for the disappearance of $65 billion.
The financial collapse that began in the fall of 2008 was attributable to the burst of the housing bubble, fiscal shenanigans at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and the longstanding practice of allowing investment banks to hire and fire rating agencies. Economists, corporate insiders, and journalists had repeatedly warned about these problems since at least 2004. They were ignored, even ridiculed by those who claimed a “new paradigm” was in effect in the U.S. economy.
From the lack of WMDs in Iraq (Scott Ritter knew) to the losing quagmire in Afghanistan (I knew) to the recent mine disaster in West Virginia (inspectors knew), nearly every calamity you can think of could have been avoided. All the idiots in charge had to do was listen to the smart people who weren’t.
Adam Cohen writes in The New York Times: “Predictions of disaster have always been ignored—that is why there is a Cassandra myth—but it is hard to think of a time when so many major warned-against calamities have occurred in such quick succession. The next time someone is inclined to hold hearings on a disaster, they should go beyond asking why particular warnings were ignored and ask why well-founded warnings are so often ignored.”
Cohen answers his own question, citing four causes for institutional resistance to doing the right/smart thing before it’s too late: ideology (reflexive thinking), change would threaten the powers-that-be, inertia, and incompetence.
No doubt, those factors all play a role. I’d like to add another: the fear to speak truth to power, which is intimately coupled with powers that tell truth to shut up.
In my long work history it was a rare workplace where management sought out new ideas, much less criticism. It was rarer still that a contrarian voice was rewarded, much less heeded. We see the same thing in politics. Those who speak up are smacked down.
All too often, bosses and officials are insecure. Worried more about losing face than doing a good job, they instinctively reject anyone and anything who threatens their prestige. Better to lose a war than to lose face.
The problem is systemic. As long as business schools crank out automatons and companies are willing to hire them, as long as voters reward the smarmiest and godliest over the straight-talkers, as long as playing it safe (i.e. boring) is valued more than taking chances, our society is going to keep screwing up. And it’ll all be perfectly avoidable.
Look around today. What are we being warned about? Which smart people are we ignoring? They’re everywhere. Let’s start with the economists who warn that the U.S. economy is at the end of its rope, that the federal government can’t keep increasing the deficit, that underpaying workers as the rich gets richer is a recipe for collapse and revolution.
For my money, the fact that we are ignoring the thousands of scientists who warn of rising floodwaters due to global warming, dust storms and mass famine due to excessive cultivation and overpopulation, and untold damage to our ecosystem as thousands of species go extinct, proves a terrible point: As a society, we are nearly as stupid as our bosses and public officials.
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46 Comments so far
Show AllI remember listening to a segment on NPR's All Things Considered about the "Big One" in New Orleans. I believe it was sometime around 2001 or 2002. They spent about 15 minutes examining the likely outcomes. It was incredibly prescient. It all played out just like they discussed it.
Corruption and incompetence make a dangerous and deadly combination.
Don't let greed escape the equation.
Mr. Rall, I believe you left out one very important "disaster" that many predicted was imminent; that would be September 11, 2001. Yet, Republicans continue to proclaim that "There were no terrorist attacks during the Bush administration" and " Pres. Bush kept us safe" !!!
It was the Bush administration that carried out 9-11.
All it takes is one look at the way those buildings came down, one look at the passenger manifests as they were first released (no middle eastern names on them) and the timing of the attack on the pentagon (one day after an announcement that billions were 'missing' and even with an hour's notice, the most well funded military in the history of the world cannot protect it's headquarters from an incoming missile) to know the truth. And don't forget that Bush's presidency was the result of a coup d'etat.
Until and unless we are willing to fight their violence and sociopathy with the same level of force, we will be their slaves.
Meanwhile, your tax dollars are going to pay for 3 headed depleted uranium babies in Iraq, a military that murders with impunity and GWB's security detail.
The US is not the 'greatest country ever'; it's simply the most dysfunctional and inhumane and murderous.
The combination of corruption and incompetence reached its' peak during the Bush administration. Barack Obama's refusal for holding anyone accountable from that cabal perpetuates the problem. American business's obsession with stock price and quarterly profits devastates the economy. Something's got to give.
