By now everyone's heard that Trump has "restarted" the Keystone XL Pipeline and the Dakota Access Pipeline "shut down" by Obama. I use the scare quotes because what's actually happened is a little less declarative than the Narrative would have it.
Obama didn't actually shut down the pipelines, he deferred final decisions on them to a later time, when he was out of office. Trump has not restarted them, he has picked up the ball where Obama left it, and is considering whether to run with it.
I split hairs like this because what is actually going on in this chaotic situation often varies quite a bit from the Narratives put out by the White House and countered by the media. There are lies and lies and more lies, in a blizzard of falsehood -- coming from all sides -- and it's almost impossible for the Rabble to sort out fact from fiction under the circumstances.
Chaos is the key, and keeping things as chaotic and unpredictable as possible appears to be the way Trump intends to rule until he is deposed.
But he's not the only one who can play that game.
Not by a long shot.
Meanwhile up in frozen North Dakota, the Water Protectors were planning to decamp from Sacred Stone and Oceti Sacowin, packing up and moving away from the Standing Rock reservation and setting up camp again at other reservations by invitation. This was to be a voluntary evacuation, but it was in line with the SRS Tribal Chairman Dave Archambault's repeated requests (orders?) that the Water Protector camps be vacated "for the safety" of the campers. Or something.
His position was that while the Environmental Impact Statement ordered by Obama was being prepared, protection/provocation by Water Protectors was counter productive. The less conflict at the site during the process, the better in his view. There have been recent incidents of violence (by police) against Water Protectors at the Backwater Bridge, a continuous flashpoint at Standing Rock. Archambault said he wanted the bridge reopened,, and that couldn't happen so long as incidents of violence kept happening there.
So he issued another request/order that the Water Protectors leave, and he and the tribal council essentially seized the millions of dollars raised for the Water Protectors and declared it tribal funds to use as the tribal council determined. I don't know what happened to the warehouse full of supplies sent to the camps, but last I heard, the tribe was refusing to release them to the camps.
As a point of reference, there have been widespread Water Protector actions primarily against pipelines all over the country since things calmed a bit at Standing Rock. This is the kind of activism that takes on a life of its own, and by spreading out so much -- rather than being concentrated in one spot -- the Water Protectors are ensuring their survival come what may.
It's not unlike the way Occupy dispersed after the coordinated violent crack down against it in 2011 and 2012. While I haven't got around to updating my Occupy links -- many are dead now -- I am quite aware that Occupy is still around and is still active, though for the most part they keep a low profile. As one of the Occupy mottos says, "You can't kill an idea."
That's pretty much where things stood on Monday. On Tuesday everything changed when Trump signed his pipelines memorandum. Keystone XL and Dakota Access were suddenly placed on the track for eventual approval, regardless it seemed of anything else.
The evacuation of the camps at Standing Rock halted and a call went out for Water Protectors to return -- so long as they were physically able to do so and could be self-sufficient once there.
The call did not go out from Archambault, it was issued by Chad IronEyes, one of the Standing Rock Sioux activists who has stayed on top of the evolving situation there and who has occupied the space between the Tribal Chairman and Council and the Water Protectors.
I haven't checked the activist notices today yet, but after Trump's action, there were demonstrations by Water Protectors and their allies in many cities throughout the country. As the Water Protectors reassemble in North Dakota, the state is preparing to force the issue and prohibit protest in so far as they can by law. They've even come up with some kind of law that legalizes running down protesters who block roads -- as long as it's an "accident."
Yes, well. We've already seen that happen during the actions last year. Sport, dontchaknow.
And there have been violent incidents at the Bridge in which numerous Water Protectors and allies have been injured by rubber bullets, water cannon, and other weapons wielded by the police. They've even set up a missile launcher apparently to shoot down drones flown by Water Protectors in order to document what's going on.
Please understand, this is all a dry run for the eventual suppression of any and all popular revolts and uprisings that might come to pass in the future.
