Last week we had another one of those diaries hit the Rec list which has people let down their hair, and call it as they see it.
It was titled: WTF is wrong with Americans: http://www.dailykos.com/...
888 comments, take a look at select comments below. I'll do a part two to this diary, but for tonight, anyone wandering past with nothing better to do, listen to what some of your fellow sapient citizens are walking around thinking....
The Posts About Media
Writ Large by "Our Media" (26+ / 0-) when we stop that bullshit, the rest will fall into place nicely.We have to get the Propaganda Machine shut down. But how?
How? There is actually a way.
We get conflicting (7+ / 0-) information every day, full of propaganda, half-truth, sins of omission or outright lies. This Egypt storyline is particularly appalling. They've reached a new low in "purposeful and willful nonsense designed to obfuscate". Between that and the general fear-factors (my job, my house, my children, my way of life as I know it will all disappear), you have a recipe for national indifference and general civic paralysis.... Those of us who have turned off the Blowhard Machine and know absolute bullshit when they see it or hear it feel as if we don't have sufficient numbers to put our lives on the line effectively. BTW, if we're to get anywhere, we have to stop waiting for someone to 'lead' us.
Exactly: if the people lead, the leaders will follow. But how exactly?
USA Is Greatest Propaganda Machine in History (14+ / 0-) Coast to coast there's almost no truthful, pertinent and adequate news and public affairs information reaching mainstream people. The framers' conception of a free press is a total failure in the modern economy. It's not reasonable to expect ordinary people to have a realistic idea of what's happening in the world.
Can you really blame someone for thinking something wrong when they've been lied to their entire life?
What is wrong with Americans is that this country (6+ / 0-) has a 24/7 propaganda media machine brainwashing Americans with fear-mongering lies about threats--threats to "freedom" from Muslims, from liberals, from undocumented immigrants, from unions, from welfare recipients, from homosexuals, from increasing national debt, from environmentalists, from "big goverment", etc. The only threat the right wingers conveniently don't mention is the REAL threat--from the wealthy 2% (who only care about lowering their taxes, and don't give a damn about a safety net) and corporations (who rob the US treasury via corporate welfare, ship jobs overseas, and hide profits from taxation in off shore accounts). These 2 forces are sucking this country dry and demonizing anyone who stands in their way. This has been going on for the past 30 years, and it won't stop until the propaganda machine is either put out of business, or we have a 24/7 progressive media machine to offer an alternative point of view to Americans....
We need a new way to approach the publicly-owned broadcast frequencies--yes.
1000 radio stations (3+ / 0-) blasting repetition of coordinated propaganda from right wing think tanks all day long, all year long, deciding what is and what isn't acceptable and creating an alternate reality because there is essentially no one in their face in real time.
Mm-hmm--yes.
The forces working against the American people (1+ / 0-) are way more sophisticated, powerful and organized. The media, big business and politicians work together in synchronized fashion like the best symphony.
True--true dat.
Capitalist propaganda an Orwellian success (1+ / 0-) Capitalist propaganda has been more successful in the U.S. than any kind of propaganda has ever been anywhere.... It has systematically blocked people from being able to express or think about what or who has been fucking with them. I think for 90% of the people in this country there literally is no conceivable alternative to Wall Street calling the shots--in politics, in their private lives, everywhere. The American people are slaves who cannot imagine what it means to be free.
Posts About Corruption
Corruption has always been a (0+ / 0-) prominent part of our political system. But we are at a turning point. All the major issues, from health care, inequality of income, climate change, and war, are directly connected to corporate policies and actions. We have the social and technical technologies to address these issues but any attempt to actually solve a problem is blocked by corporate interests, blocked by bribery and coercion. Our government is now largely incapable of regulating corporate behavior as a result of this corruption. And the survival and well being of billions of people is at stake if these issues remain unsolved. And the more we try to cope with these issues the more the corporations strive to corrupt our government.
So we need something really powerful to stop corporate interests dead in their tracks.
I look at it as a challenge (40+ / 0-) Things are rather bad because in many ways the old-style of corporate leadership in government has been enabled to come back in full force over the past 30 years, with citizens (including elected Democrats) willingly accepting the bullshite messaging from Republicans through the traditional media that a wealthy, untouchable elite should be revered at almost all costs. It's really to the point of insanity finally hitting in a serious manner, with private salaries, public services, unionization, etc. coming under fire from even our own party (e.g., Gov. Cuomo) against at least 80% of the country, while the wealthiest and best connected generally thrive and gain what's taken. Close schools and layoff middle-class government workers while bankers see a continuation of obscenely disparate, annual bonuses because the digital money trade is now firmament and considered sacred to our upside-down economy....
