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How’s That Recessioney, Oily Thing Working Out For Ya?
Let's be honest: We live in stunningly, jaw-droppingly, ridiculously absurd political times.
Here's the story in a nutshell: A far-right predatory overclass has spent the last thirty years undoing the hard-fought gains of the mid-twentieth century, which had produced a robust middle class and vastly more economic and social justice in America than the country had ever known before. These regressives used every kind of deceit imaginable to persuade unsophisticated voters to choose candidates whose real agenda was to assist their plutocratic puppetmasters in fleecing the very same people who voted for them.
Such candidates ran on issues like the death penalty, immigration, bogus wars, gay marriage and abortion. But what they really were about as legislators was exporting jobs to where workers are dirt cheap and politically neutered, crashing organized labor, shifting the tax burden onto the mass public, deregulating industry to allow unhindered profit-taking on the upside and socialized public responsibility for risk on the downside, and locking in a Supreme Court majority that would never blanch at even the most outrageous rulings enhancing corporate power in American society.
If the product of this slow and silent coup wasn't so bloody and so ruinous to so many lives, you'd really have to hand it to these guys for their political acumen and patience. It took a while, and it required the building of a broad and robust infrastructure, spanning from mainstream media to talk radio and TV to think-tanks to Congress, the presidency and the judiciary, to the GOP and now to the Democratic Party as well, but they have pretty much completely succeeded in grabbing all the levers of power in our society. They dominate its discourse entirely, and they have been almost completely successful to date in securing all the elements of their legislative, regulatory and jurisprudential agenda, at least to this point (how far they ultimately intend to go isn't clear - the US as Honduras, perhaps? - but it's unlikely to be pretty). Perhaps the only major exception to that rule was their 2005 failure to privatize the vast pool of public money sitting in the Social Security coffers, which they lust over lasciviously, like teenage boys inhaling online porn by the bucketful.
The product of these efforts has been precisely what one would expect. Corporations and economic elites have grown fantastically more wealthy than they already were thirty years ago. Their tax liabilities are now negligible and sometimes less than zero. Massive national debt, the product in part of those tax gifts to the rich, plus huge bills for interest on that debt (this alone is one of the largest items in the federal budget each year), is now owned by the mass public, who got nickels and dimes worth of tax cuts, in exchange for which they will now have to literally work years of their lives to pay down the taxes the rich escaped. Working people across the country get less and pay more for everything today. College is becoming increasingly out of the financial reach of average Americans. The minimum wage, which actually often isn't the minimum, is far from a sustainable salary for one person, let alone a family. As of 2004, the richest one percent of Americans possessed sixty percent of all wealth in the country, while the bottom forty percent accounted for a whopping two-tenths of a percent. Between 1979 and 2004, after-tax income for the top one percent of Americans rose by 176 percent, while for those in the bottom 20 percent that figure rose only six percent. And those figures are for six years ago, during what by current standards was flush times for working people. Now jobs are disappearing, with the inevitable effect of driving wages down further, not to mention all the obvious effects on prosperity, security, health, mental health and sheer longevity.
Meanwhile, just the approach
to regulation alone has produced three monstrous attacks on American
society as a direct result. First the recession-starting-to-become-
Okay, so far so bad. Nothing particularly Alice-In-Wonderlandy or especially novel about rampant greed, is there? But what's really bizarre to the point of being becoming a fully hallucinogenic experience that really should come under the supervision of the Controlled Substances Act is the effect that this has had on politics. Could there ever be a moment when right-wing ‘economics' have been so thoroughly and manifestly repudiated? Could there ever be more overt examples of corporate greed gone nuclear? Could the repercussions of these policy decisions ever more clearly have wrecked the lives of economically insecure ordinary Americans?
No, no and no. All this is as obvious and predictable as sunrise. And yet... Here we find ourselves in this remarkable and remarkably absurd position where the folks who not only created this monster, who not only have worked assiduously to prevent any solutions to the destruction they've wrought, and who now also promise even more of the same - these very folks are poised to win resounding electoral victories in November. And the folks who will be voting for them will once again become victims of their predations. And the folks in Congress and the White House they'll be voting against - supposed socialist-fascists (whatever strange Janus-faced zoological beast that would look like if it actually existed) - are in fact just about the most pro-plutocrat government imaginable. But they're going to get stomped by voters for being socialists.
