Waiting For The People

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Like a broken record, the inevitable last word in interviews lately comes down to the same conclusion, the people are getting screwed and sooner or later they’re going to rise up and throw the bums out.  Time and time again I hear from seasoned observers and analysts that we have to do an end run around our national politics because both parties are beholden to big money, with the Republicans a wholly owned subsidiary of Corporate America and the Democrats Corporate Lite.

The sad refrain that emerges, without much conviction I might add, is that the people have to organize because our politics and media have been captured and we have to find a way around the corrupt and broken system to reclaim our democracy.  Easier said that done, but there is little evidence that we are even anywhere near that critical mass of a breaking point that could trigger a populist uprising.

Indeed the highest court is continuing to push the country towards a complete capture of our politics by corporations and oligarchs.  The Supreme Court’s recent striking down of the Arizona public campaign financing law is yet another victory for the absurd notion that money is speech.  And while the law of the land is taking us back to the Gilded Age, the Republicans and the media are locking up our public discourse, foisting a suicidal compact on the beleaguered American middle class.

Although it makes no economic sense to cut spending during a recession, the very people facing economic extinction are swallowing the deficit hoax, hook, line and sinker.  Instead of focusing on their own household debt crisis and how that got into the mess and who led them into the trap, Americans are distracted by the abstraction of a short and long-term deficit crisis that is a total lie.

We are a rich country with plenty of money with no end of people around the world eager to loan us money presumably with the expectation of getting paid back.  So why are the American people drinking the Kool Aid ladled out by the same people who ripped them off with the housing crisis that ended up with Main Street getting stiffed with Wall Street’s bill? 

Why do the guileless believe the same people who are gouging them now at the gas pump and in the supermarket, as the price of basic staples go through the roof?

If the Republican get their way and throttle Obama’s anemic economic recovery in its cradle, they might well win the 2012 elections, but the middle class voters who elected the Republicans will be signing their own death certificates.  We are already close to a plantation economy as Warren Buffet has warned us.  And it won’t take much to squeeze that last measure of income from the debt-burdened wage slaves to tip them into permanent penury.

America’s middle class have not seen a pay raise since the 1970’s, they pay more in taxes than the rich and corporation, they have been living of credit to maintain a semblance of a standard of living the American dream promises, they’ve been encouraged to borrow against what they already have on credit, and now their every last cent is being extracted as they are forced to pay more to drive to work and put food on the table.

With no political leaders to turn to, and a media that continues to distract us with fantasy, delusion and disinformation, what and where do we turn to?  History’s dark verdict would indicate a shift to the right as we could easily slide into an American brand of corporate/religious fascism.  On the other hand during the last Gilded Age there was a huge left wing populist movement of rural and urban poor united around religion against the oligarchs.  But the Christian right has effectively neutralized the resurrection of that possibility and the Christian left has yet to get off the ground.

Where does that leave us? Living in hope, with some on the left believing that things have to get worse as you give the capitalists enough rope to hang themselves with.  The opposite seems to be true, with enough rope they can tie us down like helpless slaves.  The other hope is vested in the Constitution that is designed to enable a revolutionary flush of malignant power whenever a government becomes destructive of the ends of our founding father’s dreams.

The final hope is to trust in the people and that appears to be our best bet.  Although as was once said when we needed a new government but the people elected the same old one, “maybe we need a new people”.