Don't know if we can make the changes we need (4+ / 0-) voting for another Dem or Repub (God forbid!!) isn't going to change things. A true progressive would not be allowed to run. I hate to sound like a nut, but I do think there are powers-that-be who decide who will be running. People they can control. Obama is nicely controlled, I don't know why, but he is not the man I voted for. When he spoke of Wall Street and corporate profits as a sign our economy is getting better, my hair went on fire. Really??? Really, Obama???? Grrrr....
I forked out money and went to DC (32+ / 0-) all with thousands of Union Groups. Everything is a Yawnfest in America. Until millions come out in the streets here, nothing will change. I am so disappointed in this Administration it makes me sick. Our Union has been terribly weakened and it's pathetic. The Company does as it pleases and nobody does a thing. They are laying people off in our group and we have to learn 2 more peoples' jobs that are getting layed off. They are sitting right there while 2 of us are being trained to take over their jobs. Their jobs aren't going away, they are. I work in a Department that had 25 people in it when I came to that department. We are down to 6 with expanded duties....
The electoral system (3+ / 0-) ain't gonna save us.
Reply:
[Yeah] (3+ / 0-) there's no voting our way out of this mess. But I'm also talking about "leading" any kind of revolts like the kind we see overseas. That ain't happening, either. We have to stand up for ourselves and decide when and how.
I love this diary! (6+ / 0-) This is exactly what I see too. And the Wall Street bunch says you can't tax the rich yet because it will "shock" the recovery. They don't say this much out loud...just little, it is what they say behind closed doors though. There is no recovery for anyone though, and the only thing being accomplished by keeping the rich richer is that they have more wealth to protect as the world markets teeter toward destruction. That means they will have to buy commodities to try to stay super rich or protect as much of their wealth as they can, and that means they will have to starve more poor. We have lost our fucking minds, but we don't care...it isn't our kids starving yet.
When Hillary (3+ / 0-) the other day was laying out what constituted a 'real democracy' [there was the] thought we have none of the things she was talking about none. We don't have real elections, the political machine picks out our choices and the propaganda machine puts on a show. Then they tell us it was a peaceful transition of power and yet the same people, powers, policies and 'inevitable' agenda proceeds with a new face. Free Press lol. Economic opportunity--right, reform--lol.
Why is it so hard for you to admit (5+ / 0-) that the US has become a quasi-corrupt imperial state in its foreign and domestic policy, as evidenced by its massive giveaways to Wall St., big corporations and the very rich, its practice of torture and refusal to prosecute torturers, and its endless, wasteful, murderous and immoral foreign wars, all of which Obama is clearly endorsing, whether or not he personally likes them. Why the need to diminish his failings? No, he's not another Mubarak, obviously. But he's no saint, either.
We've been scammed (1+ / 0-) Bush v. Gore 2000: the Constitution does not even require that the popular vote be counted. Popular opinion is irrelevant in this country. In fact, the Constitution was expressly written to make sure that the wealthy investor class will always call the shots, and that the general population would never have any real leverage in government. Take federal elections: the results of a popular vote can voided during the primaries by party superdelegates. In the general, the population is Constitutionally prohibited from directly voting for President and Vice-President and so the Electoral
College has an additional opportunity to override the popular vote if the desire is there. Congress can then exercise the option to override the Electoral College vote by
accepting or rejecting said votes if it so wishes. And finally, the Supreme Court can completely ignore the popular vote and install the candidate of its choice. The Constitution grants the Supreme Court so much power that just like a king or a dictator, its decisions are final. No appeal allowed.
I think we did fairly well. (0+ / 0-) And the thing is, the GOP/Dems have a pretty good "divide and conquer" thing going. The GOP did an excellent job of getting disaffected independent voters to scream and yell about the 'job killing' 'Obama-Pelosi agenda' and to blame the Democrats and unions for their policies. The corporations are playing both sides and laughing all the way to the bank. But there's no shortage of outrage. According to a new report by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 17.4 million American families--almost 15 percent of U.S. households--are now "food insecure," an almost 30 percent increase since 2006. This means that during any given month they will be out of money, out of food, and forced to miss meals or seek assistance to feed themselves. The real problem is there is no left in this country that is organizing. The right is organizing and that is how we got the Tea Party.... The left has organized no mass movement.