Unforgiven nailed the fifth and I believe defining factor: greed. Profits control the decisions to ignore safety. Profits didn't even make it onto Ted Rall's list.
But all these disasters, which are local by nature, pale compared to the Big One, climate change, which we are exacerbating by our profligate activities (those pesky profits again).
I suppose 50 years from now we will again be hearing excuses of "who would have guessed!" despite volumes of scientific evidence which were ignored or ridiculed by the corporate press. I'm sure Mother Nature has a myriad of very unpleasant surprises in store for our ignoring the warnings.
When the people fear their government there is tyranny,
when the government fears the people there is liberty.
~ Thomas Jefferson
Being wrong is irrelevant to those in power. Retaining power and profits is all that matters. What do the powerful care if New Orleans sinks like a stone? If it means more profits for the powerful, they're all for it. Look at the privitization of the public school system in New Orleans post-Katrina. Case in point: the disaster created opportunities for the powerful. Had they known how profitable Katrina would be, they'd have taken action to make it happen even sooner.
When will the average person wake up and realize that their lives are run by corporations?
"Had they known how profitable Katrina would be, they'd have taken action to make it happen even sooner."
yes...and what are they currently "making happen", in the name of profit?
Superb post! The miners killed, the oil spill off Louisiana, these disasters happened because it wasn't profitable to prevent them. Your post demonstrates the crucial flaw in Ted Rall's article and challenges his "radical" status. If there are profits to be made, corporations will act proactively and responsibly (for them). Does any body really think that the repeal of Glass-Steagal was an accident? Or that real wages for working class Americans has been stagnant or falling since the 1970's was just a fluke? Or that labor unions once strong and now anemic was a prolonged case of bad luck? No. Each one of these (and many, many, more) happened from thoughtful, long term planning and action by corporate America.
Incompetent politicians and execs? Not hardly; they're the Smartest Guys in the Room, working any angle that will make more money/cut more taxes for the rich.
When I was a geologist in the early 1960s working for an oil company in New Orleans, every geologist (indeed every scientifically aware person) knew that New Orleans was in imminent danger from big hurricanes. The danger was a frequent topic of discussion. Why was nothing done? Because it would have taken HUGE money to fix the problems, and no politician in New Orleans, or Louisiana, or Washington was willing to propose that taxes be raised and the money spent.
Jim Shea
Huge money that turned out to be about 1/10th of what we're now going to spend to bring N.O. back to life. 'The stitch in time, saves nine'. Why do we have to keep relearning this?
" The scum rises to the top ". Seems nothing has changed in 2500 years! Plato: " Those who are too smart to engage in politics are punished by being governed by those who are dumber ".
Excellent analysis Mr. Rall. I wonder if this is something particular to the US or not. I do know how sad I get when I think about how kids are taught to think out of the box, be original, be daring. Then when they get to that prize corporate job they get: sit down, shut up, do as you're told or we'll find someone else to replace you.
Ted Rall, you nailed it! as always. however .... since you're not in with the in crowd - are you? - no one "important" is listening to you.
We so appreciate your cartoons, too. The sharpest political cartoonist of our time is you, Mr. Rall!
Here's a cartoon for you: Cassandra runs around predicting catastrophes right and left: Iraq, Katrina, Afghanistan, banking, etc. they all come true. When he/she makes the next prediction the powers that be say: Here she comes again with her whacky, radical left predictions. Get a life, Cassandra!
Sioux Rose
RVR: About 15 years ago I teamed up with a Key West sketch artist and we submitted some cartoons we hoped to see sindicated. We actually had some interest as we were told they'd never come across a female team before! Here are 3 cartoons we submitted (I still love them):
1. A mosquito with gigantic muscles steps forward to collect his body building trophy and he says, while accepting the award, "And I owe it all to Monsanto."
2. A woman is being burned as a witch. In the foreground, the locals gather and one woman observing the "Survivor Episode" of that non-televised era says to another, "Do you think she had a problem with self-esteem?"
3. A Texas male wearing a big hat bites into the rear-end of a cow. The caption says, "My wife says I need to eat more raw food."
What do you think? There are about 99 more... and I have some I would LOVE to see Saturday Night Live do.
hey, ted!
as long as people are forced to generate money to pay to get their life's necessities from others, thanks to the privatization of property, nothing will change...
once they controlled the land, the rest was (is) gravy...then, you just need jobs and jails...
unfortunately, jobs kill living things...
