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Making Us Clamor for Our Own Demise
Michael Moore is hosting his film festival in Michigan this week, and I sure hope they are showing “Gaslight” from 1944. The American electorate would be wise to watch it again and to put into context the messages of our elected officials as they work us to do their bidding on the debt deal and beyond. There are acting awards to be given in the latest turn of events – the President and the Speaker of the House might vie for best actor’s honors while the Senate Majority Leader and Tea Party darling Eric Cantor would surely compete for best supporting actors among a plethora of worthy players.
I watched ABC last night – but it could have been CBS or NBC or CNN or FOX or MSNBC, please choose your news flavor. George Stephanopoulos looked appropriately worried -- staged and prepared and ready to hear from President Obama and Speaker Boehner. They are all about the same basic message give or take a Bill Maher coloring remark or two or three.
We’re supposed to weigh in – we in the trenches of America. We working jobs where employers devalue us and customers berate us for doing the bidding of our employers. We’re supposed to call in and demand cuts to our own Social Security and Medicare. A balanced approach, we are told, is the right decision.
Ahhhhhh. It’s summer. We’re all supposed to be able to relax and stay cool. But most of us can never really relax. The billing services and collection agencies don’t. So we cannot.
The reality is that we are played the fools. We are the fools upon which they (those we elect and those we keep so richly appointed on our own dollars) rely for their taxpayers funded suppers. We are simultaneously their protectors and their protagonists. They need us but they think we are the fools to be played. They need high drama like the debt crisis to scare us and to engage us – and to keep the corporate media pre-empting our summer series in favor of the scare tactics.
Let’s have a little reality therapy here folks. More people are suffering for jobs and for income than ever in our lifetimes. More people are wondering where they will secure healthcare. More people are homeless or on the verge than ever. More people are wanting.
Yet, we are courted to clamor for cuts to Social Security and Medicare. We are courted to cut entitlements. We are courted to keep taxes low for those who have already been well protected and those who are already well-heeled. I almost couldn’t stand to watch any of the reports or the leaders – freshly made up and oh so-carefully prepped. None of them say what I need to have said.
Oh, to the gods of political compromise, Oh, to the gods of a better America. But is anyone watching our neighborhoods crumble or our families’ stress and strain? Our utility companies and landlords and doctors’ billing services don’t care much about such things. They want their money now. Today. There is no compromise on the rent being paid on the first of the month or the co-pay being paid at the front desk or the utilities being paid when due. We’ll be shut off; we’ll be denied care; we’ll be put out in the streets.
Just as those who need a progressively financed, single standard of high quality healthcare have been offered a multi-tiered, for-profit Pandora’s box of health insurance horrors, you have now offered us debt deals that are only consistent in their damage to real people – average, working class people.
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42 Comments so far
Show AllThe debate in Washington is about the wrong subject. We should be watching a debate about how to provide jobs. This is exactly the wrong time to be planning austerity. And the democrats are only marginally better than the republicans.
Jim Shea
The Democrats are part of the Democrat-Republican tag team. How does that make them better ?
All of you readers whose Congressional Rep. or Senator(s) are Democrats need to call or e-mail those electeds NOW and tell them that due to the Democratic Party advocating further tax cuts for corporations already subject to a negative tax rate, and for advocating Social Security and Medicare cuts, they need to leave the Democratic Party immediately and continue serving their constituents as independents.
Capitalism as an economic system holds production hostage to financiers, and through that economic power comes all social and political power. The "debt crisis" is in fact a political crisis posing the question of whether the state and society shall serve investors, or whether investors should find opportunities defined by the needs of society and its democratically elected state.
Thank you, Class Act. That was elegantly stated (and so true).
I had to chime in and agree with souixrose. Sometimes the briefest statements are pregnant with truth and elegance all at once.
Donna, good post, absolutely agree.
We should reject the MSM meme or the Washington political discourse straight jacket restricting actions to austerity or calamity. There are other options that should be discussed.
The current policies of tax cuts and excessive military spending are decimating our neighborhoods, increasing poverty for many Americans and creating severe hardships in other lands.