Divide and conquer (11+ / 0-) That is what I have been thinking is the strategy of BOTH parties. I worked in an office once where the boss was a religious nut. He was so paranoid and incompetent that he made sure that our department did not go as a group to complain. So, he pitted us one against the other to make sure we were to busy fighting with each other to do that. It was masterful and it worked. It reminds me of what the powers in D.C. are doing. You don't want everybody on the same side with pitchforks and torches. We are not in charge; the corporations are....
Unfortunately, that is a spot on (1+ / 0-) I hate to keep telling people that they should all read Naomi Klein's "Shock Doctrine" because I'm beginning to sound like a broken record, however, I really think her explanation of what is going on in this country (and the world) is the best I've seen out there. Best of all, it doesn't require any government conspiracy or anything like that, all it suggests is that, at every opportunity, those that have, grab from those who don't, leaving us all impoverished....
Blaming the victim (5+ / 0-) "Americans" are under the yoke of an extremely sophisticated system designed to enrich some and exploit others. What is wrong with us? What is wrong with the slave who can't escape? What is wrong with the woman who can't find a safe clinic to terminate a pregnancy? What is wrong with the person who dies in a bridge collapse? What is wrong with people who die of lung cancer because their government determined they are an acceptable loss and there's no reason to regulate the poison that killed them? What is wrong with the people who wait hours for trains that never come because the infrastructure is crumbling?
What is wrong with Americans? (2+ / 0-) When you have an autocrat, you know exactly who is the problem. When you have an oligarchy of private interests, it's very hard for people to know who to oppose, although the Koch Brothers' blatant attempt to buy the government might get some traction or a general opposition to K Street's huge influence in Congress, the executive, and especially the courts. Whatever it is it must focus on the point at which the government is being bought, being corrupted, wasting money, and ignoring the will of the people. And it will be something that will motivate progressives, centrists, independents, and Tea Party grassroots all together. That means that the "government or private sector" must be successfully set aside for strategic reasons.
Stupid or desperately clinging to their lives (4+ / 0-) There are still many thoughtful people who are fed up..... Show people ways to untie the harness. How can we have food independence that doesn't make us owned by the big AG industry. How can I make myself independent from our electric utility without having to take out a $50k loan? Free people from the current wage slave system and show them how to live a reasonable life without handing their entire paycheck over to the utility company and the grocery store and people will have the TIME to ponder upon the bigger questions.
Apologies for the gross imagery (2+ / 0-) But the situation in the US right now calls to mind a giant pimple that just won't come to a head. You know what I mean. It fills up painfully but there's nothing you can do. And then it bursts. And it's not pretty. That, I think, is where we are now. The pressure is building toward a critical mass. What have seen in Greece and Iceland and Tunisia, what we're seeing now in Egypt, is a glimpse of our future unless we can right the ship pretty damn quick. Unfortunately, I don't see that happening because too many of our elected officials have the maturity of a toddler who denies the existence of whatever s/he doesn't like.
It doesn't work like that (4+ / 0-) We should all take to the streets and demand what exactly? That the banks open up their records? That the Fed stops engaging in shady activity? Because I'm sure they will care. I agree with your premise that what is happening should not be tolerated, but let's be honest here. They have absolutely perfected making it nearly impossible for any of us to do the slightest thing. If 100,000 people showed up in a protest tomorrow calling for an investigation of the banks in this country 2 things would happen: Media would go into overdrive to paint the crowd as Marxist radicals hell bent on collapsing capitalism. Media would also have "financial expert" after "financial expert" on to tell the rest of the country the protesters don't understand economics and they are mistaken in their claims and nothing illegal has ever happened. This is the reality of the situation....
We are in a mish-mashed (4+ / 0-) transitional cultural period. We’ve got enough of the vestiges of the New Deal in place to prevent the average American from living in the kind of destitute poverty experienced by folks in Tunisia, Egypt, and elsewhere in the Middle East where we are seeing popular movements.
At the same time, the Republicans have successfully eroded enough of our cultural propensity for popular uprising and liberal values--virtually uncontested by the left, mind you. European cultures have maintained those kind of populist values at a much more notable level. The left absolutely needs to start fighting the culture wars again. Making smug blog posts about how stupid and ignorant conservative claims are doesn't cut it. That’s a big part of it in my opinion.
