Crossposted from WWL to Docudharma, Booman, OWL, Station Charon and Never In Our Names.
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Or:
A foray into when the UNHOLY TRINITY comes back to bite the most indoctrinated, shocked nation in which it has ever been unleashed right in the ass.
As I often am wont to do, I went back to source material when troubled by this * new economic crisis. (* Which of course is neither new, nor could not have easily been predicted by previous models)
I am re-reading “The Shock Doctrine”. I loathe bogging down into economics, but her work is accessible. Normally understanding economics is about as easy for me as swallowing a VW and passing it sorted into its component parts in bags.
Bill Maher had Naomi Klein on this week past. We catch him on the Sunday Morning rerun * religiously. (* She says with full intended irony, being of the same mind that religious people are idiots for the most part)
“They moved the disaster from Wall Street to Main Street…”
I’d almost change my orientation to do this woman she gets it so very well.
“This is socialism for the Rich”
No Shit.
Andrew Sullivan I wanted to bitch-slap. He said exactly what I predicted the neo-cons would say: “Its the poor peoples faults for taking on loans…”
Not the cunning bastards who tricked us into taking loans they swore wouldn’t bubble from 8% to 18%, as they now have. Not the speculators driving up prices on oil. Its the STUPID poor people.
I wouldn’t do him if he was the last diseased prick on Earth and I drank a gallon of Spanish Fly in a post-battery Earth and both my hands were cut off.
I digress. Lets get back to the Real Trinity.
Wanna fear a Godhead? Fear this one.
The free-market Trinity:
DEREGULATE.
CUT SOCIAL SPENDING.
Now, admittedly, I am no Einstein. That may come as a shock unto itself to those who, say, have never read me, or aren’t reading this, never heard of me or live on this planet. Heh.
I have to look back on my life wistfully, for those times when I just lived, worked, loved, played, and slept… being ordinary in an ordinary world where all things were just what they were. Was I stupider then? Perhaps. I could go all cliche about ignorance being bliss, but the fact of the matter is I was raised in a society that step by step intentionally trained me to be unquestioning. I was raised like the proverbial frog in a pot of cool water. We all were.
After the Great Depression and the following social reforms, they realized the slow boil wasn’t working anymore. People liked the Social Society better. The experiments in Chile were only the beginning. They needed shock at home.
Here is where I started to grow the tiniest of brains. Or perhaps my particular brand of American Stupidity and my age caused a malfunction in their plan. It backfired. I had just enough of the 60’s from a child’s eye view to be idealistic, without living through it enough to be disillusioned as many of my older compatriots have become.
Instead of becoming more complacent I became more enraged as they oppressed me more. I’m a bitch that way. I’m a kindergartner that way. I want my freedom, my privacy, my rights and no one is gonna be the “boss of me” and play Daddy to keep me safe by locking me in my room. Nuh-uh.
So instead of pacing the cage, I began to arm myself with information. I started small, joining a blog called POAC: Project for the Old American Century, a blog whose intent was to expose PNAC’s intent even before 9/11 and Katrina and Iraq created the perfect shit-storm of Shock in which to push the Trinity further down our throats.
I began to seek out information and answers with an almost compulsive fervor. I began to disseminate information too. Badly, yeah, but you’re reading it aren’t you? Heh.
I want to take a breath here before I complete my case by letting Naomi explain what Palin and this political climate looks like to her. Have a listen.
It almost makes Sullivan palatable, even knowing his detestable economic views.
Here’s what I think:
Palin is a last-ditch effort to bring people back to the fold of the trinity.
It has began to backfire, and not just with me. They KNOW it, they FEAR it.
As millions of Americans SEE what the result of unbridled greed and trickle-down manna stopping far short of their plates; we are collectively awakening. And we are none to happy about it.
Just as every Socialist/Communist model has failed, so has every “Free Market” failed.
Again:
PRIVATIZE. DEREGULATE.
CUT SOCIAL SPENDING.
Having seen what the “Market” does and how very unstable it is, do you think any borderline sane American now thinks that PRIVATIZING Social Security is a good idea?
BZZZZZZZZZZ! Wrong!
They get its a gamble, they get they can LOSE big time.
Do you think, for a New York minute, that people do not see RECORD PROFITS of Big Oil every time they pump? Do you think they want the market more UNREGULATED as they watch their loans foreclose? Do they want their jobs overseas as UNREGULATED businesses CEO’s get huge salaries and enormous bonuses while they are being laid off; being paid hugely for running companies into the ground and we the taxpayers bail them out and pay that salary as we starve?
BZZZZZZZZZZ! Wrong!
Do you think Americans are shocked enough by these things to want to CUT SOCIAL SPENDING, as more and more disasters affecting average people go unaddressed? The failures of response from our government in Katrina, even at the Towers is still fresh in people’s minds. The money being spent in Iraq, while our infrastructure crumbles is readily apparent to even the dimmest shmoe.
More people have no health insurance than ever before in recent history. Recent history enough, that we remember when we had it. (Remember Unions? But that’s another rant) Do they think we aren’t GETTING this?
BZZZZZZZZZZ! Wrong!
I used to think and * say often, (* & probably will say again. I’m a contrary wench) that Americans are Stupid.
I changed my mind overnight. Literally.
Sure, they have proven repeated shocks create a clean slate in which to imprint your own message, ideology or desires.
No argument there. How the American People have reacted thus far validates it too.
HOWEVER (and this is a huge HOWEVER) history and the templates of failure where this Trinity has been installed before has proven both:
A: PRIVATIZATION, DEREGULATION AND CUTS TO SOCIAL SPENDING ALWAYS END UP IN CRITICAL EXTREME FAILURE. DEPRESSIONS, UTTER COLLAPSES OF THE SYSTEM.
B: PEOPLE REVOLT.
Sure, it takes much to make people revolt in the styles of the Great Rebellions and Revolutions of the past.
It may not be the overthrow and total reformation that is needed.
But I will say, sometimes one too many shocks will make you tear the bars of your cage and tear out the throats of your oppressors. Humans are such unpredictable test subjects.
Even dumbasses like me can see it. Even dumbasses like my neighbors, my friends, my friends dogs and the fleas on my friends’ dogs see it too.
This shit isn’t working.
This shit pisses us off.
Bailing them out (which we will, unfortunately) is a tipping point. When the news spreads, as it is… and people are hurting…
People aren’t too big on the Fiddle/Burn thing, nor the men who enable it.
People will demand accountability.
People will see the Demon Trinity for what Hell it has wrought upon them.
People will want Regulation, Nationalization and more Social Spending.
And should we not get it?
So I say?
Shock This, Big Brother.
Bring it On.
You trained us to be stupid. And?
We may be stupid, but you enlightened us.
One. Shock. At. A. Time.
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