The Indians at Standing Rock know this; many of their allies do too. But the general public remains oblivious.
I've pointed out in other fora that serious protest action in the United States has historically been met with serious and deadly force. Kent State is a well known example, but there were many others in those days and previously. Massacres of Indians, of course, were routine in the 19th Century, but strikers, protesters, and other activists who were perceived as threats by The Powers That Be were frequently subjected to use of deadly force by private guards as well as the National Guard and police, occasionally by the Regular Army.
People who understand this history of suppression of dissent know that the Water Protectors, as some of the most successful activists in recent times, are at severe risk of injury or death at the hands of the authorities, no matter where they are, but particularly so in North Dakota. I don't know how many have been injured so far, but hundreds were injured during the action on November 20-21 when water cannon were first turned on the activists at the Bridge.
This is deadly serious.
I've pointed out that the Water Protectors have been showing the way to effective resistance under the current circumstances. They are rebels, yes, but they are not in the mold of past resistance efforts. They are a step beyond them. First, they are grounded in Native American spirituality, something a lot of Anglos like to play with, but something few of them understand or can relate to. It's a different way of looking at the relationship between the Spirits and the People. It's a much more powerful thing than most Anglos can imagine, and it's part of the reason why so many of the Water Protectors can endure the suppression and the violence unleashed against them by the authorities. It's a reason why the Water Protectors understand they might lose from time to time, and they understand the Dakota Access Pipeline might be completed no matter what they do, but that in the end, they will be vindicated and victorious.
They have endured so much so far, and the struggle is re-engaged, not only at Standing Rock but all over the country now.
It is part of the emerging struggle against the forces of wealth and power so perfectly expressed through the elevation of Trump and his cronies to run the government of these United States.
Water Protectors have led the way. They are the vanguard.
Where the struggle goes from here, we'll have to wait and see -- unless, of course, we are involved in actions to change the situation for the better.
Showing posts with label advice to the proles. Show all posts
Showing posts with label advice to the proles. Show all posts
Friday, January 27, 2017
Wednesday, November 16, 2016
The Democratic Party Is Irrelevant
I saw Bernie on Charlie Rose last night. As he always does, he made a strong case for his policies and programs that he believes would control Wall Street greed and uplift the working class, curb the police state, and inspire confidence in America around the world. All well and good, but by pleading with Trump to do the right thing, he's essentially declared the Democratic Party irrelevant.
Of course.
Democrats have been yielding power to the Rs for decades, truly since Reagan, but they weren't so savvy about wielding power after Nixon defeated Humphrey either. Nixon was practically a Communist compared to Trump, and the Republicans in Congress in Nixon's day weren't anything like today's radical reactionaries who call themselves Republicans. But Nixon's election signaled the end of the New Deal/Great Society coalition headed by Democrats and progressives, and the coming reversion to prior theories of what it was appropriate for government to do.
As things have devolved from that point, the Democratic Party has reverted more and more to its roots as an aristocratic and deeply conservative party not particularly intent on rule so much as it is on influence. Democrats have adopted populist and/or progressive positions periodically throughout the long history of the Party, but they've also been perfectly willing to throw them away.
During the most recent campaign for president, it appeared that Hillary was attempting to pull off something Democrats have long yearned for -- the union of the Democratic Party with top level Republican "moderates," those Republicans who had rejected Trump.
I think she thought she had achieved her objective, but lo and behold, she hadn't. The R "moderates" went right back to the fold once Trump was declared the victor. The power that Rs can wield by holding the White House and both houses of congress is truly intoxicating, They won't let this moment pass unexploited. Oh no.
Trump's apparent EC victory was stunning because it wasn't expected or planned for. The shock waves ran through the Ruling Clique, just as they did through the media and the public; it was in its own way an even greater shock than the Supreme Court's lawless interference in 2000 to give the presidency to GW and his bloodthirsty cohort. It makes no sense, and it is "illegitimate" from the get. Just as GW's elevation was. GW was forced upon an unwilling but also largely unresistant public and he caused the very horrors his opponents warned he would. Wars and economic collapse being the highlights -- or lowlights as the case may be.