How on earth did this happen?
Well, to start with, it happened because it was intended to happen. As described above, this is the product of a broad, concerted and patient effort by the radical right to capture and control American government, and it has worked remarkably well, especially when one considers the sheer amount of deceit required to pull it off. It's like trying to sell a cocktail of Dirt Drink mixed with Sawdust Soda to a man dying of thirst. But it can be done, and we know that because the process is now all but complete. When even John McCain refers to Congress "the best government that money can buy" you know you're really hurting, pal. As for that Trotskyite socialist in the White House, well he's staffed his economic team directly out of Goldman Sachs' boardroom, he bails out mega-banks one hundred cents on the dollar without even requiring that they loan money, he wrote a health care bill that forces thirty or forty million Americans to buy a product from bloated thieving insurance companies whether they want it or not, and he has dramatically increased spending on an already astonishingly distended military, while remaining essentially silent about (meager but essential) unemployment benefits right now in the process of terminating for millions of Americans. Yeah, baby - that socialist. "Workers of the world unite" is definitely what they rap about at White House cabinet meetings. Geithner, Summers, Gates - all those revolutionary syndicalists can't talk it up enough. Then they sing "The Internationale".
Clearly, the political branches of the US government have been fully captured by monied elites. Perhaps scariest of all, however, is the newly emboldened ultra-radical majority on the Supreme Court (that description is not reckless hyperbole used for effect - look at what they've done in cases like Bush v. Gore, Ledbetter and Citizens United, and watch what they do in the coming years - it will be astonishing in its scope, radicalism and hypocrisy). After decades of histrionic lies about supposed objections to judicial activism (what they really hated was the impudent offense of an elite court handing down liberal decisions and siding with mere mortals in American society, period), they have now kicked out the jambs to expand the practical definition of the ‘activism' term beyond all recognition. Lori Blatt, former attorney in the Solicitor General's Office, put it best: "They are fearless. This is a business court. Now it's the era of the corporation and the interests of business." No case underscored this tendency better than Citizens United, of course, where the regressive majority was so blatantly activist that they literally told the stunned litigants to go home, come back in a month and reargue the case around a far, far bigger question than was at stake for the parties involved, and then sweepingly cast aside long existing law in order to blow blitzkrieg-size breaches in the barriers that had previously controlled corporate influence of elections. The only case that can rival this one for utterly transparent activism seeking a regressive outcome is Bush v. Gore, in which the right-wing bloc simultaneously violated three of their own cardinal tenets - judicial restraint, states' rights, and hostility to civil rights principles - in order to require vote counting be stopped (say what?!) and to crown the mentally deficient dauphin as king. It could hardly be clearer that the Roberts Court ominously completes the troika of the right-wing governmental coup.
But there are other reasons we're in this state, as well. Think about Barack Obama and the Democrats for a second, and then try applying Ms. Blatt's phrase, "They are fearless", to those folks. Now pick yourself up the floor. Change the underwear you just soiled from laughing so hard. Wring out the hanky you just soaked from sobbing so relentlessly. Part of why we're in this mess is that Democrats wouldn't know what guts looked like if they were all board-certified gastrointestinal surgeons. But, of course, to complain that "the people's party" lacks sufficient courage of their convictions assumes that they have any. The good news is that they do, as a matter of fact. The bad news, however, is that those convictions can be reduced neatly down to two: serving themselves and serving the nice folks who donate money to get them elected. It's a bit of a problem when the gang who are meant to protect us from the crimes of the GOP are nearly indistinguishable from Cheney's thugs, apart from stylistically. Democrats are happy to give you a little kiss on the cheek before they screw you. Republicans prefer to just get on with the assault.