Global Start Date: September 22, 2012...unanimous, planetwide rejection of the modern world, and the powers that currently control it...
let's get those gardens growing!
incidentally, when technology has advanced to the point where disasters can be manufactured, are they still called disasters, or crimes? crimes...
Does that mean starting 9/22/12 you'll stop posting to CD? Internet's part of the modern world buddy.
of course...as effective as this has been...
More Sequels of More Equal empirePie April 27th, 2010
Haiti tents and false flagged events;
Barbarians of new world order that sacked and lent.
More equal is the “Animal Farm” sequel
of style and plunder
denial of ash asunder
from twin towered wonder.
Weapons of financial and mass termination
lead the charge, the surge, the purge
to the wished for final solution;
total destruction.
Everyone denies that they are a part
except for demon prophecy and celluloid thrillers,
some particles of light waved through the crack.
I am old. I'll be dead before the feces hits the whirling blades. Good luck, youngsters. You'll need it.
It's hard to beat Naomi Klein's analysis of this kind of thing in THE SHOCK DOCTRINE.
Without pretending to reproduce that, it strikes me that "elite" recognitions of catastrophe must vary widely from event to event, from organization to organization, and from individual to individual, and that these are not likely reflected accurately in public announcement.
So we will likely never be certain who knew what when and what was deliberate murder and what only massive negligence on the part of whom.
What seems obvious is that the anticipation and preparation that does exist in the corporate world is oriented just as is the corporate interest in all other phenomena: corporations only worry about who will profit and how much.
Individuals in corporations have little time to act on their human concerns because they "have to work."
Governments, of course, are largely bought, and politicians often in business for themselves, though these things are not completely universal.
All of these are intrinsic functions of corporate form and corporate profit.
We have seen that violent insurrection followed by a centralized state are problematic solutions at best and catastrophic at worst. We need a distributed and relatively if not completely nonviolent revolution to reform the ownership of production, not by the state but by stakeholders.
In this, a lot remains unanswered. However, I should think that preliminary steps would involve not only resistance to statist and corporate depredations, but the establishment of relatively independent cooperatist economies within the larger social structure and at least at first parasitic on it.
It would seem necessary to get progressive control of the basic economic elements of living: residency, clothing, food, and education.
Communication and transport may be special cases. Given current tax codes, such groups might justly and practically claim religious exemption, but that would seem problematic, since one also needs something like a separation of church and organization or "state."
Sioux Rose
BARDAMU: Excellent post. A few days ago I posted some quotes from the Guru Yogananda that spoke of the relationship between violent behavior as official state policy and the response in terms of dangerous weather/climate patterns. He called the latter the "great dissolution." I bring this up because your prescription for addressing what needs healing may well become catalyzed by environmental catastrophes that force small groups of people to work together to meet the basic necessities their joint survival depends upon.
It isn't just that we're stupid, it's that our so-called 'system' of politics does not facilitate, and may not even allow, the application of intelligence to the problems we face. I think this fact underlies Rall's analysis.
Time to start thinking in terms of structure, everybody.
The scariest thing about Rall's piece is the note of resignation in it.
We shouldn't overlook the fact that intelligence is viewed with deeper suspicion in this country than wealth. This is, of course, intentional. The wealthy who've taken over our media-streams plant the idea hard, fast, and furious that people who use multisyllable words are not to be trusted. If you have time, read (if you can) this PJ O'Rourke tripe called 'A Plague of 'A' Students' in the Weakly Standard:
http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/plague-%E2%80%98a%E2%80%99-students
Here we read that nothing is so irritating about the Obama Administration as its intelligence. The Right is usually less obvious in its smear of the Left as a group of 'smarty pants'. Usually, they simply imply to their sheep that only GW Bush, Sarah Palin, and Joe the Plumber can be trusted because they still struggle with the English language.
It isn't obvious to too many Americans why this is a disastrous set of meme's to adopt. It gets the Right elected, but its a disaster for the country at large. It sets up a reflexive distrust of simple competence. People are being trained to substitute the speaker for the message, with the speaker defined by Rightwing media as a geek. What happened to the message? Doesn't anyone in the GOP bloggosphere care?