Democrats, to their undying shame, did not serve as an opposition party but were instead enablers, co-conspirators, and willing victims. Even when they were given back Congress in 2006 they sat on their hands and essentially pretended that everything was OK, and Bush and Company would not be more than ritually challenged. For some, it was a shocking revelation: Democrats were useless.
And in 2008 when Obama was elected in a landslide and congress had a filibuster proof Democratic majority, guess what? Obama's prime objective was rehabilitating the Rs, resuscitating them from their near-death experience, and carrying on the Republican lite programs and policies the Ds had been notorious for since the victory-debacle of 2006.
To say the public was disappointed is to put it gently, and the Ds were given their punishment in 2010. The interesting thing to me is that the Ds didn't even try to reverse the trend. They essentially conceded state houses all over the country without a fight, knowing full well that by doing so, Republican gerrymandering would ensure R political dominance for at least ten years and possibly much longer than that. The Ds knew what would happen and they let it, if they didn't actually help engineer it.
They lost most of their Congressional majority as well.
As long as they had the White House, apparently the Ds didn't care. Of course the policies which essentially favored Rs, Wall Street, and the financial elites were enacted right and left (intentional pun) to the horror of many Americans who simply wanted fairness and justice from their government and got something else entirely. Disappointment? Ha.
Government obviously was totally out of the hands of the public, governing contrary to the public interest was the operating theory of both parties, and for all intents and purposes, there was no alternative. NeoLibCon capture was complete.
There was nothing We the Rabble could do about it. Elections in 2012, 2014 and now 2016 confirmed the People's powerlessness.
But this time, instead of the stability and continuity that would have been Hillary's direction in office, we get another shock to the system, equivalent to, maybe even greater than that of 2000, and literally nobody knows for sure where we go from here. I'm convinced that's designed and deliberate, not an accident of the voters' unexpected preference. I think the voters had very little to do with it. And it is obvious from Hillary's increasing, indeed unprecedented, lead in the popular vote (now up above 1,000,000 it seems and headed toward 2,000,000 maybe even 3,000,000 or more) that the voters chose stability and continuity -- even if they didn't like Hillary -- not whatever radical upheaval is in the works.
But it doesn't matter. What the voters want in any given election is of no interest or consequence to the Ruling Clique. They want what they want, and they will get it by hook or crook. The trouble is, until the outcome was announced, they obviously wanted stability and continuity, though not for the same reasons the public did.
So what happened?
Somebody or some faction which could do so pulled the plug.
Given the tiny margins in some of the battleground states that switched the outcome, and given the exit polls showing a substantial Hillary victory in those same states -- much like Gore's exit poll victory in Florida which was conveniently overruled -- it's pretty obvious that the count was interfered with (somehow) by a faction that wanted shock and destabilization rather than stability and continuity.
Crisis-opportunity, right?
Crisis=Opportunity.
We've been through this so many times, we should understand it by now. And we should have some way to counter it. But no.
Every time is like the first time. "Whut?!" And the cycle repeats over and over.
That is one of the ways Our Rulers keep their grip on power no matter the wishes of the public.
But it's a factional rulership, not a monolith, and the factions are constantly contending for the upper hand.
The fact that Hillary, Obama, and nearly all the Democratic hierarchy went along with the... odd... outcome without question and rank and file Democratic office holders are stunningly mute about it indicates to me -- having observed these things over the years and having had an inside view of DP operations for a while in California -- that the Dems really don't care, never did, and as far as they're concerned, it's no problem -- for them. In other words, they're useless and irrelevant as a political opposition, for they do not oppose; they enable.
Of course I and many others have known that for years, but seeing it so obviously presented in this case is still a shock.
But that's the intention.
Shock the public and get away with god knows what while they're fighting among themselves.
Works every time.
