The gulf between the wealthiest citizens and the middle/working class is growing by leaps and bounds, especially so during the past three decades. The richest grow geometrically richer, more powerful, more convinced of their entitlement, less interested in and concerned about those beneath them. Intellectually, the rich know that they would do better in the long run -- making even more money -- if the poor and middle class had decent-paying jobs, that enabled them to buy more products and thus generate demand in a hurting economy
But that's the long run. These guys tend not to consider the long run. (Dubya's solipsistic answer to the question of what he thought his legacy would be: "I'll be dead.") The only thing that seems to matter to them is the short-term Bottom Line. How much profit did I make this month? this quarter?
A key tipping point for this decades-long class warfare of the rich vs. the working class can be found in President Reagan's decision to break the air traffic controllers' union when it initiated a strike in 1981. Reagan's maneuver was an audacious gamble to head backwards in terms of economic and social justice, and it paid off. The weak, disorganized Left at the time was unable to mount a concerted, effective campaign against Reagan's union-busting move, and the public didn't seem to care. The lesson was learned: going backwards works.
Compare those "sounds of silence" in America then and now with how citizens in other countries are reacting to the draconian "austerity" policies in Europe. In Spain and Greece and France and Belgium and Ireland, citizens in great numbers appear to understand that the "austerity" measures being promulgated are aimed to hit the lower and middle classes while the corporate masters are permitted to continue raking in their enormous profits and bonuses. These class-war realizations have led to millions of European protesters in the streets, some of them in their anger lashing out against the banks, politicians and police.
But in America, even as the American Dream is vanishing for their children right before their eyes, those in the shrinking middle class remain in a kind of social narcolepsy while even two-job families are having trouble keeping their heads above water. The conservative-oriented mass-media propaganda machine has done its job well, and the streets are silent. The distortions and lies of the extreme Republicans and their media enablers have led millions of shell-shocked middle-class citizens -- whose incomes have remained essentially static for nearly 30 years -- to vote time and time again against their own financial interests. All this while social-conservative leaders encourage these frustrated Americans to focus their anger and resentments on homosexuals, blacks and browns, immigrants, Muslims, the Other, et al.
3. THE SHOCK DOCTRINE
What's going on right now in America and around the globe is in perfect harmony with what Naomi Klein wrote about in her groundbreaking 2008 book ##"The Shock Doctrine: Disaster Capitalism." (http://www.crisispapers.org/essays8w/klein.htm )
Here's a quick summary of her central point: The corporate masters can't always act the way they really want to in re-ordering society because such impediments as democracy and government regulations get in their way. But a societal cataclysm -- whether arranged by the elites or their merely taking advantage of these major social traumas -- these elites can move much faster, often devoid of governmental scrutiny, to sweep the slate clean and start from scratch building an infrastructure and economy that favors their ambitions and profit margins.
Recent examples: the U.S. after 9/11, the bombing and occupation of Iraq in 2003, the South Asia tsunami in 2004, and the post-Katrina rebuilding along the Louisiana and Mississippi coasts in 2005. When such traumatic events occur, creating fear and confusion in the public, all kinds of zoning and inspection and bidding rules are waived. Often communities on prime real estate are relocated by governmental edict; fishing villages are wiped out, but rather than rebuilding them, highrise tourist hotels are constructed. The massive reconstruction work is handled, surprise!, by huge corporate entities like Bechtel and Halliburton, with security by Blackwater.
Needless to say, those corporations, in ideological league with Republican policies, then scratch the backs of the GOP by providing them with constant, massive campaign donations. It's a closed loop, aiding everyone inside it, but leaving millions outside having to deal with the negative ramifications of the shock-doctrine decisions.
But that's "old history," we are told. That kind of thing surely doesn't happen today. Right!
As Bush exited the White House, he handed Obama a plate piled high with crises and catastrophes, most of them stemming from the Republican aversion to governmental oversight of corporate power. No successor could have handled that situation without paying a hefty political price. Bush bailed out the financial ("too big to be permitted to fail") giants; Obama easily slipped into the same policy, and appointed to high positions the same advisors who were responsible for the crash (Geithner, Bernacke, Summers, et al.). It was "shock-doctrine" time: opportunities for the wealthy and powerful to become more wealthy and powerful.
With the economic depression (as was the case later with the huge BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico), the result was to harm ordinary citizens while building up corporate power and profits. The Wall Street financial houses, and other large corporations that were bailed out with public funds, are once again doing pretty much what they were doing prior to the collapse, and have amassed humungous amounts of cash. Along with the health insurers and Big Pharma, the corporate giants have figured out ways to work around the various piddling reform bills that were passed, etc. And ordinary citizens? Twenty million can't find employment! We're witnessing the creation of a permanent, badly trained underclass, and there still is no concerted emergency effort to focus on job-creation, not even by the supposedly worker-friendly Obama and the Democrats.
4. TYPICAL POLITICIAN LOST IN THE BELTWAY
Which brings us to the President. Obama suggested that he wanted to be a "transformational" president, taking on the powers that be in the creation of a new, more equitable society. He knew the right things to say to generate massive support, and he may even have believed a lot of what he was promising. (I do believe that much of his heart is in the right place.) But once he arrived in the White House, he reverted to his default position: a typical centrist, triangulating, "pragmatic" politician, largely in lockstep with the corporatist agenda.
True, the Republicans made it impossible for him to get much meaningful reform passed. Devoid of a positive program to offer, their only goal has been to destroy his presidency and return themselves to power . Obama rarely seemed willing to fight for any of his initiatives. He could have, like FDR, taken on his enemies openly and consistently, and with his bully pulpit and passionate momentum raised a political army behind him. But, as with Bill Clinton's presidency, too often, Obama seems so hungry for any little reform he can call a "victory" that he compromises before any battle has been joined, or else offers some compromise for free without using it for political leverage in negotiations.
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