Just a few days ago, I got a call from a friend of mine - I'll refer to him as "Tony" in the interests of his privacy. Now, for most of the time I've known Tony, he's never really been into politics; in fact, that's a massive understatement - he's avoided politics the way an 8-year old avoids broccoli, and he's always ridiculed me for caring about it. "Why would you pay attention to that shit?" he would ask, "They're all a bunch of clowns. They don't care what you think unless you can write them a fat check. I don't want any of them to get my vote."
So, it was quite surprising to me when Tony's Facebook status read "Tony is voting for Obama" last November - after all, the guy never voted before in his life. I sent him a message chiding him about it, asking him why he was going to start wasting his time voting. His response mildly shocked me:
*Warning: contains significant profanity. Further reading not recommended for small children, the elderly, the easily offended, or those suffering from severe Athlete's Foot.*
Yeah, yeah. Look, you were right man. I still think these guys are all corrupt, lying bastards, but I don't know. I get the feeling that we're in a lot of trouble. We're all told to chant "USA #1" until we're blue in the face, but that's not just a given. We have to earn it. It takes work, like anything else. I get the feeling that we're becoming like a star athlete who's won the gold so many times that he thinks he can sit back, play video games, get fat on junk food, and then go win the championship automatically. I don't think people realize that we're not invincible. The Roman Empire was the superpower for centuries, and then one day it was gone. Finished. Fade to black. The same thing can happen to America. People want to deny that, but it's true. I don't know if this song-and-dance man Obama will be any better, but I do know I don't want that crazy old loon and his fucktarded MILF sidekick running the show. Although I would totally bone her, but only if she promised not to talk. Actually, even if she tried to talk I would. Seriously though, I got kids now, and I have to think about these things. I can't believe I'm saying this, but I feel bad I was so apathetic for so long. You were right to give me shit about this stuff. I fucking hate those fucks in DC more than anything, but it really does matter. Anyways, I gotta get back to work. Hopefully your boy Barry Hussein won't be as bad as that fuckwit George Shrub. Cheers brother.
I sent a brief reply with the standard "good for you" BS, and that was that. Shortly after the election, I was out of the country for work until this summer, so I didn't hear from him for a while. And then he called last week.
I answered, and as usual, Tony cut right to the chase (not recorded, but I remember pretty vividly):
Tony: "So, what do you think about this Obama character now?"
New Deal Dem: "I'm not thrilled, but I still would have voted the same way..."
Tony: "A lot of fucking good it would have done! I was right all along, these bastards are all the same. They're still selling us down the river. They're fucking selling my family down the river! And for what? To keep some fucking white-shoe stock brokers in their Armani suits and sports cars! Hope and change my ass! How about change for a penny - do they make anything that low?"
New Deal Dem: "I don't think so, man."
Tony: "I'm right, aren't I? I mean, I watch these idiots on TV, and all they talk about is fucking Michael Jackson, Big 12 football... it's just bullshit, bullshit, and more bullshit. 'The weather is partly cloudy. Now over to Jane for the bullshit report.'"
New Deal Dem: "I hear you..."
Tony (continuing rant): "'Thanks Steve, well folks, there was plenty of bullshit going on in the world today. At a Starbucks in Bullshitville, California, Rhianna's nipples were visible for the 80th time...' Who gives a fuck about Rhianna's nipples?! The bitch can't even sing! Here's some breaking news for you: "today, wages fell 25% for people who work for a living, while Wall Street leeches recorded record bonuses!" That's what's really going on. We're being robbed in broad daylight."
New Deal Dem: "I agree completely."
Tony: "And this fucking Obama administration, what the hell are they doing about it? They're giving them more money! More money for the fucking parasites! Oh but you - you've got to sacrifice. You've got to do without so that some Goldman Sachs criminal can buy a new house in the Hamptons. Incredible! If Thomas Jefferson and George Washington were still around, they'd fucking march into the capital and string their asses up! All of them! I don't give a damn if they want to throw me in jail - can you hear me, CIA? - THEY SHOULD ALL BE STRUNG UP!"
New Deal Dem: "Well..."
Tony: "Oh come on, man - don't give that 'well.' You know I'm right. You fucking know it. When was the last time people with all the power just gave it up? Never. Every time they fuck up, they're just emboldened to fuck up more epically next time. Just look at this Larry Summers dipshit. That fat fuck. What the hell has he EVER been right about? Nothing. These people fail upwards."
