The assault on working people in WI and MI today and across more than a dozen states (all outside the South) is the latest battleground for working people in America--but unfortunately it is stacked against us.
We will suffer a tremendous defeat if we lose--but the rich elites will not be defeated--only postponed.
Follow me down the slippery slope...
Do you hear the people sing?
Singing a song of angry men?
It is the music of a people
Who will not be slaves again
When the beating of your heart
Echoes the beating of the drum
There is a life about to start
When tomorrow comes.
...
Will you join in our crusade?
Who will be strong and stand with me?
Somewhere beyond the barricade
Is there a world you long to see?
Do you hear the people sing?
Say, do you hear the distant drums?
It is the future that they bring
When tomorrow comes...
Tomorrow comes!
--Les Miserables
Welcome friends to Good News / Bad News!
The good news is that people in WI and MI, in more than a dozen states under attack, and across the country, are rising up. They are turning out by the thousands to yell "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it any more!" They're waking up (possibly by the millions) that something bigger is going on here.
A lot of fucking people have just been force-fed the red pill and it's a VERY rude awakening.
The bad news is that this is only the first battle. All the people who ignored the beer halls or invading Poland have just woken up to Pearl Harbor. The working classes who have been effectively distracted by so many well-funded, polished, professionally produced "bright shiny things" (welfare queens, communists, entitlements, queers, feminazis, illegals....)--all the "thems" that Bill Clinton warned us about in his acceptance speech in 1992. These are all the things engineered with tremendous expense and testing to peel away vast segments of working people so that the corporate interests and the minority of "haves" can screw the "have-nots" and undo all the advances of the past hundred years.
And they're winning.
And even if we get our shit together on this battle and/or series of battles, they have the upper hand to keep winning for the forseeable future, if not indefinitely.
Yes, I am heartened by what is happening right now--vast numbers of working people are waking up and asking WTF? We are seeing a resurgence of awareness of "being my brother's keeper". Or at least "Hey, that's MY ox being gored!" I would even say that it is more than I expected, even as the GOP has been infinitely more brazen that I thought possible. Even after electing W.
But...
Here's the bad news. It's not nearly enough. They've been eating our lunch since at least Reagan and possibly since Nixon. They may, in fact, have been regrouping since Ike's famous "beware the M/I complex" or the Truman Commission. The unhappy truth is that Corporations and wealthy dynasties have much longer memories than mere mortals who are mostly concerned with paying the mortgage and putting the kids through school so they have a better life.
If we lose this series we lose. Big. All of us.
If THEY lose, they suffer a delay.
We are hobbits, they are Mordor. (Apologies to all for my multitudinous mixed metaphors.)
Are we ready for America's first general strike? If not now, when? If not us, who?