Then there's the media in this country which is, of course, beyond hopeless. Watching Rachel Maddow the other month throwing a few medium-speed hardballs at Rand Paul only served to remind me just how rare it is for any of these pathetic hacks to actually do their job, as opposed to doing the cash-driven bidding of those in power, especially tough-guy Republicans who must get plenty of laughs out of how easy it is to bully the Washington press whores - er, sorry, I mean press corps. There's nothing quite so self-made as the disasters of Election 2000 and the Iraq invasion of 2003, and the absence of any sort of serious media scepticism in those cases simply illustrates how utterly worthless the press truly are. Except, of course, as excellent public relations specialists for plutocrats. These days it seems like the only outlet doing anything approaching serious journalism is Rolling Stone. As to what it says about American society and journalism that you have to wade through cover photos of Lady Gaga's full-on unclad posterior to find out the lies our government is telling us, well, I'll leave that to you.
But clearly the neutering of the obedient profit-motivated media has worked spectacularly. One of the key fronts in this class warfare conducted by the wealthy in America has been with respect to framing. For three decades now, all we've heard is how government is a screw-up and how heroically efficient are the captains of industry in the private sector. The way regressives trash our own government in a democracy would certainly have seemed traitorous in another day. Just imagine if you said the same things about the military, which seems to miraculously escape the right's attention as the biggest and most famously wasteful government bureaucracy of all. Moreover, looking back over Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, not just a small bit of the curtain has been pulled back from the notion of the military's supposed infallibility. It's been two-thirds of a century since the United States won a big war against a serious adversary, and even then the Russians did the heavy lifting, at least in Europe. Somehow we never hear much about big, incompetent government in that context, though.
But, hey, forgive my
little flight into logical analysis there. We really cannot have
that in these times. For a minute there, I forgot to forget.
It won't happen again, Mr. O'Brien, I assure you. From now
on, up is down, black is white, war is peace, government is bad and
corporations are purveyors of Happy Meals (happy, that is, unless you
happen to be a cow, like having small businesses around, have a problem
with obesity, don't want your planet to catch fire, or object to the
creation of massive great lakes full of animal waste). Yep, big
business is good! That's why we need to apologize to BP for
our government "shaking them down" and forcing them to be slightly-barely-kinda-
But the other sad truth is that, at the bottom of this roll call of nefarious predators - under every Cheney and Obama and Brian Williams and Lloyd Blankfein doing (his green) god's work, is a great big stinking pile of yahoos better known as "Us". We'll vote Republican this fall because we utterly lack the intellectual curiosity to investigate other options. We'll vote Republican because we're greedy and lazy and willing to step on anyone's throat to get our little slice of prosperity back. We'll vote Republican as if we weren't only two years ago just absolutely counting down every second until the previous government packed up and left town. You know, the er, uh, Republicans.
But I have just one question for my fellow Americans before they step into that voting booth. The truth is that what ails us now is exactly what y'all have been voting for over the last three decades. The truth is that if you vote Republican in November it will all only get worse. The truth is that you're living the regressive dream just now, right as we speak.
We've let corporations run wild. We've decimated the government whose function it was to regulate them in the public's interest. We've shifted a very large pile of your money into the hands of the richest one percent of us, and given you and your kids loads of government debt to pay off in exchange. We've shipped your job off to China or India. We've completely immunized all branches of your government from any form of influence other than from rapacious plutocrats.
So my question is, fellow Americans, now that we've all had a nice heaping helping of what regressive politics means for us real people down here below the stratosphere, "How's that recessioney, oily thing working out for ya?"
Eh?
Comments
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124 Comments so far
Show Alla rehashing of pseudo-issues...these are all popular stances, because they utterly avoid the underlying issues of property ownership, environmental ruin, and violence...
how does the natural world survive a human culture that requires devastating industry for the right to land?
how's that chemically-saturated, cancerous, plastic, climatey-changey thing workin' out for ya?
we must take the land back...
Global Start Date: September 22, 2012...
let's get those gardens growing!
Yes, all true and well said. But what we need are solutions, actions people can take to push back at the corruptiion.
What should we look to build instead of this mess? Any ideas beyond simplistic mouthing of ideology? We need practical, real-people, everyday solutions........what can people do to protect ourselves and move the country towards doing the right things?