Thank you, Donna Smith, for having the courage to tell it like it is. I, too, am sick to death of all the beautifully groomed suits who tell us they can only raise the debt ceiling if allowed to make massive cuts to social services. It's as though they never heard of unemployment, home foreclosure, uninsured medical emergencies, elderly people scared to death that their sole income will be decimated...the whole gamut of ills and difficulties that beset our people. The suits really do tell the story. They are clueless, wealthy and they don't give a fig for anyone who doesn't have a campaign contribution in hand. What has to happen for the faux drama to end and REAL talks to begin so that those who are having trouble helping themselves can be lifted out of despair? We can call and write our Congresspeople, blog to eternity and back...but nothing substantive happens. And the people continue to hope things will get better, all the while sitting in desperation, waiting for the last shoe to fall.
I just saw a "Democratic" pig of a Senator named Mark Warner on TV claiming that the nation is broke and we must lower safety net payments to the most vulnerable in our society, namely the old and disabled (myself among them). I couldn't help but remember that this multimillionaire flag pin wearing piece of shit pays a lower tax rate than the poor shmuck who cleans his toilets. When Madam Guillotine walks into the ballroom I propose that Mr. Warner gets the first dance.
Eagle Bill,
Holy Cow! You still watch the pigs in the TV? You must be doing OK, huh? I had long since gave up watching TV. Foods on the table are more important than garbage from cable.
PS: Joke aside. In the wildness, I have not tasted beef for so long and I am enjoying cheap 80% ground beef now before heading back to the wildness again shortly
Hey sivasm, I'm not doing ok, basic cable comes with my rent. The only reason I still watch some corporate news is to keep my righteous indignation stoked up and I have a morbid fascination with watching the pigs in action, like watching documentaries about the Third Reich only it's happening here and now.
But Donna! The Ratings agencies have spoken. The USA will lose its credit rating unless the US Government does as they demand!
The Congress, Senate and the President represent the dollar, not the people and those who have the dollars will have their fullest attention.
Strategy for 2012: find enough progressives for Congress and it won't matter whether the greater or the lesser evil sits in the WH. We can more easily influence our local representatives and senators than the Wall Street stooge in the WH.
It all but impossible to break the current duopoly holding power in your country under the current system. The truly progressive voice is too diluted from district to district.
What I think is needed as a strategy is to act much like an AIPAC and that is for progressives across the nation to unite and pick out key districts where that progressive voice the strongest and target those with all of their resources.
That Progressive voice might not elect someone to Congress or the Senate in their own district in Texas to office, but can help elect one in a Minnesota.
There a certain truism I have noted up here in Canada when it comes to how populations distributed. This became more pronounced as the workforce grew more mobile. Persons of a Conservative, a Liberal or a Progressive bent will move to areas where this ideology strong.
If one looks to a Calgary as example , some of the strongest Conservatives voices are of persons who were Conservatives at heart and migrated there from Eastern Canada when they thought those provinces becoming too liberal.
The West Coast has a greater mass of "Greens" in Canada because "Greens" to to the West Coast Lifestyle. One needs a certain "Critical mass" among a population before more in that given area will listen to their political ideology. Too many want to be seen as "fitting in" with the population at large and few isolated if there only a handful of voices that believe as they do.
And who is the one living politician who ever said "No" to an extortionate threat of forced default? Uh-huh: Dennis J. Kucinich, while Mayor of Cleveland Ohio.
Dennis is the one we should have in the WH right now. _He_ would use executive power -- he was infamous (among the scum) for it; that's how he got the name "Dennis the Menace". He menaced their control of Cleveland, and he menaced and finally thwarted their plans for enclosing the public-utility commons. He paid for it with 15 years on the shelf, but he did it. He is unique in that display of integrity.
I thought Kucinich was 'the one' too, until he caved on single-payer health care.
Goodness, are you really perfect? No mistakes ever? That's pretty amazing! In fact that's incredible.
I'm nowhere near that good. I count myself lucky if I get half my important decisions right. Perhaps that's why I'm willing to cut someone like Dennis some slack: I'm living proof that errare humanum est.
Was it? Or was it only big symbolically? I frankly don't know, but it would surprise me to learn that his was the sine-qua-non vote. Do you happen to know?
DK is a U.S. Congressman, with more assistants than you can shake a stick at. He has no excuses for the healthcare vote. And he'd do it again today. Its got nothing to do with 'mistakes. He's just a sellout. He gets no slack. Soon he'll be gone and it'll be one less fake around to have to dodge.
Generally speaking, it's a poor practice to demand perfection only of other people.
