This is a transatlantic accord between conservatives. If the system is failing blame those that are hurt first and least able to defend themselves rather than the corrupt and failing system that they have built.
We watched as the bankers were rescued all in the name of saving ourselves, we paid for their bailout. Yet, when we ask them to contribute towards the system that has made them so wealthy, they scream blue bloody murder.
When we dare demonstrate against a system then the forces of order will do all in their power to suppress dissent. Violence can be used to repress the demonstrators and if resistance to this violence occurs, the anti can be upped by the forces of "order". In other words we must behave as "Ghandi" whereas they can behave as any dictatorship you care to mention.
When the bankers demonstrate at "the unfairness inherent in the system" because their bank accounts in the Cayman's might come under scrutiny, a red carpet is rolled out as they are welcomed by their political serfs.
In a system designed to reward greed conservatives on both side of the pond agree, it is the poor that need to be punished. To punish the poor you first have to paint them as greedy scroungers living off the back of society, you vilify them at every turn, you hit them to keep them down. If they resist wrap yourself in moral outrage and how dare they demand a miniscule share in the society that we have all built.
When single mother Shanene Thorpe was interviewed by BBC's Newsnight last week, she was expecting an honest conversation about coming cuts to housing benefit. Instead, interviewer Allegra Stratton challenged her "choice" not to live in her mother's spare room and, according to Thorpe, asked her whether she thought she should have aborted her daughter.
What was conveniently omitted?
Like many other people on housing benefit, Thorpe is employed, but relies on the subsidy because her salary is too low to cope with soaring London rents. This wasn't mentioned in the interview. Instead, Thorpe was squeezed into a familiar caricature: the shameless benefit scrounger, explaining her decision to sponge off the state.
Continued over the squiggle:
In the US if you are poor you must be deficient.
Noah notes that Republicans regard the working poor as “morally indistinguishable from welfare recipients,” who have long been stigmatized by conservative politicians. But I think it goes a little further than that. To these conservatives, who maintain a theological commitment to the efficacy of upper-income tax cuts and deregulation, government benefits are sinful, and recipients of government benefits are sinners, regardless of whether their benefits are earned, deserved or otherwise
.
The long drawn out steady shaming of the lowest tiers of society continues. Uneducated and morally corrupt, and not worth helping, if only they would apply the same standards to the top tier that they hold so dear.
The poorest are demanded to contribute to a system that kicks them when they are down, the rich get a helping hand to preserve the system that made them who they are.
If shaming doesn't work then use repression, when repression doesn't work, you better run for the hills. With youth unemployment at over 50% in many places in Europe and a resurgent extreme right wing on both sides of the pond we have every right to be worried. The extreme right thrives off disaffection and recruiting is becoming all too easy.
For those of us on the left we have seen our political representation sell us down the river of capitalist greed to such an extent that they no longer represent our fundamental values of a more egalitarian society. The unions have been battered into submission by both sides of the aisle, either by direct confrontation by the right or by bipartisan accord.
Our side of the aisle are so cowed into submission of a show of resistance that any flare up of violence is immediately condemned; no matter what the provocation, or the repressive tactics used.
The only way to cure the malaise is to work together, the boom periods have occurred during the periods of greatest economic equality. That means giving the poorest of us a helping hand, and those that have benefited the most being taken down a rung or two. Continue down the present course and in the end there will be blood, it is one of histories certainties and the result could be terrifying.
I believe we are at a crux, democracy is in tatters across Europe and in the thrall of a few bankers, millions of young people are being left to rot on the unemployment lines. Whereas the rich are so emboldened in the US [and abroad] by a deep and abiding sense of entitlement, and that they will be protected at any cost. Democracy is rotting in the US now that buying an election is considered morally acceptable.
This cannot continue. You cannot keep blaming the poor, the gays and women for the decline of a system; when it is the very system that is broken.