So far anyway. This time it may run into a few speed bumps, but what needs to happen are spike strips at least.
That can happen if the results in the battleground states are investigated thoroughly enough to discover the kind of jiggering I suspect went on. But I don't see that on any agenda. I don't think anybody wants to do it for fear of what they'll find. This is essentially complicity in fraud but that's hardly unusual in American politics and elections.
If it were discovered that the results actually were jiggered in Trump's favor just enough to clinch the EC, that would essentially cancel the election. The whole thing, the vote in its entirety would have to be reviewed (which wouldn't bother me) and the transition schedule would be thrown into chaos. What would be found would likely be appalling to everyone. One shock would follow another. Our Rulers would find that unacceptable because the whole system would shudder and potentially collapse. A crisis indeed, but one which the Wrong People could use as an Opportunity. The Wrong People being the Rabble.
The Rabble want fairness, justice, economic comfort/prosperity for themselves, and a sense of self-worth. Our Rulers do not want the Rabble to have those things because if they do, they can't be exploited to the extent they must be to please and pleasure their Betters.
What the Trump cabal appears to be preparing to do is to restore White Supremacy pretty much as it was in the 1950s and before, as a sop to some of the Rabble to make them think they're getting what they want while exploiting and robbing them to the hilt.
It's a nasty tactic, but it worked back in the day, so I suspect the Trumpists think it will work again. Why not?
The rest of the Rabble, the ones who will suffer the most under this scheme, "deserve their punishment" according to the principles of White Supremacy. They are inferior. Period. End of discussion. Some of them are Good Mexicans, Good Darkies and such, and so they can be rewarded, but the rest? They're lucky to be alive, they can bow down and shut up. Or leave. Or die. Their choice.
No, this isn't Nazi-ism or straight on Fascism. This is the way the US was ruled and operated from its origin until the mid Sixties and LBJ's Great Society when many of the disabilities imposed on Out Groups began to be removed.
The Trumpists want to restore America's Greatness by reverting to the white supremacist principles that they believe made America "great" in the first place.
Whether the Ruling Clique is down with that, I don't know. Some of the factions aren't, but some are.
The Democrats, in the end, though, will go along with whatever faction wins.
The Rabble can have a say, if they take the reins and force the issue, but in the meantime, the Trump cabal can get away with a lot of mischief while the issue of White Supremacy is serving to distract the masses.
Oh, these people know how to run cons all right, and they know most people are marks. Breaking free of this crap is what the People need to do. Whether they or we can, I dunno....
More later. I'm tired.
Of course.
Democrats have been yielding power to the Rs for decades, truly since Reagan, but they weren't so savvy about wielding power after Nixon defeated Humphrey either. Nixon was practically a Communist compared to Trump, and the Republicans in Congress in Nixon's day weren't anything like today's radical reactionaries who call themselves Republicans. But Nixon's election signaled the end of the New Deal/Great Society coalition headed by Democrats and progressives, and the coming reversion to prior theories of what it was appropriate for government to do.
As things have devolved from that point, the Democratic Party has reverted more and more to its roots as an aristocratic and deeply conservative party not particularly intent on rule so much as it is on influence. Democrats have adopted populist and/or progressive positions periodically throughout the long history of the Party, but they've also been perfectly willing to throw them away.
During the most recent campaign for president, it appeared that Hillary was attempting to pull off something Democrats have long yearned for -- the union of the Democratic Party with top level Republican "moderates," those Republicans who had rejected Trump.
I think she thought she had achieved her objective, but lo and behold, she hadn't. The R "moderates" went right back to the fold once Trump was declared the victor. The power that Rs can wield by holding the White House and both houses of congress is truly intoxicating, They won't let this moment pass unexploited. Oh no.