My friends and I are cursed (4+ / 0-) I was having a conversation recently with a couple of good friends of mine where we decided that we were 'cursed'. To us, it is a curse to have the intelligence to see the problems and what is causing them, but not have the power to correct them. We see the problem caused by the war on drugs, but are powerless to stop it. We knew there weren't any WMDs in Iraq, but nothing we could do was going to prevent the inevitable 'war' that was waged. We knew waterboarding was torture, but we had no say in the matter, when it was happening, or about punishing those responsible. We see the wealthy rewarding themselves for destroying the ability of so many to advance themselves, but have no way to prevent it from happening. We all rely on multiple sources for our news, and generally speaking have better information than our peers, but all that really means is that we get to see what the mainstream media doesn't want the masses to know about. We vote, we write to our elected representatives, and we try to bring an enlightened opinion to the conversations we have with others, but in my lifetime that hasn't changed anything. America is still going down a path of self destruction from within, and my friends and I feel cursed for knowing about it and being powerless to do anything to stop it.
Yay. Another gloom and doom post. Now what? (1+ / 0-) At least two or three of these diaries get rec'd per day. I get it. The nation sucks, it's corrupt, and it's heading for disaster.... Now what? What next? I see nobody ACTING other than to write a blog post.
Extended Comments
Chris Hedges' powerful and concise summary (99+ / 0-) on the recent special by Truthdig and Pacifica’s KPFK on Building a Powerful Left in the United States. Sorry, I cannot find a transcript, and Hedges is the last of five people interviewed in the hour-long program (Robert Scheer, Larry Gross, Scott Tucker, David Sirota, Chris Hedges).
In addition the theme of the Death of the Liberal Class (the title of Hedges' new book, and the idea of which is painfully and ably recounted in the first interview, with Bob Scheer), Hedges says that in the U.S., a culture of reading has been replaced by a culture of images--and the creation and distribution of images are controlled by large corporations. Hedges dose not explicate this next particular point, but to read something usually requires the application of critical thinking, which takes time; but viewing a cascade of images provides no tine for critical thinking, and hence the emotive forces are more fully in play. (That's my 2 cents worth--Hedges is very worth listening to).
What's particularly scary is to realize that the anger expressed by the Tea bagging wrong-wing is entirely justified, based on how the nation's elites have sold out the working class, and now the middle class. Hedges' point in Death of the Liberal Class is that while the liberal class never challenged the legitimacy of market capitalism, the Liberal Class functioned as a sort of safety valve, in which the concerns and grievances of the working class were handled within the system. Not fully resolved, but not ignored entirely, as is the case now. The biggest sellout, according to Hedges, was Bill Clinton and especially NAFTA, not really Ronald Reagan. This will probably anger a lot of loyal "Democrats", Jeebus, they really, really need to hear this analysis and pay attention. Because if the legitimate anger of the working class has no release through the left of American politics, the only place it has to go--and will go, and is going--is the wrong-wing. This is what happened in Germany in the 1920s and 1930s. Sirota, who we should be ashamed to acknowledge was hounded off this site, also has some important things to say along these lines.
Let's expand on that a bit (13+ / 0-) Why did we win the Cold War? Why did millions of people living under the Iron Curtain throw off the chains of oppression, tear down the Berlin Wall, and embrace a way of life that had to be utterly foreign. Because we had a better system. Soviet-style Communism didn't work, and New Deal Capitalism did.
New Deal Capitalism is the greatest economic and political system the world has ever seen. Under FDR (but due to the efforts of millions who fought, and in many cases died, as part of the labor movement), we created a system where an honest day's work could earn a decent standard of living (mostly for white males, but that had to do with the times and not the New Deal itself - today things would be better, if not perfect). The rich still got rich, the poor had a clear road into the middle class, and the middle class lived the good life. Again, it was the greatest system any country in the world has ever had. It's the system that won WWII, put a man on the moon, built Hoover Dam, the interstate highway system, and the Internet. Then came Reagan. Just as it's impossible to credit FDR alone for the success of the New Deal, it's not really fair to put its demise on one man. But the effort to tear down New Deal Capitalism crystallized around the Gipper. He slashed taxes for the rich, raised them for the working class, and began the project--as monumental as any listed in the previous paragraph--of putting the country so far in debt we'd never recover.
That effort to destroy our triumphant economic system has continued unabated ever since. The spoils of New Deal Capitalism were so bountiful that the bulk of us didn't even realize they were being siphoned off until it was too late. We're here fretting over America's decline? We already declined. We've been able to prop ourselves up on credit, and ride a bubble for a few more good years, and now that's come to an end.