My response is for everyone who's able to have a kitchen garden so at least they won't starve. Train more farmers, teach children that it's not only a safe and secure livelihood, but lots of fun and necessary for society to survive.
Other ideas?
A PERFECT DESCRIPTION of the fall of the American Republic!!!!! I only regret that the people who need to read this most are not the people who seek enlightenment regarding the slippery-slope America is careening down!
A look into the rear view mirror (towards Germany after WWI) shows how it will be fixed. After defeat comes rebirth - industry and the military and the courts will tighten up the holes in the leaking ship and the great ship FASCISM will make us #1 again.
Then there's the media in this country which is, of course, beyond hopeless.
From time to time the media are not hopeless. I.F. Stone used to say that all governments lie, so there is no reason to believe anything they say. He did the heavy lifting needed to find out the truth by scanning the paperwork behind the announcements and cultivating low-level people in the agencies.
Seymour Hersh is a contemporary muckraker whose work is always worth reading.
But there are too few of such people, and thre are too many who sell themselves the the TV networks to make the big bucks. Mike Royko scoffed at one of the pretty girls on the morning news programs (who claimed to be a reporter), saying that from his desk he could throw a pencil in any direction and hit a better reporter.
thanks for mentioning Royko...
I agree with the idea that regressives are rolling back some of the most positive developments of the past 60 years including from New Deal policies to Civil Rights. I share Green's bafflement that middle class Americans have been hoodwinked into supporting policies that would be so damaging to them. I am similarly befuddled by the fact that recent events haven't revealed the utter failure of right-wing economics. To say we need more of the medicine that has made us sick is more than bad medicine-- it's unconscionable, and insane.
But as repugnant as contemporary Republicans may be, I don't see that voting for Democrats will bring about meaningful progressive policies. Nor do I have any hope that the Dems have any desire to end the wars.
So, it's insane to vote for Republicans who will give us stronger doses of what's making us sick. But isn't it also a bit nuts to vote for the democrats who promise change but give us more of the same. Isn't that a little nuts too?
I think most of it comes down to the fact that a lie repeated enough will be believed as the truth to many if not most people, and awful lot of people require no proof when someone in power tells them something.
Don't forget the fact that people get a pretty corporate view of things from the main stream media. Most newspapers have a Business section, even PBS has a nightly "Business Report". Ever see a MSM outlet that has a daily or weekly labor report?
This situation is the dead end of the constitution itself, intended as it was to guarantee the democracy of property, while obstructing the democracy of the people.
The powerlessness of the public proves only one or the other of two choices: either Glenn Beck is correct and some nefarious totalitarian conspiracy manipulates the world to the desires of Satan -- or Karl Marx is correct and class dominates the world and no true democracy is even possible until the public wins the class war against the interests of investors.
In either case, voting is the methadone of the masses.
Between Marx and Beck I'm gonna have to go with Marx. The rich have been behind every damned war for 2 thousand years. At least in the old days they occasionally died in them too. Good times...
I have a garden. We eat salad from the garden most days. I think of Need Little, Want Less. I am unemployed and I have to wait until I can use my small retirement cache. I need to stop driving and stop buying. I am two miles from the nearest bus stop, should I walk there to go to town? Maybe I should write, paint, play music, write poetry, read from the library, cook fresh food, trade my skills for the skills of others. I have a friend that has worked at least four years in the thirty years I have known him. He in my mentor in the skills of not buying. What money I have, I keep as cash, in $100 bills because I know that spending a ten is easier than breaking a hundred. I have chickens that eat my food waste and I feed their shit to my compost piles and my compost to my garden. I will build a set of cold frames this year to stretch my garden into the fall and early spring. I need to not play with the "elites" anymore.