Now, when someone like Brooksley Born warns of a derivatives disaster, don't trust that Cassandra smarty-pants. When Al Gore warns of climate disaster, send Mr 'I-invented-the-internet' packing. Who do these geeky clowns think they are, and what were they talking about, anyway?
Sioux Rose
UBREW: Solid insights, and I see you corrected THE word. The English teacher presents an "A." There is another nuance to your observation and that is, by getting a large segment of the population to distrust its deepest thinkers, the very concept of independent thought is perceived as taboo. What better way (should religion fail in its use of supernatural threats to get people to obey often idiotic rules) to ensure uniformity, the practice (and protocol) of all authoritarians.
Can you believe I had to go BACK and edit that word? I must have a blind spot. I generally hold that all the hard-to-spell words in the English language are French, words like 'bureaucracy' just kill me, sending me repeatedly to the Google-sphere for spell-checking.
Good insight on distrust of independent thought. I might add that often hard-working peoples are looking just for this type of 'out'. It's much easier to work hard when 'the universe is in order'. But how can it be in order when Joe Smarty-Pants over there is yelling 'fire'? He must be a kook. How fortunate, then, that Bill O'Reilly and Glenn Beck agree with you. Sleep in peace and dream of Mutual Funds.
Sioux Rose
UBREW: Added to advertising and/or "the lie told often enough is PERCEIVED AS TRUE." These recipes for cognitive disaster are precisely what's running the dark engine of the MSM.
I have words I have to check, too. The English language has so many anomalies, the phonetics of one word may sound just like another; but the spelling is not consistent in these parallel cases. It's hardest for persons studying English as a second language.
In college I was attracted to Latin males and they used to speak Spanish when they didn't want me to know what they were up to.
When I went to England (part of a college program), I went out with a guy from Iran and he used to speak... is it Farsi? with his pals.
I deducted I could never keep up.
Then when I spent time in Singapore in 2004, I had this dazzling China doll of a female friend who married a pilot and used to drive me around in her Mercedes. Cars in Singapore cost more than twice what they do in the U.S. to discourage people from having them in such a tiny nation. Anyway, she invited me to her posh country club one night and they had private Karyoki rooms on one floor... so there I was with a group of professionals, and they were singing Olivia Newton songs in Cantonese AND English. It was hilarious... and also delightful.
Now in North FLorida it's the season of bird song and I think their elaborate vocal and often musical languages must present similar "translation" problems among the assorted winged beings that nest in my zone. Truly it is an amazing planet, if (like democracy) we can keep it... which requires loving it and its creatures more, and disabusing as many persons as we can of their mistaking money as a yardstick to determine worth.
It sounds like you made the right choice. Time and time again, it is necessary for people to step outside themselves, outside their place of comfort, to appreciate 'the other'. Language is a primary means of experiencing this, so perhaps those of us who experience difficulty spelling should be encouraged: perhaps we're just more attuned to bird-song, among other things.
"The scariest thing about Rall's piece is the note of resignation in it."
It is key to rid oneself of "hope".
But also to avoid the duality that the System enforces subliminally to the effect that "no hope" = "hopelessness" = "resignation".
"When Al Gore warns of climate disaster, send Mr 'I-invented-the-internet' packing."
Oppression has always been a feature of human life and tolerance for it is great especially with Sugar-Daddy's petro-opiates to wash it down. Also, USans are insulated from the world by the USan elite media. The USA is the world, and the rest is mere fringe, according to the masters of the great North American Consumption Plantation. Result: USans lose connection with a broader reality.
It's called arrogance. In a culture that prefers self-promotion and assertiveness over modesty and honesty, unbridled ambition and unchecked greed are continuously rewarded, promoted, and emulated. Overwhelmingly those which end up occupying the decision-making positions in the chains of command exert their duties intoxicated with delusional self-aggrandizement and a sociopathic disregard for truth, stubbornly uninterested in differences of opinion. What results is a homogenization process of mindsets which seek only to mirror and replicate their likeness. American culture has degenerated to such an individualized and fragmented outlook on life that it will be nearly impossible to act concertedly as a society in effectively solving the many challenges present before it, without first going from bad to worse. After which there might be little worth salvaging.
