Here's a new sign. The cover story of TIME magazine is called "The Great Retirement Ripoff," and one of its subcaptions on the cover says, "How corporations are picking people's pockets-- with the help of Congress."
This is a most encouraging development, because it has a dimension that is lacking in the others. The falling poll numbers, as I have argued in my piece "Not Reassured Yet," seem to reflect a repudation of the manifest failures of the regime: the war-gone-bad, the debacle after Katrina, the price of gasoline going up while wages go nowhere. And the "abandonment watch" is basically a case of rats leaving a sinking ship.
But this TIME magazine cover story is a different matter. It begins to get to the heart of the corruption and ruthless indifference to justice that have permeated this regime. Not only on the cover, but also within the piece itself, one might get the impression that one was reading not the fruit of Henry Luce's publishing empire, but perhaps the PROGRESSIVE or the RAMPARTS radical mag of old.
Finally, the American people may be starting to get the word from the mainstream media about the spirit of insatiable greed, unmitigated by any concern for justice, that has been governing America during this period.
One might ask, however, where were these reports before? Where was TIME magazine while these laws were being passed? Where were these 'Bush abandonment' people, like Colin Powell's deputy-- Lawrence Wilkerson, now so eloquent in describing the fractured decision-making process in the Bush inner sanctum-- when his testimony might have influenced the 2004 election? Better late than never, but much better on time than late.
Perhaps the United States is heading toward its own STONES FROM THE RIVER era. An era of false heroes and self-serving memory. Not altogether noble. But better that than the era that we've been living in.