I can entertain myself, do more to feed myself, change my attitude to be at peace with myself, and wait to see if the rich overlords really want to play chicken with the returning vets who have no job, have PTSD and know how to blow things apart. The curse, "may you live in interesting times" certainly seems to be clear to me, but how I live in these interesting times is up to me.
excellent
"Watching Rachel Maddow the other month throwing a few medium-speed hardballs at Rand Paul only served to remind me just how rare it is for any of these pathetic hacks to actually do their job, as opposed to doing the cash-driven bidding of those in power"
This sums up DMG's naive, self-absorbed, stupidity. What does he think the job of the corporate media is?
Progressives like Green are Regressive, especially when they write what passes for enlightened analysis. DMG should be closed up and shut down from websites like CD.
Yes, he is a counter-revolutionary. We must silence this capitalist-roader.
Filthy running dog!
Don't forget the right wing manipulation that does take a generation to work: the defunding of education;and, with that, the change in the curriculum, assisted most recently by No Child Left Behind (Orwell, we hardly knew ye) to be slanted away from the non-tested social studies (let the volleyball coach teach that). It's a generation that votes better than its elders on the whole; but only when they remember to vote..........
All true, but writing it on Common Dreams, you're mostly preaching to the choir. And of course, you'll never hear any of this stuff in the "liberal media", where people who don't already know it might actually get to read it.
Royce
I usually don't make it through Green's pieces because he too often goes over the top. The ranting, bug-eyed thing, ya know?
However, here he's laid out the clear, well-established facts as we have long witnessed and borne ourselves--biting lips-- through them. Others have similarly tried, but fortunately this time Green has ignored the customary word count limits and PUT IT ALL DOWN. Good!
Time was when Green would have been deemed a moderate. I too find the political spectrum so dramatically shifted in 50 years that I do not understand how my moderate, reasonable views are now considered "radical" or "leftist lunacy" or "wimpy pacifist" or even "unconstitutional."
Back in the 70's the first time I read a solicitation from Gardner's Common Cause , I thought "well, this is pretty interesting, but why should I support something so commonsensical and middle-of-road?" There's another instance that huge spectrum shift again.
My hometown rep, Marcy Kaptur, is another instance of someone who is really just plain folks, whose positions haven't really shifted in 30 years but who now finds herself called "a radical leftist."
We can talk all we want about electing more progressive politicians. While that will certainly work, as Green here acknowledges, nevertheless, the established party powers do not offer any new way of effecting public interests.
What it will take is a powerful cultural effect like Sinclair's "The Jungle" or Steinbeck's "Grapes of Wrath" or most especially an "anti-"Ayn Rand.
We won't be as lucky as the Germans after the Weimar Republic failed because at least the Nazis lowered unemployment and funded social services to the average German in exchange for the Germans giving up their politcal rights. The greedy, treasonous motherfuckers who rule our country are too cheap to to give anything to the workers. Our fascists are in the process of dismantling our meager social safety net. Let the revolution begin. Power to the People!
Good analysis of what the right hath wrought. But then you end by saying voting Republican will make things worse. That's it? Keep voting when you just outlined how ridiculously useless the Dems are. Time for the US to wake up to the facts that a corporate overlord class will eat their flesh and pick their bones if they don't figure out how to topple them.
Professor Green your description of the problem is well honed. Time to focus on what can be done.
Thanks for putting it straight.
Vote non-corporate, progressive, and anti-fascist.
As for what we can do? Waiting for a few successful progressives to get anything done seems pointless. I think we have to look well past the government and take Wall Street, Corporations, and the wealthy head on, and by all means. Oppressed people demonstrate/protest, lobby/politic, vandalize, spy, bomb, kill, plead, reason, boycott, and on and on. We will collectively need all tactics.
Excellent summary of affairs in this country! It would be hard to word it better in less than a book. Step 1: Clearly see the problem and its orgin. Step 2: Develop solutions to address the CAUSE of the problem. But, first you have to clearly see the causes... Internationally, as Mr. Green points out with U.S. politics, greed has violated human rights to such a degree that we see the current disasters occurring. The most egregious disaster is the thousands starving and dying from malnutrition and preventable diseases by the day. The only solution will be sharing resources; implemented in the many policies and practices among people, companies, corporations and nations. I believe we will see reorganization of financial systems soon, after the next collapse (emminent); also governmental systems will have to achieve a balance of capitalism (say 30%) and socialism (say 70%) - Social Democracies. All the ridiculous label-demonizing tripe (of 'Socialism' and so forth) from Beckites and Ditto-Heads will be swept aside, as will those spouting that dribble.