All true - but predicting disasters is also a business. Do you remember this one: how acid rain would destroy all of the US eastern forests by the early 90s, if not sooner. Just one of many
Or the so-called 'ozone hole' (/sarcasm)
Acid rain is touted by Krugman, at least, as the evidence for why cap-n-trade works. Thats how they solved the problem you don't think existed.
Celine's Second Law: Accurate communication is possible only in a non-punishing situation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celine%27s_laws
At times like this I wish I believed in God. First Obama joins the "Drill, Baby, Drill!" crowd; now, just weeks later, a deep-sea oil rig in the Gulf is dumping 44K gallons of crude per day into the Gulf -- and since the well cap is thousands of feet under the ocean, it will be weeks before it can be capped -- IF EVER.
If only I didn't have to believe this were coincidence, but rather the wrath of an outraged God.
If you read Spanish you might try Neruda's El Libro de las Preguntas.
If you do not read Spanish, it is worth learning for Neruda alone.
There are very few like that in any language or historical epoch.
Things change.
It is a new age--but it will be many decades before that is widely understood, especially in the US.
Many old myths and organizing images are dying slow and tortured deaths, screaming violently all the way to the slaughter houses they have built for others, and now for themselves.
"They simply chose to ignore the warnings."
Because they're making so much money with the way things are now, and will make even more money when things go wrong as predicted (e.g. Paulson/Goldman short of mortgage backed securities). Capital loves certainty, even if that certainty is of disaster. The greater the certaintly the surer the bet.
Why didn't the guy who threw his shoes at Bush get the Nobel Peace Prize? He's more qualified than Obama.
please pardon the length of this post, but this is going ignored...
Uh, 9/11.
CLAIM: "I do not remember any reports to us, a kind of strategic warning, that planes might be used as weapons." [responding to 9/11 Commissioner Kean]
FACT: Condoleezza Rice was the top National Security official with President Bush at the July 2001 G-8 summit in Genoa. There, "U.S. officials were warned that Islamic terrorists might attempt to crash an airliner" into the summit, prompting officials to "close the airspace over Genoa and station antiaircraft guns at the city's airport." [Sources: Los Angeles Times, 9/27/01; White House release, 7/22/01]
CLAIM: "I was certainly not aware of [intelligence reports about planes as missiles] at the time that I spoke" in 2002. [responding to Kean]
FACT: While Rice may not have been aware of the 12 separate and explicit warnings about terrorists using planes as weapons when she made her denial in 2002, she did know about them when she wrote her March 22, 2004 Washington Post op-ed. In that piece, she once again repeated the claim there was no indication "that terrorists were preparing to attack the homeland using airplanes as missiles." [Source: Washington Post, 3/22/04]
CLAIM: There was "nothing about the threat of attack in the U.S." in the Presidential Daily Briefing the President received on August 6th. [responding to Ben Veniste]
FACT: Rice herself confirmed that "the title [of the PDB] was, 'Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States.'" [Source: Condoleezza Rice, 4/8/04]
CLAIM: "One of the problems was there was really nothing that look like was going to happen inside the United States...Almost all of the reports focused on al-Qaida activities outside the United States, especially in the Middle East and North Africa...We did not have...threat information that was in any way specific enough to suggest something was coming in the United States." [responding to Gorelick]
FACT: Page 204 of the Joint Congressional Inquiry into 9/11 noted that "In May 2001, the intelligence community obtained a report that Bin Laden supporters were planning to infiltrate the United States" to "carry out a terrorist operation using high explosives." The report "was included in an intelligence report for senior government officials in August [2001]." In the same month, the Pentagon "acquired and shared with other elements of the Intelligence Community information suggesting that seven persons associated with Bin Laden had departed various locations for Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States." [Sources: Joint Congressional Report, 12/02]
CLAIM: "If we had known an attack was coming against the United States...we would have moved heaven and earth to stop it." [responding to Roemer]
FACT: Rice admits that she was told that "an attack was coming." She said, "Let me read you some of the actual chatter that was picked up in that spring and summer: Unbelievable news coming in weeks, said one. Big event -- there will be a very, very, very, very big uproar. There will be attacks in the near future." [Source: Condoleezza Rice, 4/8/04]
