You don't have to be told this. We're living in a sick society. Congressmen are bought and sold to shadowy interests as dearly as they were paid for by the robber barons of the Gilded Age. And here we are -- as Greeks, Spaniards, and American homelsss peoples, etc. are sold into chattel to a life of even greater poverty, misery and despair so that hedge fund owners in Danbury, Connecticut can refurbish their yachts.
The overconcentration of capital has reached the point where the world Gross National Product is $270T, but the exotic financial instruments invented by said yacht owners are worth over half a quadrillion dollars. The bodies politic and economic have begun to to generate their own gangrene.
2012 looks to be dismal year. The euro is spoiling faster than warm milk lying around. China shows the same financial overripeness that afflicted the USA in 2007. And in Washington, we're guaranteed political gridlock until after the election season is over. Don't get me started on this now!
You and I think the same thing about the deep well of enthusiasm we all have for the general election. :( We care, but how much difference is there between two center right candidates bought and paid for by plutocrats? And here comes Citizens United! Thanks to the best Supreme Court that money can buy, this decision gives the American public the power that it deserves to decide. Nothing. Instead, because of poverty, cheap ass education, and flat screen TVs, we've become a nation of slack jawed, compulsive potato chip eating droolers who respond like fish to the highly polished bait that the banksters throw out in their political adverts.
How else to explain all the media chatter of GOP presidential wanabees before the annointed Romney is rolled out? Tens of millions of dollars on TV advertising have already been spent on almost meaningless elections. And no doubt, we're all looking forward to the endless parade of demographically fine-tuned bushwa that will be put out by both Romney and Obama forces. $2 billion, please.
All of this is intolerable, and sooner or later the whole, rotten boiler of a system will explode of its own accord. When this happens, we'll actually see forces of both right and left (the vast majority of Americans) as feared, potent political forces aligned against the 'reasonable' center of plutocracy. No doubt, some people in American will have to go to the FEMA concentration camps that the fearmongers and military contractors have so thoughtfully provided for us.
And don't forget to throw global warming into the mix.
Then, and only then -- will meaningful change take place in America and the world. The 1% will put up a helluva battle, but they may eventually be defeated. To save capitalism, a new Roosevelt will have to be invented, both for the United States and the world. Over a great amount of time, the monied interests will realize that the best thing they can do for themselves is to let their oil companies be nationalized, and their coal mines and polluting electric plants to be permanently shut down.
If we don't -- it's the end of us all.
In the meantime -- we've got to wade chest deep, through fifty meters of pig shit.
TIP:
Enter the amount, and click "Tip" to submit!
LEV JANASHVILI
Omnipotent Poobah
Donegal Descendant
Emily Holleman
MarianneSp
Reverend Billy Talen
Salon.com
Comments
Happy new Year.
The vision you lay out is apocalyptic. I’m not saying you’re wrong but I lean to thinking (hoping?) that drastic action on global warming will be undertaken in time to stave off the very worst scenarios. Of course this is speculative because as a boomer I won’t be around for the nadir.
And I don't find this a depressing post. It's refreshing to hear this very much taboo subject addressed. That's step one on finding a solution. But as long as we let money do our thinking for us all decisions are moot.
I don't think too many people are actually interested in survival and the world ultimately is a place of mob rule. Welcome to the jungle!
http://mikescommentaries.blogspot.com/2012/01/bohemian-grove.html
Oh, and when SHTF day gets here, there will be no place to run, we will have to stay and fight.
P.S. - I'm sure they're watching us.
:-) / r
Anyway, I can’t say you are wrong in general, but I will say this about one specific:
You wrote: We care, but how much difference is there between two center right candidates bought and paid for by plutocrats?
You, and many others here, seem to think there is almost no difference. I think there is a difference…and that the impact of the difference is substantial. But “the despair” seems to cloud people’s minds so they will not see that impact…nor reasonably evaluate it.
As I see it, if this mindset prevails, the GOP candidate will win, because people will vote for “change” just “to throw the present bum out.” And if that happens, we will all see if there really is no difference or if there is a difference and if the impact of that difference is significant.
I mean, what the hell…
…would a few more Justices like Scalia and Thomas really be all that bad? And it is not as though they are appointed for eternity. Most of them don’t live for more than a few decades or so after appointment.
And the rest of the federal judiciary!
Truer words have never been spoken.
The ills you've described here often keep me from turning on the news at all. It would be nice to disappear into the art world and escape the madness, but then I would be more miserable if I was uninformed so I just keep going back for more. For the first time in my life I can fully understand the meaning of the idiom, "ignorance is bliss."
On the other hand, Putin is all but guaranteed to win the next election here and he's not going to do it because he wins the popular vote. Now, that's an issue, because in Russia, there's no electoral college.
the annointed Romney is rolled out- the GOP hate him too!
through fifty meters of pig shit.- Don't get me started..
Plus what did this Canadian will never understand.. People go out and vote but their choice does not matter. It goes to the Electoral College and THEY decide. It's like Tink being the choice of the people on OS but never gets an EP..:)
Good thing you do not live next door. I'd never shut up hahaha
HUGGGGGGG
Plutocracy on such a global scale, aided by magical technology,
indeed could cause untold natural disaster
the plutocrats can escape from to their
fortresses,
leaving the enemy, the lower & middle classes,
stuck on cots in tented cities all over the USA, nay,,
all over the globe..
Of all forms of tyranny the least attractive and the most vulgar is the tyranny of mere wealth, the tyranny of plutocracy.
Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt: An Autobiography (1913) Chapter 12, Paragraph 4 [2]
I don't think that 2012 will be much worse than 2011 or 2010 was and 2015 might already turn out much better than 2011.
I think that the worst thing what could happen would be a big war. Now, I think that even Israel will become a grown-up country and they will understand that they will cease being the most powerful country in their region and they will accept that they can't prevent by force others of making nuclear weapons. They will finally understand that the only way is to negotiate and give up their own nuclear weapons.
Americans will finally little by little become to understand that they are not the most advanced country of the world. The focus in the world will shift toward Asia more and more. Americans will pull their forces out of Afghanistan in 2012.
The climate will become a little cooler in 2012, because the sun is cooling. It will cause some problems but in general the shift is so slow that the world can adjust. In 2012 the global temperature will be just a bit cooler than in 2011.
Lezlie
um - that would be president obama. and he's hard at work, prolonging and deepenign the current economic crisis, just like FDR did in the 1930s.
it wasn't until after world war 2, and tax rates were lowered and america started making things (like cars, airplanes and xerox machines) that the rest of the world wanted to buy that we returned to prosperity
the sort of "new roosevelt" giveaways you long for are economic suicide - we'll end up like greece or italy.
do you even read the newspapers?
as was the gilded age; i'm afraid helium might become
cost-prohibitive in a globally warmed cranium.
That said, I'm not so sure that's a desirable outcome either, since as you point out, the teeming masses are on the whole a helluva lot dumber -- and I might add more blinded by fundamentalist religious fervor -- that they were half-a-century ago. And there's a helluva lot more of them.
In short, our next revolution is more likely to end up like the French Revolution or the Russian Revolution than our previous one.
Yes, step 1 of the 12 steps: "We admitted we were powerless over our government and that our government had become unmanageable." You describe it well. There are eleven more steps to recovery and this is what is known as a VERY low bottom we have hit, well, we haven't even seemed to hit bottom, the fresh hells continuing (the citizen detention a case in point) with so many ostrich citizens unwilling to acknowledge the collective bottom thus far. The answer to recovery is collective rigorous honesty and vigilance and commitment to climb the other 11 steps after sustaining a grasp of reality and accepting how bad things are.
I too am stymied as to why despite so many people giving at least lip service to how bad things, they seem still so enmeshed in the gamesmanship of the media in an election in which the citizens don't have a dog in the race, except for Ron Paul's stance on stopping the USWarMachine, and he seems to have a snowball's chance in hell of winning and his domestic stances still seem troubling, though stopping USWarMachine killing is A HUGE PLUS TO ANYONE WITH A REMOTELY WORKING CONSCIENCE.
In the past two years I have participated in the Green Party to different degrees according to my IRL challenges. I know it offers a political structure and voice, I know they have presidential candidates who commit to pushing back cleanly against the lobbying corruption that got us here and yet its ranks don't seem to be growing significantly. I am surprised given the principles of the "green party" franchises across the planet -- they do stand for the principles that remind me of the essence of the 12-step recovery programs, in fact. A global network promoting a paradigm shift from power and control patriarchy to partnership and cooperation humanism. Still, it takes a hardy commitment to get truly involved in such a Party.
I turned on the tv yesterday and was happy to see Bill Moyers interviewing someone. I remember there was even talk once of him running. I don't know why we so insulted and disenfranchised, many now former, and frustrated Dems have not organized heartily behind a viable challenger to both corrupt money parties. Why many haven't officially left the Dem party! Why are so many still clinging to the not so viva la difference between the Dems and Republicans. My personal view is that when the Obama administration began after the horror of the Bush years there was such relief and hope, hopium Cindy Sheehan called it, among those of us waiting for a return to humanism and instead there began a steady not so subtle crazymaking continuance and even escalation of the same status quo anti-humane and anti-civil liberties policies with the cognitive dissonance buzzing from the minimization or denial of official Dem, media and citizen apologists. The former two are vastly corrupt, and the latter -- the citizens -- stuck permanently it would seem in the 5 stages of grief, primarily still "bargaining" that Obama is lesser of two evils.
I posted a link on my latest blog to a cartoon discussing Obama's signing of the NDAA and noting his insistence, HIS insistence, how it include the US citizen detention at the whim of the executive branch section. To have American voters OKAY WITH THAT, rallying to HELP Obama win against the admittedly deranged Republican rat bastards (excluding Paul) continues to confuse me.
I am going to look into the Green candidates for President and pray that we just don't continue to wait until it gets later and later and later. The corporate media won't help. of course, in fact it will fight us, including MSNBC which people need to get into their heads, for real alternate and humanist politicians, not game players and bullshit artists. The corporate media blocks coverage of movements by citizens re anti-war, pro-universal healthcare, pro-choice, pro-climate control, etc. We have got to stop going to the craven and corrupt, pimped out media to learn about the "reality" of our nation and our world. Except for rare, rare, rare exceptions we will be fed propaganda that enables the escalating conscienceless destruction, even literal murder, of the oligarchy and its USWarmachine.
There was a joke going around, "What is the ONLY REAL difference between Bush and Obama?" Answer? "Opposition." That is chilling.
Three types of people, those who MAKE things happen, those who WATCH things happen and those who EVENTUALLY ASK, "WTF HAPPENED???"" The last group is still a vast one in America.
Sorry to go on so long. libby
But I don't see that happening any time soon.
We have been warned though.
I see the future as bleak as you do here.