What will we choose - the time is running out... I am optimistic still.
Another laundry list of Bush GOP Bankster/Corporate-owned Dem-enabled Government horrors We The Peasants suffer from more daily.
Ho hum. We're the choir. We know all of this already. Hell, we're experts on the topic.
But does this choir-singer offer even the hint of a possible course of action, or strategy, or vague plan that might prove effective against the most giant Goliath said We The Peasants have ever faced?
No.
As Bill Maher would say: "New Rule": no more laundry lists of America's plutocratic ills unless potential solutions are included. Stop wasting our time...
The "Yahoos" who will vote Republican aren't the problem. It's the Yahoos who will vote at all. Green points out how absurd both the Democans and the Republicrats are, yet implies that voting for Democans is a solution. Talk about a cognitive disconnect. Until we topple this fetid system of governance, look for more of the same and worse. How about if 20 or 30 million of us showed up in D.C. and in New York (the heart of our corporate media machine) on election day instead of at the polls, with handcuffs and prison garb in hand to take down these corporatist sociopaths who control our country?
Gee, there's a concept.Oh, but gosh, we wouldn't want to jeopardize the Democratic Party. Get a clue, people.
"It's the Yahoos who will vote at all. Green points out how absurd both the Democans and the Republicrats are, yet implies that voting for Democans is a solution. Talk about a cognitive disconnect."
Jeez, just a couple of years ago--back in 08--I was all into voting.
Little did I know...
I would point out that since around 1970 50 percent of Americans that can vote DO NOT VOTE at all.
Reagans "overwhelming victories" for President came from about 29 percent of the electorate.
Thus 20 percent MORE of the population "did not vote at all" then voted for Ronald Reagan.
I can not see how that 50 percent did themselves a lick of good.
Now NOT voting Republican hardly means one MUST vote Democrat but will will take something a great deal more then "not voting at all" to change things.
There are plenty of reasons people don't vote. The most common reason is not being able to get the voting registration in on time. Getting a few free hours from work isn't always easy. About that 50 percent, in 1992, 2004, and 2008, more than 50% voted.
regressives used every kind of deceit imaginable to persuade unsophisticated voters to choose candidates whose real agenda was to assist their plutocratic puppetmasters in fleecing the very same people who voted for them.
The oppressed love their oppressors. There appears to be no end to this stupidity, short sightedness and utter absurdity. The next stop for the United States, no matter how long it takes, is the graveyard.
Thanks Mr. Green, you have succinctly summarized what I have tried to previously point out especially when it comes to elections. Through the traitorous efforts of the msm and all the shining lights and sparkling glitter or disinformation or NO information that has mesmerized the normal addict of the msm, I call them the dumbstream of america, people can't critically think for themselves. That covers the majority of the people, the dumbstream, the numbers that would vote out the infectious waste that breeds in the halls of our government.
We here on commondreams and other blog sites are just the few who realize and are able to look deeper for the truth. Thus leaving behind the numbers needed to 'restore' what is, as you say, all but lost now with the supreme court taking money from the aristocracy for their decisions now. That leaves the dumbstream with only the 2 simple choices at elections, neither of which is different from the other, of voting for, again as you say, a republican in place of a democrat in November. And as I said there being no difference in either party, even if they did manage to retain a majority of the democrats in office, the charade of 'proceedings' in congress will definitely be compromised, as if it needed to be, for the republicans to minorially(new word) control the neoconservative agenda over the 'pretenders', the democrats.
In the end, because of this obfuscation, the dumbstream are so totally out of it as to who or what to vote for that the idea of voting 3rd party just can't be entertained in their pathetically corrupted brains, it would be like voting socialists, the very part of the old democracy that allowed this country to reach some sort of peak in efficiency up until ronnied butt fuck reagan, the puppet, took the reins of power or at least because the aristocratic 'YES' man.
