The next Great Depression is coming. The R people (Right, Republican, Rich, Religious, Racist, Repressive, Regressive) are making certain of that. Remember, a lot of folks did just fine during the other Great Depression. Most of the rich people, for example, kept making money. So did the politicians. They were all just dandy. Depressions devastate the lower classes, not those on high.
People are desperate for jobs and workers’ rights are suffering. Wages and benefits are going into the dumper, and our corporate overlords are happy as hell.
It began with Reagan. The right was betting that an experienced snake oil salesman blowing out the right kind of horse hockey would woo and seduce the American people and make fools of them. They were right. Reagan, an idiot before the Alzheimer’s hit, proved to them that modern man could still be made foolish by high slogans bellowed under bright banners. Reagan followed stage directions and delivered his lines well, and that was all. He never had an original idea in his life or an ethic that wasn’t carefully calculated for public consumption.
“Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” His famous line written by someone else and fed to him in large print. It meant absolutely nothing, accomplished absolutely nothing except being a good dramatic turn. Stage craft. Of course Reagan, the well combed veteran of WWII Army films, was well-versed in propaganda.
And he started the modern resurgence of robber barons with his loosening of the reins of the corporations. Opening the gates so they had free shots at the sheep.
And so on. Until the momentum of piled gold became unstoppable. And it may well never be stopped, as Mr. Obama is discovering now.
The teeth of the watchdogs were pulled to the point that when crude oil gushed into the Gulf, investigators found that the government bureaucrats tasked with minding the drillers were also on BP’s payroll. The government of the people had been bought out from under us and Congress grew fatter. The idea of public service became an obscene joke as legislators courted droves of ardent lobbyists picking between bribes. Long ago Will Rogers said, “we have the best congress money can buy.” I don’t know if this was humorous then or not, but it’s certainly no giggles now.
Back when health reform was all the fury, I happened to wonder why the Man wouldn’t want healthy, happy workers. Then I began to wonder why I was being so stupid. Of course they don’t. They certainly don’t want them feeling secure. They want them frightened and trembling in the shadow of immense bills and payments due so they’ll be scrambling to work for that next paycheck, their only hope at holding destruction off for another month. And they’ve got it.
Why do you think our current wars are lasting so long? I think it’s because the corporations and the generals are just making too much money off of them to let them ever end. Corporations have their own armies calling them contractors rather than mercenaries, one of their PR people clued them in on that I suppose. Now this private warlording has become a massive global industry in its own right.
The hospital industry and the drug industry and the insurance industry and the AMA have all melded to form a great health care cabal preying on the ill and suffering. People with few choices left.
Good old Ladybird’s war on poverty has become the R peoples’ war on humanity. On the workers, the common man. All of us that don’t belong to the club. I think they’ve won.
Those few fortunates who have a job now aren’t spending much time fussing about working conditions or benefits. Desperate to support their families, they are desperate to keep their jobs while knowing thousands are desperate to take it if they slip. I don’t believe that lower class and middle class and such terms are relevant anymore. They are obsolete. There are only the R people and the desperate.
Rather than the Great Depression, the Great Desperation.