Realistically, how are we going to bounce back? We don't produce anything--our biggest exports are Hollywood movies and manufacturing jobs. We have encoded into our highest law of the land that corporate profits are more important than anything that benefits our citizens. You may blame Obama for not fixing it all, but can you name another politician who could? It's too big for any one person to fix. It'll take another grand social movement, of the type that built the New Deal in the first place.
There is no comparison between Egypt and the US (95+ / 0-) In Egypt, there is a thug, a dictator, at the top and life is grindingly oppressive for almost half the population. You say the wrong thing, print the wrong thing, and you can be jailed, tortured, or just disappeared. In America, the oppression is far less overt, far less openly abusive, as the rich are too smart to be that stupid. Revolutions are bad for business. If you owe them money, they trap you in a cycle of debt you can never get out of, they don't put you in a debtor's prison that you could target as blatantly abusive. They are catered to, at the growing expense of the working class and the poor, because in America you can, as a poor or working class person, muddle through life like slogging through a thick mud while they are off in Aspen eating caviar and planning on buying a new Yacht.
A lot of Americans don't even realize that they are being fucked over. They work the poor like mules, pay them like wage slaves, and have media outlets galore to apologize and divert attention from blaming them. In America, when the system that the Oligarchy Express favors is working as they dream it should, the pain is simmeringly chronic, nagging even, but manageable. Like a bad flu. People don't know who to be mad at, so they are just mad. Mad people are stupid people, they can be conned and manipulated into hating other poor people or people who don't think as they do.
There is no comparison between what plagues Egypt and what plagues the average American. In Egypt, you can outline a simple black and white strategy to overthrow the bad guys because there is a bad guy. The Dictator. The bad guy. Singular. An angry mob can focus their ire on him, Dictator X, and his thugs, whatever they are called, with the dream of sending them off to exile in France or Britain and the hope that what comes next will be better. In America we have class warfare, people making just enough to get by, just enough to keep them angry and unhappy but not in utter ruin where they might take to the streets and break things, and that class warfare is deeply embedded and engrained all through the society. Poor people resent other poor people in America as much, if not more, than they resent the rich. Because they hear from a million directions that there is some buggaboo "Other", usually of another race or creed, that is taking from them what should be rightly theirs. There is no figurehead thug. You have a pantheon of corporations and champions of Oligarchy and social darwinism.
There are millions of poor people, religious people, working class people, who have been conned into voting against their best interest. The banality of common exploitative evil is well marbled like fat though a massive piece of meat. Even the people who bring the masses the news have been conned into tilting how the news is covered to avoid "liberal bias" charges where no such bias exists.
The reason that millions aren't taking to the streets is that there is a confederation of enablers of misery and exploitation, and no easy answer to getting rid of them. Who are Americans supposed to take to the streets and overthrow? Bank of America? BP? McDonalds? MicroSoft? Exxon? GE? General Dynamics? Boeing? Ratheon? Time Warner? Comcast? Cox? Comcast? Newscorps? US Gas? Commonwealth Electric? Koch Industries? Sheldon Adelson? The Heritage Foundation? The American Enterprise Institute? Sinclair Broadcasting? ABC? CBS? NBC? CNN? Fox News? Every investment house on Wall Street? Every MegaBank Too Big to Fail? Every lobbying group in DC? All of them spend a lot of money lobbying somebody, and many do it to get Movement Conservatives elected and to keep Rightwing thinktanks funded.
So, you take to the streets, and you mob the Koch Brothers every move. Or you come to Vegas and shadow Sheldon Adelson until he has a nervous breakdown. And the whole Oligarchy Express makes you the bad guy, and the Kochs the victims, and you marginalize yourself even more.
You send the Koch Brothers fleeing to live in exile in France, and not only do you have a few hundred thousand more cancers to go, but the Koch Brothers can do what they do now, exactly as they do it now, from any place on Earth. Worse, they get portrayed as the victims, and the conned millions who vote against their best interests see the good guys as the bad guys even worse than they did before. There is no simple black and white 'do this and everything gets better' answer to the complicated spider web of reasons why things are so tilted in favor of the rich and so awful here for the poor and working class. The reasons things are the way they are here [is because they’re] engineered to be the way they are, and there is no simple, or simplistic, answer.
There is actually a simple, and simplistic answer.