Kucinich has no more chance becoming president than Carrot Top does. I've supported him in the past, usually admire what he says and have been appalled at how quickly he caves to Party pressures, but still see him as one of the tiny handful with a shred of integrity in either House. Yeah, I'd vote for him, maybe, but that opportunity will never arise. The Dim Party will not let him near the ballot, and his failure politically is that he won't detach himself from that useless, worthless party apparatus. As an Independent, like Sanders, he'd have a lot better chance. As a lifelong Democrat, he's just a gadfly flitting around on the margins of a party that has absolutely no time for him and will never help him get to the WH or anywhere else, unless it's back home to Cleveland.
I can't watch any of these congressional assholes, or Obama, for more than a minute without gagging. I stopped paying attention to anything they say on TV months ago, and this debt ceiling charade is just the latest gambit in drawing attention away from issues that really matter and which they are unanimous in doing absolutely nothing about. On top of the health care crisis, never addressed at all except to serve the profit interests of the Industry, global warming ignored year after year, with the climate getting more chaotic every year, no jobs initiative at all, shoveling taxpayer money to Wall Street criminals as rewards for hijacking the economy, and all the other items in the chamber of horrors known as the US Government, now they want to force the entire economy into Depression, if they can possibly do it, and thereby ensure a Republican White House in 2012.
The insanity of these people makes the Mad Hatter, the March Hare and the Red Queen look like paragons of wisdom and common sense. How anyone can or would actually VOTE for any of these lying buffoons is the biggest mystery out there today. The first test for understanding what is going on today in Washington should be: Would you vote for ANY Democrat or Republican for any federal office? A Yes answer means you fail the test.
Thank you Donna Smith for seeing through the bullshit.
I just happened to be talking this morning to an old friend who moved from Philly to Florida a couple of years ago when her husband's doctor advised him to move to a warmer climate; he suffers from disabling multiple sclerosis (MS).
She works a mediocre full-time administrative job, has been unsuccessfully looking for a better one for months, and is now applying to places like Target for a second job.
According to her, her husband's Social Security disability benefits are pretty paltry or limited as it is, and she claims that there are already scheduled reductions in the pipeline that are sure to get more drastic when the Elected Misrepresentatives finish the dirty work Donna eloquently describes.
She's always been a resilient and temperamentally cheerful person, unlike Yr. Obd't Servant, but she's not getting any younger and things sound increasingly grim.
This made me consider the time-honored defense, or at least mitigating argument, made for every "master/slave" system from feudalism and slavery to animal husbandry: that it has never been an economic proposition for a master or owner to starve their serfs, slaves, or livestock.
I'm sure everyone has heard some variation of this point-- more often than not offered as a last-ditch consolation, not a ringing defense of whatever exploitation is in question.
The idea is that even if the master/owner is devoid of humane compassion or empathy, their potential ruthlessness, viciousness, and cruelty will perforce be limited by their economic self-interest-- they will logically stop short of brutal extremes simply to protect their investment and ensure that their going concern remains viable and prosperous.
That's as may be. But my sense is that this "natural" check is no longer operating in the capitalist Amerikan Imperium-- or other Western nations, for that matter.
I don't know whether to attribute this to some subliminal apocalyptic overclass "End-Times" madness, or some other form of emergent top-down mass psychosis or sociopathy.
But it seems painfully clear to me that the power elite-- the shadowy über-financiers and moneyed interests and their legions of sycophantic political and administrative allies, enablers, servants, and wannabes-- is going for "broke".
And that it's the ordinary unprivileged citizens of many nations who are slated to end up broken with impunity.
I don't know how true or valid it ever was that the powerful classes are ultimately compelled to subordinate their own interests to the interests of those they rule, control, or own in order to keep their own boats afloat and riding high.
But, as the present "debt crisis" melodramatic farce will surely prove, the overclass is now pushing the envelope further and further; it seems determined to deprive and squeeze the economically disadvantaged masses to extinction, "working class" and "middle class" alike, and devil take the hindmost.
Ratcheting up bottom-up "austerity" and imposing lethal privation on a majority of a nation's population in service of profit and Empire seems too catastrophic a risk for a prudent overclass. So maybe I'm being deceived by my lyin' eyes-- because that's what I see happening.
The present philosophy of The Catfood Commission, the Elected Misrepresentatives of both parties, and the overclass that runs them was succinctly expressed by Charles Dickens in 1843: "'If they would rather die,' said Scrooge, 'they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.'"