Trump's apparent EC victory was stunning because it wasn't expected or planned for. The shock waves ran through the Ruling Clique, just as they did through the media and the public; it was in its own way an even greater shock than the Supreme Court's lawless interference in 2000 to give the presidency to GW and his bloodthirsty cohort. It makes no sense, and it is "illegitimate" from the get. Just as GW's elevation was. GW was forced upon an unwilling but also largely unresistant public and he caused the very horrors his opponents warned he would. Wars and economic collapse being the highlights -- or lowlights as the case may be.
Democrats, to their undying shame, did not serve as an opposition party but were instead enablers, co-conspirators, and willing victims. Even when they were given back Congress in 2006 they sat on their hands and essentially pretended that everything was OK, and Bush and Company would not be more than ritually challenged. For some, it was a shocking revelation: Democrats were useless.
And in 2008 when Obama was elected in a landslide and congress had a filibuster proof Democratic majority, guess what? Obama's prime objective was rehabilitating the Rs, resuscitating them from their near-death experience, and carrying on the Republican lite programs and policies the Ds had been notorious for since the victory-debacle of 2006.
To say the public was disappointed is to put it gently, and the Ds were given their punishment in 2010. The interesting thing to me is that the Ds didn't even try to reverse the trend. They essentially conceded state houses all over the country without a fight, knowing full well that by doing so, Republican gerrymandering would ensure R political dominance for at least ten years and possibly much longer than that. The Ds knew what would happen and they let it, if they didn't actually help engineer it.
They lost most of their Congressional majority as well.
As long as they had the White House, apparently the Ds didn't care. Of course the policies which essentially favored Rs, Wall Street, and the financial elites were enacted right and left (intentional pun) to the horror of many Americans who simply wanted fairness and justice from their government and got something else entirely. Disappointment? Ha.
Government obviously was totally out of the hands of the public, governing contrary to the public interest was the operating theory of both parties, and for all intents and purposes, there was no alternative. NeoLibCon capture was complete.
There was nothing We the Rabble could do about it. Elections in 2012, 2014 and now 2016 confirmed the People's powerlessness.
But this time, instead of the stability and continuity that would have been Hillary's direction in office, we get another shock to the system, equivalent to, maybe even greater than that of 2000, and literally nobody knows for sure where we go from here. I'm convinced that's designed and deliberate, not an accident of the voters' unexpected preference. I think the voters had very little to do with it. And it is obvious from Hillary's increasing, indeed unprecedented, lead in the popular vote (now up above 1,000,000 it seems and headed toward 2,000,000 maybe even 3,000,000 or more) that the voters chose stability and continuity -- even if they didn't like Hillary -- not whatever radical upheaval is in the works.
But it doesn't matter. What the voters want in any given election is of no interest or consequence to the Ruling Clique. They want what they want, and they will get it by hook or crook. The trouble is, until the outcome was announced, they obviously wanted stability and continuity, though not for the same reasons the public did.
So what happened?
Somebody or some faction which could do so pulled the plug.
Given the tiny margins in some of the battleground states that switched the outcome, and given the exit polls showing a substantial Hillary victory in those same states -- much like Gore's exit poll victory in Florida which was conveniently overruled -- it's pretty obvious that the count was interfered with (somehow) by a faction that wanted shock and destabilization rather than stability and continuity.
Crisis-opportunity, right?
Crisis=Opportunity.
We've been through this so many times, we should understand it by now. And we should have some way to counter it. But no.
Every time is like the first time. "Whut?!" And the cycle repeats over and over.
That is one of the ways Our Rulers keep their grip on power no matter the wishes of the public.
But it's a factional rulership, not a monolith, and the factions are constantly contending for the upper hand.
The fact that Hillary, Obama, and nearly all the Democratic hierarchy went along with the... odd... outcome without question and rank and file Democratic office holders are stunningly mute about it indicates to me -- having observed these things over the years and having had an inside view of DP operations for a while in California -- that the Dems really don't care, never did, and as far as they're concerned, it's no problem -- for them. In other words, they're useless and irrelevant as a political opposition, for they do not oppose; they enable.
Of course I and many others have known that for years, but seeing it so obviously presented in this case is still a shock.
