The People are Not Happy

It did not start on Wall Street, or in Madison, Wisconsin, in Libya, Egypt, Greece, Italy, Syria, Chile or London. It did not start with the Tea Party protests. It did not even start with the massive crowds Barack Obama attracted in the United States and around the world when he campaigned for the U. S. presidency on a platform of "change you can believe in."

For years the G-8 summits have been picketed and protested by large, committed groups of opponents to the Plutocracy that decides the economic fate of the globe.

When the U. S. declared war on Iraq, millions of protesters demonstrated in cities across the globe, including the U. S. itself. Of course the mainstream media downplayed or ignored them, so perhaps they did not really happen at all? I guess THEY were not part of the "coalition of the willing."

What is significant is that the unrest is increasing; the momentum is growing; the demonstrations are now stretching from India to Greece, from Chile to London, from New York City to Portland, Oregon.

Throughout history the rich and powerful have oppressed the poor and weak. And throughout history, when the pendulum swung too far in favor of the rich and powerful and the "small people" were ground down to the point where they had nothing left to lose, societies lost their glue and revolutions occurred.

Intelligent billionaires like Warren Buffet see the danger and attempt to avert it. But the mindless nature of most corporate empires precludes such perception. Our society has reached the tipping point. I do not believe we have yet crossed the point of no return. But the gathering storm no longer can be denied.

Barach Obama was elected because he offered the "hope" of "change." That change has eluded us. The man who received the Nobel Peace Prize and went on to wage ever greater wars, is not, perhaps, the vessel of change we thought we elected.  His administration has coddled the financial industry that mindlessly dropped us into economic disaster, insisted government must pick up the tab, and then, by successfully resisting all attempts of that same government to reform it, ended up more powerful than the governments (read Great Britain, Germany and France (i.e. the European Union) and the United States) that rescued it from disintegration in the vain hope that action would also rescue their economies (read FAIL to that!).

Make no mistake. The Old Regime will not "go quietly into that good night." It will adopt the measures of Syria and Libya. It will use the same subterfuge the Egyptian military did to foil the true advocates of change by sacrificing its figurehead. Non violent demonstrators will be corralled, beaten, maced and tear gassed. Predator drones, already used on innocent bystanders in foreign countries, will be deployed on native soil. Homeland Security will track down dangerously adept leaders and their naive supporters alike.

The best case scenario would be a pragmatic awakening in Washington. A coming together to solve our terribly urgent problems. Our leaders might already be too deeply in thrall to their corporate overlords to attempt this.

The creation of a viable third party might avert the inevitable meltdown of our democracy. But far too many roadblocks already are in place to make this outcome at all likely.

Tough times a coming.