New Deal Dem: "So, do you think we should bust out the pitchforks and march on Wall Street and Washington?"
Tony: "Fuck yeah! THROW THEIR ASSES OUT! My neighbor down the street is being foreclosed on. They're laying people off at work. Oh yeah, and the roads and infrastructure are still falling apart. This country's going completely to shit. We need to get our country back."
New Deal Dem: "Oh come one man, you know you just hate Obama because he's black!" [Note - Tony is biracial, or as he describes himself, "a white son-of-bitch and a black son-of-bastard"]
Tony: "Very funny. But no, I don't hate Obama. Not as a person anyways, I'm sure he's nice guy. Or maybe not. It doesn't really matter. He doesn't have any power, he's just a puppet. The whole system is a cesspool. Anyone who thinks Wall Street isn't running the show is delusional. What is it, like $80 for the bankers for every $1 they throw to real people? Why don't they just come to my house and take shit on my doorstep! That's about as good as some $600 'stimulus' check. $600. Can you believe this shit?! After they've robbed how many trillions? And then they give me $600?! The fucking nerve!"
New Deal Dem: "Well, yeah. It's the new feudalism, man! The banksters and their puppets gorge themselves, and then act all charitable with their tax rebates. They expect the peasants to be thankful for the scraps, ya know. I'm totally with you - $600? After you've stolen trillions, you try to give me $600 back?! And then expect me to reelect you? For what? For stealing my wallet, but leaving me the Andy Jackson I have in my pocket? Get the fuck out of here with your $600! How fucking dare you! Why don't you just say 'let eat cake?'"
Tony: "Yeah."
New Deal Dem: "Yeah."
Tony: "So what happens now? Do we just wait until the next election to vote in some other douchebag who will be exactly the same?"
New Deal Dem: "Or worse."
Tony: "Or worse?"
New Deal Dem: "I don't know... I don't know if we're going to make it passed the midterms - you know, next year."
Tony: "What do you mean?"
New Deal Dem: "Well, for one thing, the world is bankrupt. The financial system is like $2 quadrillion in debt. It can't be sustained. The federal government and almost all the state governments are broke. The level of borrowing by the feds can't be sustained either. The Federal Reserve is buying lots of treasury bonds, but if they keep doing that, they're going to destroy the currency... the bottom line is that we have to rebuild the industrial base and go back to producing things again. But that's the opposite of what they're doing - they're basically looting the real economy to save this enormous mass of entirely fictitious speculative paper."
Tony: "Yeah, I gathered that - not that the media bullshitters will tell you. That's freaking nuts."
New Deal Dem: "Yeah, it is. It's clinical insanity, really. It's the same sort of insanity that prevailed in the Soviet Union before it collapsed. They tried to save 'the system' while ignoring the needs of the public. 'Sorry buddy, you've got sacrifice. We've got to save THE SYSTEM.' Well, just why exactly does 'the system' exist, if it's not serving the people?"
Tony: "It didn't work out too well."
New Deal Dem: "No, it didn't. The people got fed up with it and the incremental reforms. There's that sort of sentiment building up right now. People have had it. Like in the USSR, it's not even that they won't take it anymore, it's that they can't take it anymore. The powers that be tried their best to call things down, but it didn't work. In fact, it had the opposite effect: everyone knew they were full of it."
Tony: "Everybody knows."
New Deal Dem: "What do you mean?"
Tony: "I mean everybody knows. What we're talking about here. Everybody knows. Americans will put up with a lot of shit, but not an infinite amount. Everybody knows that the media lies. Everybody knows that the bankers robbed the government. Everybody knows that we're going to have to pay for their bad bets, no matter what these talking heads say. Everybody knows that the elected officials don't give a damn about them. Everybody knows that the game is rigged. Everybody knows that the economy's not getting better. Everybody knows that their kids don't have a future right now. Everybody knows."
New Deal Dem: "You think so?"
Tony: "I know it. Maybe not all of these rich white people in the suburbs, but they're clueless anyways. In my neighborhood, everybody knows. They may not know all the details, but they know. Everybody does."
It was at this point that it hit me - it's different this time. Here's one of my most laid-back, care-free, easy-going friends, talking as if he's ready to storm the Capitol building. I knew exactly what he meant, and exactly how he felt, because I'd seen the same thing before.
