signalmankenneth
Verified User
A new poll reveals what you already knew: the economy is fucking depressing. You can't help but wonder how many people have committed suicide over losing a job or a house, or how many relationships have been strained to the breaking point by a lack of money. It's proof that we live in Bizarro world that we even take such things for granted. Much like the tenets of organized religion, if you simply lay out the reality in simple terms- you and I are subject to the whims and vagaries of a tiny group of social parasites who produce nothing while taking everything, and when their investments tank our lives go in the shitter- it's patently ludicrous. To those suckling at the teat of corporate control, however, it seems as natural as sunshine.
So while you and I are "tightening our belts," Wall Street is about to hand out their annual grotesque bonuses. While the largest world economies are parading around Copenhagen acting like tight-fisted misers, but pretending to be jolly rich uncles, people opposing the wholesale destruction of the planet are getting arrested by the thousands and held for twelve hours on no charges. Indeed, the rampant social inequality and environmental destruction that increasingly marks the period in which we live will become increasingly incompatible with normal democratic forms in the coming years. Your current elected officials are impotent in the face of bankers and war profiteers.
Don't believe me? Take a look at the last fifteen years of American political history. The impeachment of President Clinton, Bush v. Gore (which establishes a legal precedent for eliminating universal suffrage), and the 2004 election shenanigans. If the last election was clean it was only because the wishes of our corporate masters and the wishes of the masses coincided on that particular Tuesday. There is no reason to think that the 2012 election won't be rife with electoral fraud, particularly if a candidate more suitable to the long-term goals of American imperialism than Barack Obama is put forward by the Republican Party.
And then there's the small matter of Barack Obama bringing Gitmo home and the Supreme Court refusing to even hear the case of detainees who said they were tortured there.. At a time when the economy is in the tank, there's always a really easy way to give people good jobs at good wages- build more prisons. The startling thing about what is going on with bringing Gitmo detainees to America, is that impoverished towns are bidding for the privilege of hosting America's gulag. The logic of such a situation perpetuates itself, and goes nowhere good.
Democrats, for their part, are bracing for a slaughter in the 2010 mid-terms. Apparently people are very angry about the Iraq and AfPak wars, and don't think that tax rebates for installing solar panels are any substitute for a robust jobs program. This ties in to the idea that such massive social inequality and representative democracy are not super compatible. You and I want money for education, health care, and jobs. The people who run this country want it for larger and larger superprofits. In the past, concessions were able to be made. But in a world where America is on the decline and its rivals are getting ever more hungry for a piece of the imperialist pie, the crumbs capitalism can throw around are fewer and fewer.
The choice between socialism and barbarism becomes clearer with each passing minute. We are now approaching thirty solid years of full-throttle attacks on the living standards of the working class and intensified attacks on the neo-colonial world. How much more do you think the world can take? How far removed from naked fascism can we possibly be? Contrary to the right-wing propaganda that dominates most of the corporate news sources, people are not fucking stupid and rarely take this shit lying down. It's only a neurotic focus on electoral politics that even makes such a position tenable, and in a country where half of us don't even vote. As the attacks on people intensify, as social misery increases, as global wars of conquest and plunder spread, the resistance will crop up in small pockets. The question, however, is what form this resistance will take and whether it will win or be crushed like an ant.
You'd better hope that it wins. Because the alternative is literally too terrifying to contemplate.
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Nick Pell
Grandmaster, Black Sun Gazette