CLAIM: "The Vice President was, a little later in, I think, in May, tasked by the President to put together a group to look at all of the recommendations that had been made about domestic preparedness and all of the questions associated with that." [responding to Fielding]
FACT: The Vice President's task force never once convened a meeting. In the same time period, the Vice President convened at least 10 meetings of his energy task force, and six meetings with Enron executives. [Source: Washington Post, 1/20/02; GAO Report, 8/03]
CLAIM: "The CSG (Counterterrorism Security Group) was made up of not junior people, but the top level of counterterrorism experts. Now, they were in contact with their principals." [responding to Fielding]
FACT: "Many of the other people at the CSG-level, and the people who were brought to the table from the domestic agencies, were not telling their principals. Secretary Mineta, the secretary of transportation, had no idea of the threat. The administrator of the FAA, responsible for security on our airlines, had no idea." [Source: 9/11 Commissioner Jamie Gorelick, 4/8/04]
CLAIM: "The decision that we made was to, first of all, have no drop-off in what the Clinton administration was doing, because clearly they had done a lot of work to deal with this very important priority." [responding to Kean]
FACT: Internal government documents show that while the Clinton Administration officially prioritized counterterrorism as a "Tier One" priority, but when the Bush Administration took office, top officials downgraded counterterrorism. As the Washington Post reported, these documents show that before Sept. 11 the Bush Administration "did not give terrorism top billing." Rice admitted that "we decided to take a different track" than the Clinton Administration in protecting America. [Source: Internal government documents, 1998-2001; Washington Post, 3/22/04; Rice testimony, 4/8/04]
CLAIM: The Bush Administration has been committed to the "transformation of the FBI into an agency dedicated to fighting terror." [responding to Kean]
FACT: Before 9/11, Attorney General John Ashcroft de-emphasized counterterrorism at the FBI, in favor of more traditional law enforcement. And according to the Washington Post, "in the early days after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the Bush White House cut by nearly two-thirds an emergency request for counterterrorism funds by the FBI, an internal administration budget document shows." And according to a new report by the Congressional Research Service, "numerous confidential law enforcement and intelligence sources who challenge the FBI's claim that it has successfully retooled itself to gather critical intelligence on terrorists as well as fight crime." [Source: Washington Post, 3/22/04; Congressional Quarterly, 4/6/04]
even more at link below
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2004/04/b44918.html
"Shouldn't-a Hadn't-a Oughtn't-a!" -- Dorothy Provine in "The Great Race"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnbPbObY1l4&feature=player_embedded
The sooner Americans realize and understand that our government has been taken over by a motley collection of thieves, con artists, liars and mass murderers who's only goal is to get richer and more powerful, the sooner we'll be on the road to taking back our nation.
You could blame all the blameless catastrophes on incompetence, but in truth, they don't give a damn for 'We the People,' as people, they only see us as slaves and cannon fodder.
"We the People" have ignored and took for granted our precious democratic republic, thinking that knowing the score of last night's 'Big Game,' or who won the latest NASCAR folly or that the sordid details of a Paris or Brittney or MJ were more important than knowing what in the hell was going on in the halls of government.
When that didn't satisfy our lusts, there was always the shopping malls or movie theaters to escape to, to watch sick and twisted movies with plenty of sex, nudity, exploding bodies and very graphic computerized images... Who needs a plot, screenplay, good acting and decent directing when the goal is to stimulate the head between the knees, not the one between your ears.
While we were grazing in La-La Land, a gang of vicious cutthroats has taken over the government and were able to lie to us woefully ignorant and apathetic types that they were doing the 'right' thing and bringing democracy to the world, by trashing ours at home.
They will not stop until the last bit of blood and wealth is sucked from our bed-ridden republic, then cast us aside for the buzzards.
I don't feel sorry for us adult types, we've got it coming.
But it's sad that we're turning this toxic mix over to our kids.
Are you saying it's time to head to Washing-town with the battery ram on the flatbed?
It's almost impossible to believe most of us were full of hope and enthusiasm just a year ago. One heard very little of the cosmic cynicism which now fills the progosphere.
This speaks volumes for how catastrophically the Obama Administration has failed. The voters were clear that they wanted change and reform, not the biggest bait and switch in memory. But it started going bad from the first cabinet assignments on.