As I alluded to in the conversation, I was in the Soviet Union before it all blew apart, and there was exactly the same attitude - everybody knew that the public officials were corrupt, and only interested in preserving their own power. Everybody knew that the media was lying to them. Everybody knew that the standard of living was declining, despite what the rosy official figures said. Everybody knew that the economy was collapsing. Everybody knew that their kids had no future. I can't even really describe it, other than to say that everybody knew.
And everybody knows now. In the past, when it at least appeared that enough people were doing well, it was easy to ignore the corruption of corporations, the collapse of our industries, the indifference of elected officials. When anyone could get a platinum card, it was easy, or at least easier, to ignore the decline in real wages. And when you could at least get a decent job after graduating college, it was easy to ignore all of the people falling behind.
But that's done now. Now the large corporations are so dependent on ill-gotten gains that they have to resort to highway robbery. Now our infrastructure is so run down that it's literally falling apart. Now you can't get a credit card to buy groceries if you're unemployed, and you can't get a student loan for college - much less have any assurances of finding decent employment.
I don't know what's going to happen precisely, but I do know this: that which can't go on, won't go on. A rapidly increasing gap between rich and poor can't go on. Public support for a supposedly progressive government which values Wall Street profits over the well-being of the citizens can't go on. The wielding of immense national power funded by borrowing from poor nations can't go on. The list of things in American society which simply cannot continue on could fill volumes.
We cannot know with certainty what will happen going forward, but there are so many social, political, and economic pressures building that something must blow. In my view, the present environment in the United States looks ripe for some sort of revolution. How will that begin? What form will it take? Hard to say, but history can be of some guidance.
Take the example of the collapse of the GDR (East Germany): it began with a relatively trivial matter, the dismantling of Hungarian border barricades that sparked the powder-keg of public resentment that toppled the Berlin Wall. In France circa 1789, it was the king's firing of his finance minister after he suggested that the royalty restrict their opulent lifestyle. All things considered, these official transgressions were quite minor, but in both cases, they were the straw that broke the camel's back. People just stood up en masse and said: "Enough! Enough of this shit! This is one thing too many! We're not going to go on living like this! We don't have to, and we won't! We're fucking sick of this shit, and we're not going to take it anymore!"
At some point here as well, it's going to become one nudge, one poke, one firing, one incident of police brutality, one regressive tax, one plant shutdown, one bankster bonus, or one insult too many, and when that happens, you'll see an explosion of public outrage that only appeared to be dormant. The righteous outrage of what legendary Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto called "a sleeping giant" - the American public - will boil over, and when it does, those in positions of power will be impotent to even contain it. We saw the beginnings of this at the town hall meetings.
It's not about Obama or Bush, nor the Democrats, nor the Republicans, nor Wall Street per se. It's about the system - the rotten, slimy, corrupt system. The system which has failed, and is failing in rapidly increasing numbers, the majority of the American people.
Maybe it will be the second leg of the financial crisis, whenever that hits. Maybe it will be some sort of labor dispute. Maybe it will be the collapse of the dollar or a bank holiday, as in Argentina. Maybe, like the Boston Massacre, some idiot cop will fire on a crowd or a defenseless citizen. Maybe something else entirely. But something will happen - some sort of revolution will occur, and quite soon.
Not because the people are quick to anger - far from it. Not because they want a "government handout" - they don't. Nor will it happen because they're racists and hate Obama - as I hope was apparent from the above conversation, for many people, including my friend Tony, the utter failure of the Obama administration to protect the interests of the lower 80% (economically) of the population, even with huge Democratic majorities in both houses just verifies what they suspected all along: that the system will not allow itself to be changed from within.
And perhaps most importantly, the reason I feel such is essentially inevitable now is because, for a growing number of people, they're simply at the end of their rope. They haven't got any choice. They know that neither they nor their children have a future right now. That, from what I've experienced, is why the Soviet Union fell, but the People's Republic of China did not, even though there were military interventions in both cases. Soviet citizens knew they had no future; the Chinese did. People will tolerate all kinds of abuse, but once they realize they have no future, and more importantly, that their children don't, they snap. In every case that I'm aware of, it's only when they're starring into the abyss that they suddenly wake up and say "I might go down, but I'm not going down without a fight!"
When that happens, something changes. A gear shift occurs in the mind and soul of the individual. A distinctly human type of survival instinct activates. A new historical dynamic takes hold of the society. The old rules cease to apply. People cease to respond to potential rewards and punishments in the ways they used to. I saw this in progress in the Soviet Union, and I see the same thing today in America. It's something new in the history of the nation. It's different this time. It's not like it was before.
The reasons? Well, everybody knows...