Works so well in fact that it got congress to scramble out of its normally glacial speed to swiftly pass an unconstitutional bill! Funny how when they felt the citizenry...and Steven Colbert...reaching for the pitchforks the normally arrogant and unresponsive Know-Better Do-Nothings turned into Do-Better Know-Nothings!
Of course....they did still get it wrong, waste time, miss the point and totally screw up by passing an ex post facto bill of attainder to tax the chump change of the AIG bonuses....but they did it because they were SCARED OF US....the little darlings!
Aren't they positively cute when they are frightened into action by the righteous wrath of their employers!
Now all we have to do to get some MEANINGFUL changes...like investigating massive corporate fraud, War Crimes, and heck, maybe even their own corrupt asses... is harness that same wrath, agree on what needs to be done and KICK SOME KEESTER.
Of course it is that middle part that is tricky. The harnessing and deciding part. We seem to have a bit of a problem with that, historically speaking.
What with all the wedge issues, distractions, pork centered bribes and .....oh wait! Most of that shit was and is perpetrated by Republicans, or was the result of Dems being more scared of Republicans than they are scared of US!
And of course, the Republicans have lied cheated, sex scandaled and hypocritized themselves into a quivering, directionless pile of goo that ....deliciously and ironically....is small enough to fit in a bathtub and drown!
So now...getting back to that pesky harnessing and deciding and directing part. We now know that Citizen Power works. All we need now is to figure out how to a) keep it going. b) concentrate it on the areas and issues that need to be fixed or attended to...which unfortunately after Bush is, to put it mildly, fucking everything, and c) communicate that to Congress.
In NO uncertain terms.
Obama has Health Care and a probably weak ass but the best we can do Climate Crisis bill covered. Energy is next on his list. The War Machine is still too powerful to be meaningfully challenged but at least Barack has them moving in a better direction, so that leaves....
MASSIVE INVESTIGATIONS.
Of just about everything.
(btw, when has it ever been so hard before to get politicians to grandstand for investigations?)
If we play our cards right, which is by no means an easy task mind you, this IS the time when we could use Citizen power to do a real, and long overdue House Cleaning. From Wall St. to the Abramoff tentacles....right up to the War Crimes of the previous occupants of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
So fellow Citizens of a possibly once again democratic nation instead of an aristocratic plutocracy....
Who wants to play cards?
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Of course the concern here is an out of control populism, fueled by irresponsible demagogues. That concern was expressed in the excellent comments over at Docudharma.
But isn't that the nature of outrage?
It is not really focusable in without demagoguery. Even then it often gets out of control in a heartbeat and goes its own way.
To which I replied...
Obama is practicing some damn good....and responsible....demagoguery.
Demagoguery, populism, and class war are all buzzwords that the Ruling Class has imposed and vilified to blunt, if not moot, the voice of the people.
RESPONSIBLE populism is, again imo, is about the only real antidote to the plutocracy.
Especially in light of the fact that is responsible demagogues don't direct populism, irresponsible demagogues will fill the void.
Just as...
They only call it demagoguery and populism when effective rhetoric is used against them, to overcome their privilege and advantages in media access.
And received an excellent rebuttal!
Sigh, I just worry about stoking
anger. Once you get something from an extreme emotion like that, you start to get to like the high, not just of the emotion but the win. Unfortunately you have to have a more extreme emotion and a more extreme win to get that high again. It can (but does not always) lead to an addiction.
Just call me the wet blanket on this issue. I want the change you want, but someone has to worry about where it goes from there, or else we wind up like the Religious Right. Never forget they think they are doing what they do for the very best of reasons too.
So, lol, to give myself the last word, how do we balance the concerns of what the Ruling Class would call Mob Rule....with what is quite possibly the only REAL tool We The People have to fight back in what is undoubtedly a full on Class War. Our anger and our willingness, at long last, to give it full throated voice.
A Class War in which TRILLIONS of dollars are at risk of being transferred from the Lower and Middle Class....to the Ruling Class?
The Ruling Class whose rapacious greed got now threatens to crash the world economy. Which WILL, as always, hurt US far more than it will hurt them.
Update! Many folks in the comments are legitimately pointing out the dangers of populism. But let us not forget that it was a wave of economic populism that led to the financial reforms of the New Deal.
The same firewall regulations that the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act wiped out.....which led to the current collapse. NOT a coincidental 'pattern' methinks.