This country may not be totally broken yet, but it will take the total collapse of america to hopefully rebuild it, if it is possible. Which sort of hints at a revolution, which, as mentioned above, the msm has really done a jam up efficient job of quashing that feeling in the dumbstream.
And what I also think is interesting is this scothus' decision to not let the right to be armed to be infringed. Why with the ever increasing deterioration of our society would that be so important to undo any restrictions on firearms(legally or illegally)? It has all the nasty portents of creating armed resistance so either the people kill themselves or it would be easier to justify the use of not just law enforcement but probably the military to step in and quell the 'violence'. Remember the BONUS ARMY!
I do find it implicative that the law enforcement and judiciary are mostly silent and non responsive to the obvious breaking of the laws of the land especially in our government and the courts because 'lobbying' is criminal bribery and the person bribing an elected official or government employee is criminal just like an elected official or government employee who accepts the bribe is a criminal. To be nearly worthless, money sure does still carry a huge facade of weight.
That's a great article man but why no mention of third parties? You're not telling me that you still think that we should pick between two corporate scumbag parties, now do you? Are you planning to run for president as a Green Party candidate? If so, announce it already and arm yourself.
As far as I can tell from the article and posts, republicans caused everything and democrats don't have the guts to fix it, voting won't help, third parties are useless, the Empire is falling, America is getting what she deserves and only a few here and on other sites like this one see the truth.
The only concrete suggestions I see are get a garden and stay off the grid or start over on another planet.
When does the storyline change? When does a Progressive answer to the problems arrive? One that doesn't insult people and presents realistic proposals?
"The only concrete suggestions I see are get a garden and stay off the grid or start over on another planet."
Easy for you to say when some of us live in apartments and can't do that. How about another solution? Keep what you have and use less of it and temp it down some? People who brag about not being materialistic are usually the most materialistic.
Repair instead of replace, where possible (not always easy these days). Balance necessary purchases of new stuff with buying other types of used items from Goodwill and Thrift stores. Switch off lights whenever possible - sounds obvious, but I've found in the USA it's not thought about a lot. In the UK (where I used to live) we had notices all over the place at work reminding us to switch off unnecessary lights, so it eventually became a habit.
"Switch off lights whenever possible - sounds obvious, but I've found in the USA it's not thought about a lot. In the UK (where I used to live) we had notices all over the place at work reminding us to switch off unnecessary lights, so it eventually became a habit."
Great suggestion! But how can we get it in place? Something this simple is worth yards and yards of complaining about emissions. It would save emissions and money.
My apologies! I meant those were the only suggestions I had seen in the posts, they weren't my suggestions. My bad.
You're forgiven. Just to help you there. Frankly, I'd love to move to a bigger and better home once I get a new job that pays better so I could own some backyard to garden. But first, I have to get married and have a family before I can think of moving to a big home I can't afford alone. :)
"When does a Progressive answer to the problems arrive?"
Never.
Thats disheartening!
DMG asks: "How on earth did this happen?"
And his answer truly is a pile of bullshit.
Thing is, twenty years or so ago I would have believed it.
And if you asked me back then what my political inclination was, I would have told you liberal--and hastily added: socially liberal but fiscally conservative. I even thought I was on the political left.
What I didn't know back then was that this "socially liberal but fiscally conservative" business was bullshit and that being a liberal, I was far from being on the left. Worse in fact--because I didn't know it--I was on the fake left.
Since then I've grown and learned. And DMG is still slinging the bullshit.
What DMG's doing here in this piece is blaming the American public. As part of the fake left, DMG is essentially over-exaggerating the role of the more familiar right and scapegoating the rest of us to divert attention away from the failures of liberalism and progressivism to serve as any kind of real and effective opposition.
The truth is however, that which ails the general American public is present in a more concentrated and lethal form in the fundamental ideas, values and thinking of Democrats, progressives and liberals.
And it's not just a matter of a lack of intergrity, honesty or "guts."
It's a mindset--to borrow DMG's phrase--of the "obedient profit-motivated." Democrats, progressives and liberals didn't have a chance in fighting against it. Instead, they've embodied it. And they've been spreading it for the last 40 years or so.