Great post, OS. I'd say it's sociopathy. I think the "owners" of this country have gone insane (if they weren't already). I keep thinking of that scene from the movie "Independence Day" when the President (played by Bill Pullman) asks the alien with his tentacles around the throat of the wacky scientist, "What is it that you want us to do?" And the alien responds, "DIE." I think that's what the owners want us to do. DIE. However, in killing us - and ultimately billions more around the world - they will kill themselves. How very self-destructive. How insane.
It sounds like you are describing The Tragedy of the Commons, where the peasants are a common resource in relation to the robber baron class. Even if they see the resource collapsing, they won't stop exploiting it because the rest of the robber barons will just take up the slack?
If that's true, then 1) we'd be better off if we were literally slaves, and 2) a revolution is inevitable.
You have nailed it, OS. Couldn't have said it better, myself. They do want us dead. It's Social Darwinism from head to tail. We are no longer useful to them. They don't need us. So we should just die already. And they are more than willing to help us along. Evil personified.
We're just potential disease vectors to them, too risky to keep around.
my humble servant,
"...this "natural" check is no longer operating..."
In times past, they needed the commoners for labor. Labor is found cheaper elsewhere, so the jobs were boated overseas. The difference in the new consumer economy gone global is that the u.s commoners aren't needed as consumers, hence, they are just a liability.
It is the ironic reverse outcome of their centuries old dream of opening the China Market.
Perhaps we should Swift-ly make a new modest proposal.
Good point, Buck.
We the People have simply become "redundant".
The United States is still a huge "market" and is making a lot of very wealthy people wealthier all the time. What we're seeing is simply the result of the citizeny not pushing back hard or effectively enough to dissuade the reptiles from helping themselves to the last crumbs they've historically been compelled to leave us.
They'll always happily keep a gargantuan slave class around for mine and military fodder and to peel their grapes. They know if they snuff us all the Chinese will happily relieve them of their mansions in the Hamptons.
Donna Smith is one smart nurse. She nailed it with the title of her article. George Orwell couldn't write better fiction than the reality of Barrack Obama.
By 1933, the state and federal governments were illegitimate in the eyes of many as they failed in their primary duty to support the citizenry in a time of crisis--Just the proposal of a New Deal and the never before seen flurry of government activity during FDR's first 100 days averted mass rebellion. As Donna outlines, the attitude of the Oligarchy and its minions is the polar opposite today as both parties compete to see which can do the least--which is to say, cause more damage to the citizenry. But the citizenry has yet to seeth as much as its 1933 conterpart--the reason being the safety net emplaced because of the lessons learned has done what it was intended to do despite its meagerness as there was nothing of the sort in 1933. It should be obvious that returning to 1933 is to invite rebellion, but they aren't talking about the elimination of the safety net--yet. The question thus becomes, how many will see that this is just the 1st round toward its elimination and rebel, which is the appropriate response? Polls tally 80%+ are opposed to any cuts in the safety net, but the Oligarchy doesn't listen to the citizenry--a fact the latter have yet to really learn. IMO, the Oligarchy will get its way and the cuts will take place, and the citizenry will do nothing as times aren't grim enough--yet. It seems clear the Oligarchy thinks it can continue to print money and distribute it to itself, so it has no need of the citizenry.
In US history, there's been the Square Deal, New Deal, and Fair Deal--all meant to advance the General Welfare. Now we are confronted with what I term the No Deal meant to radically degrade the General Welfare while further enriching the Oligarchy. The message to the citizenry ought to be very clear: Fight like madmen to keep what you've got or be prepared to get screwed--again.
Last night I finished re-reading the late Helen MacInnes's _Above Suspicion_, written in 1941 but set in 1939, on the cusp of WW2.
"If only the methods of hate and force had been resisted at the very beginning: not by other countries (for that would have been called unwarranted interference) but by the people of Germany, themselves. But, of course, it had been more comfortable to concentrate on their own private lives instead of dying on barricades, if in the last extreme they had had to pit force against force."
The 1930s is the only period in US history I'm aware of that the Oligarchy actually listened to the citizenry's demands, although at the time there was also ongoing repression, especially for blacks, asians, jews, and hispanics along with unionists and socilaists, and the FBI was allowed to gain even more power with reactionaries still represented within congress. Another very important difference is the degree of conformity and indoctrination present today vesus the 1930s and the power of the Propaganda System. The great mass of people in the 1930s had moxie whereas today's people have very little, which is why they're ignored. Given the nature of today's citizenry, it's easy to understand why the feds would want to silence a DeChristopher via incarceration instead of assasination a la MLK.
