Responding, in the NY TImes, to a Tom Friedman article on America’s decline, Adam Ash of New Haven, CT hits the nail on the head:
“The changes that Tom Friedman mentions aren’t going to happen. Nor will the most necessary change of all — a massive public works program that could employ millions to build and repair our infrastructure (smart grid, high-speed rail, broadband, big tax breaks to green-energy start-ups and folks who green-energize their homes, etc),
The corporate stranglehold over the nation’s future will continue — the fat cats of Wall Street, Big Oil, Big Agribusiness, Big Pharma, Big-Bonus-and-Golden-Parachute CEOs, the Big Military Industrial Complex. We on Main Street will remain the willing Stockholm Syndrome dupes of the Washington-Wall Street-Pentagon Axis of Predatory Fraudsters.
Let’s face it, this is what America is. This is what America has become. This is what America will be. There will be no Poor People’s Movement. No Pitchfork Uprising. No massive Middle-Class March. No national demand for the reining in of our plutocrats. No nationwide insistence on holding them accountable for ripping us off, legally and illegally. The revolution will not be televised because the revolution will never happen, One cannot get a nation of obese potatoes off the couch and into the streets. They’re happier vegetating on their behinds in front of the TV machine’s 24/7 propaganda.
It doesn’t matter which political party is in power: the fleecing of regular folk by our morally blind elites will continue. Our elites enter into their bubble at our Ivy League universities, and they never exit this bubble. They don’t have to. Life is good in their bubble. Outside the bubble, Main Street dreams turn into Pain Street ashes.
The Tea Party folks — our latest populist movement — are complaining about big spending. They are right to do so. But here’s the weird thing. While they may vent about the big spending on social services (healthcare, Medicare, and Social Security, which is solvent, BTW), there’s not a single peep out of them about our Godzilla-sized military spending.
America is looking more and more like Rome under Nero. And what do the Tea Party people do about this trend? While we’re burning and our elites are fiddling, they’re complaining about the quality of the firewood.
The decline of America will only be arrested if the greed of our elites consumes all reason, and renders our entire middle class totally desperate or jobless. Will our elites be that dumb? Possibly. Meanwhile, see you at the next financial meltdown. And get used to it — meltdowns have been, and will continue to be, our traditional way of life.”
Here in Van Nuys 