The Very Depressing Truth
I found this article by "Partisan Hack" at Daily Kos. I want to quote a couple of lengthy segments from it, because it encapsulates much of what I have been saying on this blog, and for many years before. When I first began telling this story, most everyone thought I was crazy, but now, finally, some others are starting to see the ugly truth. Is it too late? Maybe it is. I think we are going to find out soon. Anyway, here goes:
I agree completely with every word of this. Unfortunately, it is beyond the capacity of most people in this country, bombarded as they are from birth with fairy tales about how we are the only perfect nation in history, to see the peril swirling up around them. In that lies the real danger that the United States has already virtually lost the battle to survive as a free country, and that we are about to be taught a very cruel lesson in how the most civilized country in the West, Germany, could fall into barbarism beyond anything the world had ever seen.
And I ask you to remember, if you are tempted to comfort yourselves with the notion that Hitler was eventually defeated, at a cost of 50 million lives, that the new fuhrers of our country will have something Hitler never had: a thousand nuclear weapons.
"...we are in the middle of what Tea Party advocates seem to hope is nothing less than the destruction of The United States of America itself...The Tea Party draws on white supremacist sentiment that has been a part of U.S. history since its beginnings, augmenting it with pro-Nazi sentiments fueled by the so-called Fellowship Foundation of "key men" (and, sometimes, women) starting in the mid-20th century. Their purpose is completely clear; split the U.S. so that it can be destroyed, and replaced with a far right police state benefiting a few elites.
As with the rise of Hitler during Germany's Weimar Republic, the Tea Party uses economic and social chaos to fuel its rise. It undermines faith in democratic processes at every turn, so that people will favor "strong man" governments - governments that will benefit the "key men" first and foremost and further the redistribution of wealth from average people to the elites. The Nazis of Weimar Germany also used resentment against Europe and moderate Germans for the perceived unfairness of war reparation payments after World War I to fuel nationalism, much in the same way that the Tea Party fuels resentment against the fall of the "Southern Cause" with its encouragement of Confederate flag-waving and the use of the proxy Gadsden Flag from South Carolina's troops in the War of Independence.
What we are engaged in is not an economic fight, or even a political fight. What we're engaged in is in fact a fight for the last chance for a democracy in the United States for the foreseeable future. The billionaire lords of the Tea Party. like the industrialists backing Hitler, want to wage economic and military war on anyone who might interfere with their accretion of wealth, both in this nation and beyond...Sadly, I don't think that the U.S. public really gets this - or really gets that they are in a battle where they are still the majority against this hardened and fantasy-based group of extremists. Hitler rose to power in part because everyday people became exhausted, beaten down by harsh economic realities, a beating aided and abetted by a flaccid and complacent media. So it is again today. Little has been learned in a century, unfortunately, it would seem."
I agree completely with every word of this. Unfortunately, it is beyond the capacity of most people in this country, bombarded as they are from birth with fairy tales about how we are the only perfect nation in history, to see the peril swirling up around them. In that lies the real danger that the United States has already virtually lost the battle to survive as a free country, and that we are about to be taught a very cruel lesson in how the most civilized country in the West, Germany, could fall into barbarism beyond anything the world had ever seen.
And I ask you to remember, if you are tempted to comfort yourselves with the notion that Hitler was eventually defeated, at a cost of 50 million lives, that the new fuhrers of our country will have something Hitler never had: a thousand nuclear weapons.
Comments
Consider this consequence of a possible, now probable, default. In order to protect what little remains of the "full faith and credit" of the United States government, and in order to better manage interest rate volatilities as a result, the Treasury will be forced to prioritize a bucketful of bad choices.
Debt owed to the government of China is 6% of the national debt; whereas debt owed to the Social Security Administration is well over than 40%. What is a likely scenario?
Governments and bondholders will likely be paid in order to stabilize interest rates, equity markets and credit exchanges, and prevent the currency from going into free fall. Social Security will end up savaged.
For decades, extreme right-wingers of the Gilded Age mindset have regarded Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Food Stamps, environmental regulations, and food safety inspections as forms of “commie-socialism.” A badly compromised and under-funded social safety net will then become an easy target for dismantling.
This is tantamount to a frontal assault against the social safety net - not by democratic means - but by extortion and coup d'etat.