Well it sure would be a welcomed deviation from the norm. Better now than later. Brainwashed leftists are always muttering about unsustainability of the weather , energy and environment. While going out of their way to exacerbate the REAL unsustainable problem gaining momentum on us which is the budding unsustainability of retirements in America. For lack of a better label I'll call it "THE PENSION AND ENTITLEMENT WARS" It's coming sooner than you think.
Maybe it's time, maybe that's all that's left. A mostly true statement of course. And while I personally would certainly prefer a peaceful productive culture/society sometimes I wonder, all things considered, if it's even realistic anymore. As for me, should society and the rule of law completely break down. All I need is to stock up on water, food and ammo. I have little aversion to violence and no compunction about killing, assuming the circumstances call for it of course. As I see it it's people like that will be more likely to survive.
+1 I've know it was coming for a couple of years, long enough to load up on water, food, ammo and some heavy iron. I have enough silver maples to become some kind of half-assed warlord. I'm already the town GroÃbürger and live on a hilltop in the middle of town in a medieval looking home that should be very defensible as it is mostly stone walls over 1-foot thick. My business plan is to pay people to block our mountain highway pass and charge a toll. I should be able to support the entire town. I will likely also start a town farm and market. I have sufficient tools to start a blade sharpening business and maybe a barbershop. The democrats want to make threats? They want to abandon democracy? No problem but you are going to need a chicken to pass through our town. If I see an Obama bumper sticker its going to be 2 chickens to pass.
Well, it's about time! I wondered what it would take for Cairo-like demonstrations to break out on this side of the pond, and now, thanks to the folks in Madison, Wisconsin, we know the answer: it's the same as anywhere else , autocracy. The newly-elected Republican-cum-tea-party governor of that state mistook his election as a mandate to engage in another of the right-wing's battles with the middle class by targeting one of the Republicans' favorite bogeymen, labor unions, threatening to unilaterally terminate the rights of 175,000 state workers to collectively bargain (a right, by the way, the union movement originated inâ-you guessed itâ-Wisconsin). He even borrowed a page from the Middle Eastern despots' playbook by threatening to call out the National Guard to quell any protests. But, unlike the rest of the socio-economic class in this country who are under attack by conservatives but who have seemingly decided to shuffle off to the slaughter house in sheep-like obeisance to their oligarch, corporatist overlords, these feisty laborers have intoned Peter Finch's famous movie line, telling their bully governor that they're mad as hell and they're not going to take it any more. Now, how about the rest of us? Americans are notoriously complacent. Ever noticed how, in so many other countries, in a matter of hours after something unpopular happens, tens of thousands are marching in the street, with banners and signs already made decrying the latest outrage du jour? In this countryânot so much. Even though we have a rich history of public protest, dating from the original (and still the only authentic) tea party demonstrations during our colonial period, our impossibly high threshold for âtaking it to the streetsâ (hat tip: Doobie Brothers) has all but eliminated public demonstration as a legitimate form of protest. The last time we had mass demonstrations in this country of an equivalent magnitude to what we've seen in the Middle East was during the Vietnam war, and that was primarily because many of the demonstrators were at risk of becoming involuntary cannon fodder. There's nothing like being told you're going to carry a rifle in a far-flung rice paddy against your will to put you in protest mode. Sure, Americans have lost trillions in their pension and retirement accounts as a result of the crimes committed by Wall Street investment banks, for which no one will ever be held to account, and sure, millions of Americans have lost their homes as a result of fraudulent loans and foreclosures, for which no one will ever be held to account, and sure, the U.S. has even greater income inequality than many middle eastern countries (including Algeria and Egypt), members of the middle class: get over it. Pay your taxes, even if the super-rich pay far less, proportionately, than you do, and STFU. Write a blog, or maybe even an opinion column for your local alternative paper, but whatever you do, don't put your bodies on the line, en masse, to express your disaffection or to demand your grievances be addressed and remedied. That would be so third-world. Labor unions, of course, make a convenient target for the tea-and-no-sympathy crowd. It's much easier to blame public employee unions for the fiscal problems most states find themselves in than it is to take responsibility for policies that have caused those problems. In Wisconsin's case, this means the governor can bash unions as a scapegoat for a budget deficit that he himself caused by a series of corporate tax reductions he promoted immediately following his election. Republicans hate labor unions, almost as much as they hate people of color, not just because they're a check on corporate power the GOP worships so slavishly, but also because they (unions and people of color) are strong enclaves of Democratic electoral support. So, while it's perfectly OK for the Wisconsin governor to water himself at the trough of corporate power brokers, the Koch brothers (the same ones who've funded the whole tea party âmovementâ and who also paid to have counter-demonstrators bused to Madison), labor unions must be thwarted, at any cost. The anti-union mantra is a familiar one here in the South, where the majority of âright-to-workâ states are located. Unions are vilified here, perhaps as a remnant of a slavery-induced mentality that workers should be grateful, and even servile, to their employer/masters. Right here in River City the hostility towards public employee unions in particular was graphically displayed in the dustup that followed the garbage workers' failure to report for work during a particularly cold stretch of weather. And, other than WalMart, FedEx is perhaps the most successful corporation in the country when it comes to resisting unionization, so much so that it's managed to get traditionally pro-union Democrats to push its anti-union agenda in Congress. Maybe the demonstrations in Wisconsin are a function of the fact that, unlike the rest of the country, the demonstrators were already organized, and maybe the public employee unions in Wisconsin are the ones who are really promoting the âdon't tread on meâ ethos the tea party disingenuously mouths as a subterfuge for its real, pro-corporatist, agenda, but either way, we can all learn something from their resistance efforts (and, indeed, from the demonstrations in the Middle East that preceded them as well), namely that there's something to be said not only for being mad as hell and not wanting to take it anymore, but in storming the barricades to do something about it. http://www.memphisflyer.com/JacksonBaker/archives/2011/02/20/gadfly-aux-les-barricades-wisconsin
interesting that you hold the republicans responsible for this. me, i voted for obama who promised "change i could believe in" and was disappointed when he put the same crooks in charge that bush had. so lean further left if you want. one more sheep in the flock.
You've got me wrong. I too am disappointed with Obama as he moves further right to appease the radical right. I go further left because that's where the answers are. If Obama was going left we would be seeing indictments. I blame republicans because they are so quick to talk about personal accountability when it comes to the working man, and have little to say when corporate America skates free for their criminal actions. It's the deregulation that republicans promote that are at the root cause of this crisis. When has corporate America ever done the right thing unless they were made to do it? Labor law? No! Environmental? No! Safe work conditions? No! Left to their own devices they would have us all chained to a work station, laboring for slave wages, while turning every stream, river and lake into an open sewer.