Word has it that the president will go out on the hustings to sell his plan to reduce benefits for the poor, the sick and the old in an effort to get the "other side" to agree to a minute increase in the tax liability of the highest of the mighty.
Of course the H & M won't agree. This has been made clear over and over again: Our Betters simply refuse to pay any more taxes. They refuse to pay the absurdly low taxes they are obligated to even now; all they will pay is what they choose to pay, and they will direct the use of that tax money as they see fit. Period. End of discussion.
The social contract has been broken, irrevocably.
The question is, what do we do about it?
The key to understanding is that elections are not how these matters are resolved. Elections may or may not provide a modest amount of guidance to the ruling class about how to proceed with programs and policies they have already determined to implement, but they are not the way those policies and programs are determined in the first place.
In our case at the moment, the ruling class has decided that it will implement policies and programs which will further squeeze the poor, the sick, and the old, while simultaneously reducing the living standards of the working class and significantly reducing both the numbers and the living standards of the middle class.
This is now Doctrine, agreed to by all the "serious" political factions, regardless of party identification or ideology.
Those least able to will be forced to pay. Forever.
We see the results of the implementation of this policy and these programs in Europe, starkly and with a kind of awful ugliness we didn't think was possible even a few years ago. People are going hungry in Europe's "periphery." They lack many basic services and care. They are unemployed and unemployable in their own countries because their economies have been looted for the sake of a handful of a financial sector run completely amok. The results are painful and obvious, and Europe's elected leaders do not care. They see their future is secure only through adherence to the dictates of the out-of-control financial sector. The People and what happens to them do not matter.
The People, for their part, have complained more or less loudly, and massed and marched and carried signs, sometimes even battling with police, but they have not reached the point of rising up to overthrow their exploiters and oppressors. No, it appears that that phase of human response to adversity is gone, vanished into the mist.
What we see instead is a response tailored to the People's immediate needs for succor and sustenance, sidestepping the apparat that has been deployed for their suppression. Much as has happened in the United States in response to the calamity of Hurricane Sandy -- "The Storm" -- the People have spontaneously adopted the practice of Mutual Aid, and are acting on behalf of one another quite apart from the bureaucratic mills of the corporate state.
It's a wonder to behold.
In addition, there is a surprising awakening to the fact that certain limited interests are profiting mightily -- and expect to profit much more -- from the nearly universal governmental obsession with austerity policies in the midst of an economic disaster of global proportions.
Some people are getting far richer than even their wildest dreams through the implementation of economic austerity programs and policies, and that is why they are being pushed so strenuously in the corridors and halls of Power.
So in the midst of this, there's one of the most magnificently tawdry sex scandals in our long history of of them. Hm. What could be going on? Certainly not a distraction from what is important? Certainly not that!
Sex scandals tend to be ginned up to distract the Palace courtiers from otherwise productive tasks. In this case, the tawdriness of the cat-fight over the General(s) is matched by the delicious irony of the rightist "moralists" (apparently) doing in not just one of their own but the very star of their ongoing Morality Play. Of course what's apparent may not be what's true, so I'll withhold any judgement about what's really going on. I don't know. But for now, it looks like the Scandal has the media courtiers and not a few of the governmental and military ones fully engaged.
The fact that this is happening just as the Pretend Liberal Candidate was re-elected and plans to go on a campaign to sell his version of austerity programs and policies leads me to wonder whether there isn't some design and intention behind the events.
In other words, by keeping the courtiers engaged in Scandal Watch all sorts of mischief can take place under, around, and over the radar. The mischief of which I speak, of course, is the economic sales-job that is underway as we speak.
My prediction is that this Mother of All Sex Scandals will last just as long as it takes to implement the economic policies that have been waiting in the wings for just the right moment. And then it will be over as if it never happened at all.
Don't be too surprised if His Divinity St. David Petraeus winds up on the Throne just the same.
Oh what a tangled web...
Evidence suggest that the scandal was intended to come out before the election as part of the effort to unseat Obama. (By tying it in to the Benghazi Narrative the Republican establishment were trying to develop). It's coming out now because it developed a momentum of its own.
ReplyDeleteThe whole Benghazi clusterfuck is getting more and more ludicrous all the time.
ReplyDeleteIt looks/sounds like a wheels within wheels operation that was so out of control that it was easy for the 'terrriss' to do their business and take over the consulate and its black site -- leaving a number of Americans dead.
There are legitimate criticisms of this sort of crap but the Rs are making them. They are trying to make political hay for themselves and it's sickening.
The Dem's defenses are no less so.
Blerg.
Er, I meant to say the Rs AREN'T making legitimate criticisms...
ReplyDelete