Sooner or later a critical mass of the American public is going to understand this reality - and, when it does...
It's important to bear in mind that the wealth distribution this video demonstrates depicts anything but a healthy society. This is a society that does not serve the population but actually preys on the majority. It's a society facing severe political and economic tyranny. So many Americans have been indoctrinated to recoil compulsively at anything they perceive to be socialism that the significance of balance between labour and capital has been purged from their consciousness.
Hanging the rich could be a good start. The threat might help concentrate their minds on the concerns of the poor.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90RzlUjE_Lo
That's a good clip. Thanks.
ReplyDeleteI thnk the revolution will be short sharp and fail dismally. The oligarchs are very very smart. They are not going to be taken by surprise. They are incredibly well armed. Its us and them and we are them.
ReplyDeleteAmericans will tell you that socialism does not work and will give you the example of Russia and China. Will this disparity ever change? I have my serious doubts. Greed and power seem to prevail. Despite this democracy baloney general public have very little power. Elections are mostly bought. Obama was a great hope for Americans. He has done very little to reduce the disparity between the rich and the poor. Actually some corporation are a lot richer than they were before 2008. Obama bailed out banks and big businesses – corporate welfare.
ReplyDeleteI can't predict whether the revolution will succeed or fail. But I can predict that -- when it comes -- all that pent up anger will make it very, very nasty.
ReplyDeleteBut ultimately, Steve, the United States cannot continue as a consumer economy. It will have to descend into some other sort of organization, a plutocracy at best, a modern form of feudalism at worst. Democracy cannot function in such an imbalance of capital over labour. Nations can only ignore the social compact for so long.
ReplyDeleteLD, Americans have never been brought to distinguish political models from economic systems. Those of my own vintage were brought up to perceive democracy and capitalism as two sides of the same coin. That, of course, was hogwash but it did illustrate how readily an entire society could be indoctrinated. Yet we believed we lived in enlightened times, an Age of Reason. Not so much.
Today, however, China teaches us that capitalism can get along just fine in a totalitarian state. Democracy can in fact present obstacles to free market capitalism that authoritarian states sweep aside.
Americans have been fed the idea that the very form of government that might actually serve their interests is a godless entity that would trample on their rights and take their guns.
When I was a kid I used to wonder at how the Japanese and German people were able to believe the crap their governments fed them. I never imagined I would see that same contagion flourish in democracies. And it is every bit as malignant to our societies as it was to pre-war Germans and Japanese.
That's quite correct, Owen. It's the distinction between a democratic reformation and a social revolution.
ReplyDeleteOne can be moderated, invoking shared experience and values. The other, freed from the anchor of civility can be unpredictable and brutal.
The video is great! It ought to be shown in all schools so kids know what kind of a world they are going out into. Showing it on t.v. might be a good idea also. Many won't believe it, but people ought to know. Its a great teaching tool.
ReplyDeleteCanadians should not sit around and think things are any different here in Canada.
The fact is, e.a.f., that we're trending in the same direction as the U.S. and it's unlikely we'll pull out of our dive until America does.
ReplyDeleteThose of us who remember the vibrant, robust middle class that North America enjoyed from the 50s into the early 80s have no doubt about the malignant change Reagan and his successors ushered in.