Showing posts with label middle class. Show all posts
Showing posts with label middle class. Show all posts

Thursday, March 3, 2011

Paradise Lost?

Engineering economic disasters is one of the few things the GOP leadership is really good at. Another is their ability to shift the blame for the destruction they cause to the Democrats. They’ve proven, over time and beyond all doubt, that Republicans have the requisite skills necessary to lead the nation’s working- and middle-classes to financial ruin and, possibly, to something far more dire. Doesn’t mean they’re stupid or incompetent, mind you, it only means they’re sinister.

What motivates Republicans to put business interests ahead of human interests or environmental interests or sustainability interests or, apparently, having-any-kind-of-a-future-at-all interests? Why are Republicans trying to remove all the safeguards that were put in place to protect the public from corporate excess? Is it, as most pundits claim, only that corporate entities want to cut expenses and maximize profits for their investors, or is there something far darker and more ominous  (but, perhaps, more necessary) lurking in the shadows of public perception?

The answers to these questions, I suspect, are known only to the authors of GOP policies that intentionally harm, by way of disenfranchisement, multitudes of people from the middle- and working-classes and everyone from the south pole of the leisure class. However, I do have a theory—supported by mountains of evidence, but no rock-solid proof (yet)—that the GOP’s real intention is to implement policies that result in depopulating the planet.

Assuming that depopulation is the Republican’s ultimate goal, how might it be accomplished in the least amount of time with the least amount of opposition? Would marginalizing vast segments of the redundant population prior to its culling be among the initial steps? You’re damned right it would (as amply demonstrated by the fascist regime of Nazi Germany during the run-up to WWII).

Stay tuned for further discussion.


Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Broken Promises, Shattered Dreams, Ugly Truths: Monopoly for the Masses

“I think Barack Obama is a one-term President.” —former Vice President Dick Cheney

Well, I think Dick Cheney is an asshole—but he’s probably right. President Obama runs a serious risk of being a one-term President because he’s largely failed to deliver on his campaign promises (the ones he made to the voters in order to get elected), and the window of opportunity for keeping those promises continues to shrink. At this point it makes no difference why Obama reneged on his promises; the end results are the same.

For what ails this country blame Obama, yes, but not before you blame previous administrations going back 30 years. Blame Wall Street’s shadow government, greedy corporations, and their minions, the lobbyists, too. In Congress, blame the Republican obstructionists and spineless Democrats who, for expediency’s sake, shirk their responsibilities to their constituents. Blame wrong-headed Supreme Court decisions; blame an ill-informed electorate that believes Faux News is the purveyor of gospel truth; blame a disinterested public that’s too dimwitted to fully understand the issues or too complacent to get out and vote. While you’re at it, blame the chickenshit defenders of the status quo (which probably includes all of the above); there’s plenty enough blame to go around.

The inconvenient, unbearable, ugly truth of the matter is that the U.S., as it’s existed for more than 230 years, faces imminent danger of becoming something the Founding Fathers never envisioned, something they abhorred. While a dysfunctional government watches dispassionately as the economy sputters and grinds to a halt, the social infrastructure of a once great nation inexorably turns to rubble.

Common citizens suffer for lack of jobs, lack of affordable housing, lack of health care, and lack of competent, trustworthy leadership. Meanwhile, a very small percentage of the total population ransacks the economy and carries off all the goodies—thoroughly shortchanging the middle class and totally disenfranchising all those below the middle class.

If current trends continue, it won’t be long before the people in the upper echelons of the middle class and those in the lower echelons of the privileged class begin to feel the pinch, too. When the richest of the rich have extracted every last dime from members of the lower classes, it’s only a matter of time until they begin feeding on their own.

In every Monopoly game, there can only be one winner.

Q >>>