You're confusing the televangelists with the (0+ / 0-) flock. The John Birchers have been occupying the fringe for decades, supported by the Koch Brothers wealth, but never broke out of their tiny, tightly wound orbit into the big leagues. It helps that FOX et al do the Tea Party PR work for free, but the whole message would not be connecting as well as it does if the rank and file fringe of the hard RW had not been joined by many who are not nearly so fringy who never usually go that far but feel they have been driven to it now. The Coulters and Palins and all the rest are using and abusing the rank and file Tea Party members, but it is the underlying, commonly identified wrongs in this country--the knowledge of which is shared by the right and left--that gives them their escape velocity. If we were to fearlessly identify those problems and just as fearlessly advocate for true remedies of those problems, we might be surprised at the support we might get.
Capital will flow to where there’s money to be made. It’s just that simple. America’s "accomodative" monetary policy has spurred a new wave of corporate borrowing. And where are these multinational entities deploying these new investments? Not in the United States. That money is flowing into emerging economies. Bloomberg reported on the trend in Bernanke’s ‘Cheap Money’ Stimulus Spurs Corporate Investment Outside U.S--"You’re seeing leakage from quantitative easing," said Stephen Wood, chief market strategist for Russell Investments in New York, which has $140 billion under management. "That leakage is going into emerging markets, commodity-based economies, commodities themselves and non-U.S. opportunities."
U.S. corporations have issued more than $1.07 trillion in debt so far this year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Foreign companies also are tapping U.S. markets for cheap cash, selling $605.9 billion in debt through Nov. 15 compared with $371.8 billion for all of 2007, before the Fed cut the overnight bank-lending rate to a range of zero to 0.25 percent.... Corporate cash sloshing across U.S. borders is an unavoidable consequence of the Fed’s low-rate strategy, Wood said.... U.S. corporations’ overseas investment in the first half of 2010 exceeded the amount that foreign firms spent in the U.S. on factories and acquisitions at an annual rate of almost $220 billion, according to the Commerce Department. In the first half of 2006, the last year before the financial crisis, the net flow favored the U.S. at an annual rate of about $30 billion....
American Spirit Comments
We don't own the media, but we have two huge (10+ / 0-) advantages: (1) there are more of us than there are of "them" and (2) we have the truth on our side. so we overcome the propaganda by talking to our families, friends, neighbors, and strangers. the ones who are anesthetized and still in denial about the state of our so-called democracy. we do it at chautauquas, and community feasts, and block parties. we treat it like what it is--a campaign to disseminate truths that are not easily accessible. so we use phone banking, and social media and fact-based e-mail forwards. we teach people, as most of us had to learn, to listen with skepticism to everything they hear from the mainstream media (of whom they are already distrustful) and from their bought and paid-for "representatives".
The mass (2+ / 0-) revolution in America you are wondering about is on the way. One of the missing ingredients is an issue that can coalesce American right wingers & American left wingers to join forces in protest against its government.
Obstacle to Overcome #1: The iron grip of FOX News will have to be lifted from America's right wing.
Obstacle to Overcome #2: The iron grip of thinking passively/aggressively bitching about problems on the Internet is authentic civil disobedience...that will have to be lifted from America's left wing.
Once the aforementioned shackles are shed by the right wing & left wing, you will then see untold millions of Americans take to the street protesting the incalculable bullshit being thrust upon us by our government.
When it is time, they will come! (0+ / 0-) I think the American people are a bit stunned at things right now. They wonder how things have gotten so bad in America. With media and the Internet they see the corruption game going on in Washington and the rape of the middle class. It's sinking in slowly but surely. Right now they just have dyspepsia over the state of our union. But make no mistake, they know whose fault it is, and if things get a little worse, a single spark could ignite a tinderbox resentment. You think Americans would not do it or have not guts to fight back. Are you kidding?? We are the descendents of patriots who sent the British Empire packing with their tails between their legs. We kicked their buts. The day will come, no one knows when for sure, when our government will have it's reckoning, just as the Mubaric regime has had it's reckoning. And if our Government resists the will of the people, it's sure to find out that the American people are not cowards and the real reason our enlightened forefathers instituted the Second Amendment in our constitution. And when that day comes, I would not want to be a politician.
Nonsense, it could happen overnight. (0+ / 0-) This sort of popular revolution always seems "impossible" until it happens. People thought the USSR was stable under Gorbachev. People thought MUBARAK was stable and unstoppable two weeks ago!