They didn't have a chance against it because at heart, Democrats, progressives and liberals are fundamentally linked to capitalism. That fundamental link is a shared definition of human worth--a definition of worth based on profit.
Consequently, the ideas, vaules and thinking of Democrats, progressives and liberals are inextricably blended with the acceptance of the prerogatives of the profit motive.
To meaningfully challenge those in power, you need to stand on principle not based in that power. That's why there needs to be a real left.
Not simply those who rail at the symptoms of this disease:
"Yep, big business is good! That's why we need to apologize to BP for our government "shaking them down" and forcing them to be slightly-barely-kinda-nominally-sorta responsible for their ecological and economic epic disaster in the Gulf."
...all the while spreading it further,
asking--how's that working out for ya?
"To meaningfully challenge those in power, you need to stand on principle not based in that power. That's why there needs to be a real left."
Yes. And there is none. That's why it's not working out for us (but "they" are still doing fine).
Comment moved to correct place.
"The truth is however, that which ails the general American public is present in a more concentrated and lethal form in the fundamental ideas, values and thinking of Democrats, progressives and liberals."
I messed that part up a bit. What I was trying to say is that which ails us is in a subtle yet powerful form in progressives and liberal politics--ails us in a more concentrated and lethal form in the views of the public at large.
Namaste, couldn't agree more. It is the difference between vanity and humility, empathy and indifference. This perversion is resultant of the disconnect with Nature. Christianity has played hand in hand with capitalism to convince people that they are the center of the Universe, mini-gods.
"I'm here on CD creating as many are, the possibility of a
____ non-cult of the self-less"
Count me in.
the garden is growing:
This morning I picked two strawberries, one zucchini, a yellow squash, some green beans and admired potato plants that magically planted themselves. Also flowers on egg plants! A hummingbird showed up at the Lily of the Nile plant. If not for the garden I was certainly be on zoloft, since almost everyone else I know (but they don't garden!) is.
B-B-Baby, you ain’t seen nothing yet
Crude oil is packed with a toxic chemical called benzene. Even in small amounts, benzene is associated with leukemia, Hodgkin`s Lymphoma and other serious blood and immune system diseases. The EPA`s "safe level" for benzene is 4 ppb (parts per billion) and benzene is being found in Gulf air at levels of 3,000 ppb. Crude oil is being smelled hundreds of miles away. If you can smell oil, you`re breathing highly toxic benzene.
With the oil, numerous other toxic gases including hydrogen sulfide and methylene chloride are also gushing from earth.. The levels recorded pose serious, even fatal, risks to adults and unborn children.
Most people know that the chemical dispersant BP is using is highly toxic. It`s so toxic that the EPA ordered BP to use a different and less toxic dispersant - an order which BP ignored. Currently, over a million gallons of these toxic chemicals have been dumped into our oceans. The same dispersant was used with the Exxon Valdez oil spill. It caused serious respiratory, liver, nervous system, kidney and blood damage in people.
But wait, there is more : During hurricane season water is ‘sucked’ up into the atmosphere not only by oceanic evaporation but also by physical dispersement. So, it should`t be a surprise that scientists are predicting severe destruction across the U.S. from toxic rains - and it appears the first cases are being reported about 400 miles from the Gulf.
Plants have small, raindrop-sized burn marks on them. It is likely that crops may fail and if they do survive, it`s likely they`ll be toxic to consume because plants being watered with toxic chemicals will absorb those chemicals into their cells.
Enjoy your strawberries while you can.
thank you, yachtie...
yes, the ripples from this are only beginning...
the oil keeps flowing, wind and rain will be blowing, and the Gulf Stream travels far...
Yep, the fall-out will reach Europe.
Thank you for the update. I wish we knew of a solution to this, but it is not evident.
I am referring to an article in 'Global Research' by K.Evans.
I just saw a good video on the health consequence of the this--including those who are working local fishermen)to clean it up.
Part 2—The effect on human health
http://wsws.org/articles/2010/jun2010/vide-j30.shtml