Cassandra posting

[bobquasit]

Posted over on the New York Times, waiting for approval.

Barack Obama, Phone Home

Obama is going to sit back while the "bipartisan" commission (which is entirely made up of people who will absolutely NOT be dependent on Social Security when they retire, and will certainly NOT have to delay their retirements one day later than they wish) guts Social Security. And the Democratic leadership will join the Republican leadership in letting it happen, with perhaps some faux howls of rage to fuel fundraising efforts.

And then in twenty years, when being old is synonymous with being desperately poor (as it was back before Social Security was implemented), most Americans will follow FOX News' lead in blaming the poor themselves for their poverty, rather than the obscenely wealthy monied class and corporations whose greed destroyed America.

Just as only Nixon could visit China, only the Democrats can destroy the New Deal and the Great Society. It's political suicide for them, but nonetheless they're doing it, piece by piece. Why? It's either sheer stupidity, or (more likely) they've decided to throw in with the winners in our long class war: the owner class, the billionaires and large corporations.

And after all, What is the public going to do? Revolt? The most any of them will think to do is vote for a third party, which is why billionaires like the Koch brothers and Rupert Murdoch have thoughtfully provided them with an ersatz third ("Tea") party to divert and defuse any real possibility of change.

We're witnessing a tragic experiment. The American working class is being tested to destruction. Will the complicit media manage to confuse and bamboozle an uneducated and ignorant public into internicene warfare? Or will the public, in the end, finally wake up and turn on the plutocrats and media moguls who have decided that the middle class and poor are expendable? I wish I knew. Either way, the results will be very ugly indeed.

George Carlin said it best. It's called the American "Dream", because you have to be asleep to believe it.

Comments

[unquietsoul5.livejournal.com]

Unlikely. The votes they have won't do it.

Logic says we're in for another stalemate round for 2 years, with the economy stagnating like it did in the 70s.

Unless
1) Another War Breaks Out

2) A big enough money scandal breaks out and some major Republican Politicians are involved (or having sex with the participants)

3) Obama goes postal on them

4) China Calls in the Debt

5) A big name Rent-a-A-Boy scandal breaks out and some key Republican Senators are exposed as customers.

6) Aliens land

7) Volcano Day

[klyfix.livejournal.com]

Hmm, I was going to add something about the notions of 2012 and the Mayan calendar being valid, but then realized that actually is slightly farther away than two years from now. :)

Obama "going postal" isn't an impossibility. If his Clinton-like desire to compromise and make deals is pushed too far (although it's been pushed too far already, really) it certainly is possible that we'll see Obama 2.0 who is more Truman or LBJ.

Another war is a fair possibility, alas. I can see some stunt by North Korea leading to it or Iran providing an excuse. Heck, I'm almost surprised that this hasn't happened already.

[klyfix.livejournal.com]

The Tea Party is just extreme conservative Republicans under another name. The (not so) Secret Masters there are not providing an alternative to the Republicans (except for the very few people running under a "Tea Party" which in some cases was actually set up by Democrats) but getting extremists the nominations in the Republican party.

Violent revolution, hmm, the problem is when the people who've been fed conspiracy notions by Glenn Beck and others decide that elected officials of either party are Evil Traitors and decide to do what Sharon Angle called "Second Amendment Solutions." And if the Tea Party is setting up for anything with its extremist rhetoric it is for that scenario, although the Secret Masters probably aren't allotting for that, thinking that the Masses are Asses and would just continue to be led by the nose. People not much farther afield than the Tea Party have engaged in violence in the not so distant past after all.

[(Anonymous)]

The situation in USA is basically "boil the frog"-type of deal. There are lots of things that could be done to avoid total collapse, but none of them will be done, until kicking the can further down the road becomes absolutely impossible - and that could take as much as couple of decades. There will not be a violent revolution, until the number of angry people with guns and nothing to lose exceeds the number of people, who believe they can still get by another month with the help of hard work, government handouts and occasional tax fiddles. Technically the whole Western world+Japan is already bankrupt with no way out of debt, except printing money, but if central bankers play their cards right, they can still kick the can for upto two more decades. They're gonna try and they might succeed, because in politics agonizing pain in the next year is better than moderate pain now and people go along with it, because fixing things would mean austerity and throwing away everyone's pension plans. Can you take two decades of recession and sloooow spiraling to oblivion?