Dear OD
You’re right. Its all bullshit. But I’m not going to convince you otherwise. I’d just as soon not talk politics until after this sorts itself out.
All I can say is that the Right has its chance now. It has the House, Senate, Supreme Court and Presidency. It also has more than its share of the State Legislatures and governorships, as well as a big piece of the local judiciary. The business lobbies and trade associations all support the Republican program. So do the churches, banks and financial institutions, and its setting up its own tame universities. It even has its own propaganda arm and funding mechanism. Well, the mutineers have battered their way onto the bridge. Now let’s see what they do with it.
Now if you want my OPINION, here it is:
America has always been the country of wealth and opportunity. But it has always promised more than it could deliver. This has especially been the case since the end of the Depression and World War II. But those days are over, not because its anyone’s fault, but for a variety of historical and economic and technological reasons, both here and overseas. This started to turn in the last decades of the 20th century. Slowly but surely, the American Dream has been starting to vanish. The idea that everyone would have a nice job in a factory or air-conditioned office has started to fade. We all were entitled to two cars, a house in the suburbs, and college for the kids. We would have a pension and cheap health care and never ending and ever growing prosperity–forever. We wouldn’t even have to join a union! The average American is now starting to realize he will not do as well as his parents once did, and that his children will probably do worse than HE did. We’ve talked about this before, Chris, we hit the Sweet Spot. People like our parents won’t be able to have kids today as prosperous as we are. And this realization is just starting to sink in.
People are scared, they’re looking for scapegoats, they’re looking for villains, and they’ll follow anyone who can provide them. We can’t blame the Communists any more, there aren’t any,
in fact, the Russians and Chinese are beating us at our own Capitalist game. We can’t blame the blacks, they’re too damn many of them, they have lawyers and guns and they are finally starting to move into the middle class. So we are blaming the Arabs and the Mexicans and the poor. Germany had its Jews, we have our Liberals. But its still fascism, Chris, the dictatorship of the middle class. When the average middle class guy feels threatened, he needs to blame it on someone, ’cause he’ll never admit he was conned by the guy he wanted to be like by working hard and following the rules, and he will follow anyone who promises him easy answers. And the business community will always support the Hitlers of this world because they always promise to cut taxes.
I’ve seen this coming since the 60s Chris. I didn’t get all the details right, but the general pattern is unfolding exactly the way I saw it. We got greedy and we ate the seed corn. We went into debt, yes, government debt, but consumer and corporate and financial debt, too. We didn’t just spend all our wealth and all we could borrow, we spent it on worthless shit that made a few people very rich while the rest of us made careers out of selling each other pizza and following lunatic professions like Real Estate Investment Counseling Education. And we failed to invest, either in education, research, infrastructure or the environment–all we could see was next quarter’s financial statement. Well, it was great for a while, the Sweet Spot, but now we’ve shot our wad. We redlined the country right into the 21st century, until it slung a rod and seized up. The hippies were right.
Believe me, there’s no way I’m going to convince you of any of this, so I’d just as soon not talk about it any longer. I’ve already lost my cousin’s friendship, and almost my brother’s (they are on opposite sides of the spectrum, which is why I’m convinced I must be the Fucking Moderate). All I can say is I’ve organized my life to deal with the world I saw coming when I was a young man. And so far, things are turning out exactly the way I expected them to: a general economic decline, followed by environmental, political, cultural and military consequences. And then, a series of carefully engineered shortages: energy, credit, housing, education, medical care, and (any day now!) food. Just like the Romans. And towards the end, we’ll get our own Hitler, the man with all the solutions to all our problems, with a bag full of enemies to blame all our troubles on. And following him straight over the cliff, a desperate mob of scared, ignorant and angry people, looking for a scapegoat, and willing to follow anyone who can promise them one. “The riot squad is restless, it needs someplace to go.” Bob Dylan said that.
“History does not repeat itself, but sometimes it rhymes.” I said that.
From now on, lets keep it to the eclipse, and your cancer treatments. The political shit will surely work itself out without our help.
Buzz