But that's the intention.
Shock the public and get away with god knows what while they're fighting among themselves.
Works every time.
So far anyway. This time it may run into a few speed bumps, but what needs to happen are spike strips at least.
That can happen if the results in the battleground states are investigated thoroughly enough to discover the kind of jiggering I suspect went on. But I don't see that on any agenda. I don't think anybody wants to do it for fear of what they'll find. This is essentially complicity in fraud but that's hardly unusual in American politics and elections.
If it were discovered that the results actually were jiggered in Trump's favor just enough to clinch the EC, that would essentially cancel the election. The whole thing, the vote in its entirety would have to be reviewed (which wouldn't bother me) and the transition schedule would be thrown into chaos. What would be found would likely be appalling to everyone. One shock would follow another. Our Rulers would find that unacceptable because the whole system would shudder and potentially collapse. A crisis indeed, but one which the Wrong People could use as an Opportunity. The Wrong People being the Rabble.
The Rabble want fairness, justice, economic comfort/prosperity for themselves, and a sense of self-worth. Our Rulers do not want the Rabble to have those things because if they do, they can't be exploited to the extent they must be to please and pleasure their Betters.
What the Trump cabal appears to be preparing to do is to restore White Supremacy pretty much as it was in the 1950s and before, as a sop to some of the Rabble to make them think they're getting what they want while exploiting and robbing them to the hilt.
It's a nasty tactic, but it worked back in the day, so I suspect the Trumpists think it will work again. Why not?
The rest of the Rabble, the ones who will suffer the most under this scheme, "deserve their punishment" according to the principles of White Supremacy. They are inferior. Period. End of discussion. Some of them are Good Mexicans, Good Darkies and such, and so they can be rewarded, but the rest? They're lucky to be alive, they can bow down and shut up. Or leave. Or die. Their choice.
No, this isn't Nazi-ism or straight on Fascism. This is the way the US was ruled and operated from its origin until the mid Sixties and LBJ's Great Society when many of the disabilities imposed on Out Groups began to be removed.
The Trumpists want to restore America's Greatness by reverting to the white supremacist principles that they believe made America "great" in the first place.
Whether the Ruling Clique is down with that, I don't know. Some of the factions aren't, but some are.
The Democrats, in the end, though, will go along with whatever faction wins.
The Rabble can have a say, if they take the reins and force the issue, but in the meantime, the Trump cabal can get away with a lot of mischief while the issue of White Supremacy is serving to distract the masses.
Oh, these people know how to run cons all right, and they know most people are marks. Breaking free of this crap is what the People need to do. Whether they or we can, I dunno....
More later. I'm tired.
Friday, October 12, 2012
Life At Versailles, Or The Other "Debate"
 |
| Versailles |
These people have been on the Government Teat too long.
I arrived back at our place in California just as the Vice Presidential "Debate" was beginning, so, still zzzzz-y from the long drive, I sat down to listen to and watch a bit of it. At least Martha Raddatz was awake, I'll give her that, and she maintained some sort of control of the boys.
Well, that was my impression. Both Biden and Ryan came across as boys, literal adolescents having at one another, more for fun and for show than for any real object at all, because both of these boys know that no matter who eventually sits in the Big Chair (and the not-quite-so Big Chair nearby) the strings will still be pulled by the same people, and the results will be about the same because the goal is the same: Empire, economic calamity (for the masses), and some sort of permanence, ie: "certainty" for the High and the Mighty.
There were times when Ryan came across as just a punk, which seems to be his personality in any case, but I don't know that my judgement about these things is actually valid any more, being as that I'm more of a codger these days than not.
By his advanced years -- 70 now, is he? -- Biden should have come across as the Doddering Old Count puttering around the Palace since he's been in office (thus part of the Palace culture) for nearly all his life (wasn't he first elected when he was a twenty-something... punk?) Well, maybe that's how younger people saw him last night, but I myself saw him more as the older frat brother slapping around some random pledge. Ryan wasn't a real person to Biden (I don't know that anyone who speaks in constant sound bites and talking points could be mistaken for "real" in any case). He was an object, a cat toy.