2036 will see the Centennial of John Dos Passos's great trilogy USA. There remains quite a lot of the country he depicts--mostly the negatives. I doubt he would use the same vigor to describe today's people.
It bears repeating: this is all like professional wrestling, all noise and lies, and all a betrayal of so-called democracy.
When both sides eventually reach a consensus, that's when we're mostly all doubly screwed.
Donna failed to mention that little weasel, Reid. He's as good an actor as any of 'em.
It was real people who voted these jokers into power Donna. Mostly over 50, both the more affluent like those in Michele Bachman's Minnesota district who really don't want to participate in a society if it requires them to pay more taxes, (at least that is how they perceive it) but also the older and poorer people on fixed incomes who will hurt the most if they don't get their checks from the wicked government. They so richly deserve what is going to be meted out to them.
And if they don't get their checks do you think they will have the honesty or perspective to say to themselves. "What have we done?" No, they will just hate the government all the more and I predict that if violence does break out they will be on the front lines of it. These people want to see the government fail-- They don't have your empathy Donna. They don't think about the needless pain they will inflict on others. You forget Donna that they believe God is on their side, that they are avenging angels. I only hope they will suffer too as they bring the rest of us down to their level. When the smoke clears if they want to secede--let them do it. Good riddance.
The most pathetic thing about this article is that Donna Smith still clings to the Blue Dog Party.
Donna,
Nothing will change as long as the Blue Dog Party has people who see a better way of doing things, like you, contained within their (your) own contribution to the status quo.
Anyone who is a democrat is a willing participant in the privatizing corruption and abuse.
Please say enough is enough.
In a direct democracy, any citizen could, for example, introduce a balanced budget amendment initiative, okay, but also require that the super-rich who stole our money pay progressive taxes and pay the gargantuan debt they racked up with their war profiteering and financial manipulations that made them richer at public expense.
I'll bet such a referendum or a similar one would become law.
Many Americans, by design or accident, have been dumbed down to the point that they shouldn't be allowed to handle sharp objects.
Just as bad, many have been molded into being as ferocious as a new-born kitty. You'll see many of these types making comments on blogs and news sites. If you reply to their comment with a straight-forward answer, they'll reply in a hysterical manner, accusing you of 'flaming' them and being a mean, hateful bully when your only sin was that you went straight to your point and didn't dance around the subject and sugar-coat for mass consumption.
At one time, someone who was known as a 'straight-talker' was considered a valuable friend, as they would tell you the truth and not fill your head full of hot air and BS.
Not anymore, now some consider the straight-talkers as some kind of deranged nut, who should be locked away in some loony bin.
Between this and the untold number of lies still protecting the FALSE FLAG/INSIDE JOB of 9/11, this country's future is getting extremely grim.
How often do you honestly think a member of the Plutocratic ruling class (Congress and the President) in our Plutocracy has any sense whatsoever of how it is to live as an average American citizen in our country?????
Over HALF OF THEM are millionaires and probably have never worked a nine-to-five job in their lives! Health care? Ha! They have "the best that money can buy" and could care less whether or not the average citizen can even afford the worst. Do you really think that any of them live like or interact on a social basis with any "average citizens?????
I have never met a millionaire and I believe most of the Plutocrats in Congress have no relationships whatsoever with an "average citizen." If they did, they couldn't have possibly even dreamt of killing medicare or cutting social security, much less gutting medicaid!!!
They live in a "land of their own" and I wonder how it ever came to be that the Plutocrats became the most populous group in Congress. It had to be because of their wealth, of course (buying their positions). What average citizen knows ANYTHING about their personal lives, much less enough to actually believe what they're promising?
The "lower class" (average citizens) in America is "on its own." The charade of Democracy we have here is just that - a charade.
America doesn't even come close to being a Democracy when you have a Supreme Court declaring that a CORPORATION may have more influence over politics than a citizen can. And they absolutely insulted us all by naming their ruling "Citizens United."
And exactly how much of a chance do you really think there is that this will ever change? Not a chance in a million!!! We are living a charade that is careening its way to ruining life in our country - you'll be either very wealthy or "one of them."