For his part, Ryan seemed to enjoy it, but then he loves him some attention, doesn't he?
The world Ryan wants for the rest of us is one of submission, misery and despair. Apparently, this grows out of his religious faith somehow; but then I guess after the rejection of the reforms of Vatican II (now 50 years ago) the Church really does want to go back to submission, misery and despair for all except the Highest of the Mighty for whom no flattery is out of bounds.
Biden is old enough to remember Vatican II and the reforms that resulted, and like the Rebel Nuns, he seems to think that that now antiquated version of the Church ought to still mean something. Yes, well. Good luck with that.
How did misery for all (except those on top) become the standard outlook for the younger generation?
Do they even realize it?
But there is no less misery misery in Biden's future vision, such as it is.
And this is why both of these boys are basically Bubble Boys, living in the Palace of Versailles, completely divorced from the People they ostensibly serve.
Yes, they have personally suffered somewhat in ways that many of us can relate to, but I'm not at all sure that either of them can relate their own suffering and loss to what the millions encounter. On the other hand, I can easily imagine them ordering the masses to "suck it up like I did." True empathy is not really a strong suit of Versailles.
Back in the day, Versailles was "open." Anyone who could make their way to the Chateau was admitted so long as they were unarmed. They had essentially free rein to roam the corridors and grand salons at will; many were able to directly encounter one or another royal functionary, count, or duc, and it was even possible for the unwashed to encounter and directly petition the King Himself -- though such encounters were rare. In a sense therefore, the Ancien Regime was at least theoretically in closer touch with the masses than our own isolated and heavily protected Royals are. When the déluge came, therefore, the Anciens were not entirely unaware that the People were, shall we say, discontent.
These days, however, it is not at all certain that those who have lived in a version of Versailles all their supposedly adult lives -- like Biden and Ryan to take but two -- have any idea that the masses are not altogether delighted with them.
After his Victorious Performance at the previous "debate" with Obama, Romney attempted to adopt the trappings of Royalty, asserting his "interest" in and "care" for "all the People," but it is obviously a charade, something he knows he is supposed to do which he doesn't carry off very well. Ryan doesn't have to play that game -- and he doesn't -- any more than Biden does.
They're just boys playing. Doing what they do.
Somehow, I am not reassured.
Saturday, October 8, 2011
Step by Step
Advice to the confused proletariat:
Click image above to embiggen
These are easy things, simple things, things that surprisingly few Americans seem to have thought about or -- apparently -- done.
But there is another side to it, the starker side that many of the Occupiers are all too familiar with. Go here. Go here now. Do not delay. Do not read the rest of this post until you go. Go here now and read the stories that you find there.
Millions and millions of Americans have been forced into poverty every year since the beginning of this Endless Recession while those on the top of the heap have reaped greater and ever greater rewards at everyone else's expense. They -- and only they -- have benefited from this catastrophic situation, and fully intend to keep it that way.
*Millions and millions of Americans don't have bank accounts to transfer to credit unions.*Millions and millions of Americans don't have credit or debit cards and can't get them.
* Millions and millions of Americans don't have checking accounts and can't get them; nor do they have any place to withdraw cash from. They may not have any cash when it comes to it.
* Millions and millions of Americans are dropping out -- or are being dropped out -- of the consumer economy. Shopping? What's that?
* Millions and millions of Americans are not connected to the internet and cannot become connected because they can't afford the apparatus and the monthly fees. Their only access to "news" is the television or newspapers or... more and more... word of mouth.
I've been hammering this point for years:
It is the deliberate policy of the United States Government and its sponsors to drive millions upon millions of Americans into poverty so that the sponsors of this Government may continue to enjoy the fruits of other people's labor.
That #OWS action is, in part, a populist response to that simple fact.
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