Placebo Presidency: A Call for the Audacity of Hopelessness

[Phil Rockstroh]

From time to time, events unfold that are so large in scope, so all-encompassing in their implications that one's initial response is muted by an inability to categorize it all within the realm of experience. Previous reference points prove of little service. One's image of oneself and one's place in the world is under siege, perhaps even in danger of being torn away. One stares into the abyss, until the abyss removes its dark shades and makes direct eye contact. The mind buzzes; one's thoughts scuttle in circles like stunned insects.

On a collective basis, we as a nation are living through such a time. At present, we are witnessing the descending spiral of Icarusian Capitalism; our sacred delusion of the perpetual ascendancy of a god-like market place lies broken in the dust. Malls and Mcmansions stand abandoned, desolate as the edifices of forgotten gods, as the come-ons of the salesmen of deregulated capitalism are churned to spittle amid a cacophony of collapsing market platitudes.

And not an uptick in public optimism, nor a surge of euphoria on Wall Street, nor the "invisible hand of the marketplace" sprinkling pixie dust will bring back the Olympian days of 2005, when the wise men of Washington and Wall Street knew the force of gravity was just a myth believed in by those embittered prophets of doom whose only joy in life is fantasizing the fall of their wealthy betters. It does not matter a damn how many dollars our present day believers of neoliberal tall tales, President Obama and Treasury Secretary Geithner, pour into the hole in the ground where the crash occurred, a bean stalk, twining skyward towards a golden, debt-negating goose, will not flower forth.

Fortunately, when false convictions fall, it is possible for a leveling of sanity to prevail. But there can be no more hubristic flights borne on waxen wings. No more multibillion dollar confidence scams from Wall Street. No more smash and grab imperial wars. No more tea parties for the dim and deranged. There is the banality of evil, and then there is the evil of banality. Both, the present era has produced in abundance. From about the late nineteen-seventies to the present, The United States all but ceased manufacturing products and went into the business of manufacturing marketplace hype, baseless fears, and illusionary enemies. Due to this economic and cultural derangement, a dark tower of self-imprisoning delusions has circumscribed our nation's fate. Is it any wonder the quintessential dark lord of the darkest tower, Dick Cheney, will not exit the scene?

And what will foster real change? Not pleasing sound bites and rousing oratory from President Obama, then a continuance of many of the pernicious policies of his criminal predecessors. Conversely, the iron gates of Hell must crash closed behind us. The absence of light must grow so unbearable to us that we're willing to ask how is it we arrived in this place and become willing to challenge our most cherished concepts about ourselves and our place in the scheme of things. That is the sort of "indefinite detention" the nation could use. What is needed is the audacity of hopelessness.

President Obama and the Democratic Congress could have ridden a wave of public discontent towards meaningful reform, but instead they have hugged the shore. And they seem to be surveying the property, scouting locations to build beach house retreats for their elitist benefactors and the militarist fantasists whose tsunami-sized arrogance wrought the present destruction in the first place.

Meanwhile, right-wing radio haters, like penned dogs, bark into the empty air of their meaningless day. Daily, we negotiate our way through the encompassing banalities and casual brutalities of soft oligarchy, as beneath it all churns the nebulous rage of the powerless that creates an audience for the likes of Beck, Hannity, and Limbaugh.

It is high season for those virtuosos of displaced anger, because not only the nation's treasure, but its élan vital, has been squandered inflating the bubble-borne vanities of the ultra-wealthy up to the point of economic immolation. The elite have perpetrated an act of catastrophic clownishness so massive that it has left the rest of us stunned, and left to pick amid the debris of our exploded hopes. Bur hopes do not die pretty. Once dead, they do not rise like the redeemer gods of myth; instead, they stagger about, rotting and snarling like B-movie mummies. They leave us with our mouths tasting of ash. Our hearts choked by dry thistle.

Yet the buffoons of Wall Street and the killer clowns of our militarized Disneyland strut and swagger past the smoking ruins they left behind after their high-end looting spree. In their plundering, the only thing they didn't steal for themselves was any sense of self-awareness. Or is self-awareness necessary when you're obscenely rewarded for your narcissistic follies? What motivation would a high-chair tyrant have to modify his self-centeredness when he is shielded from the consequences of his bratty machinations? Why become an honest actor in the realm of human events when one can strut through life with a con artist's inexplicable sense of entitlement?

And what about the rest of us? The financial elite, by means of their bagman in the Executive Branch and Congress, continue to plunder our hopes for a meaningful future byway of that legal larceny popularly known as the bailout, i.e., the latest transfer of wealth from the bottom upward. This is why the buffoonish tea-bagger types hoard their resentments. All they've been left with is a heap of fragmented hatreds. Those toxic baubles they shore against reality.

Tragically, when not addressed, fear and resentment will increase in intensity and can become an exponentially growing feedback loop of paranoid rage. At present, such a process has created that haunted forest of the airwaves known as right-wing talk radio. It is the voice of anger feeding off of itself, and it seems dangerously close to reaching the point of hypertrophic breakdown. It is the audio analog of a belief system in exponential decay ... The more the rot increases in the system the more Glen Beck babbles and weeps. It is physically manifested in the cataclysmic ecosystem of Rush Limbaugh's repulsive bulk ... his corpulent carcass is the morbid bloat of unregulated capitalism.

Right-wing hatred is a many headed hydra that feeds on fear and desperation. It cannot be fought by attacking its spindling heads, each of its hissing mouths dripping with black poison. Instead, one must make thrusts at the noxious heart of the raging beast. But one cannot know where the heart of an external monster beats without suffering the agonies of one's own. Accordingly, one must allow one's heart to be broken. And don't look to Barack Obama's bland charm to mend it. Because the honest grief of the heart provides a point of reference, a foundation of knowledge, as to why the monster is inconsolable in its wounded fury; hence, this provides a strategic starting point as to how to fight it.

And that is why we must release the photographs of torture. Moreover, we must bring public ignominy upon the respectable psychopaths in high places who mandated these policies, plus bring a leveling of shame upon the high-flying, highchair tyrants of high finance who exploded the global economy. Our ugliness must be public like a frog. The nasty secrets must be revealed; the mortifying pictures gazed upon. Our stomachs should seize up in revulsion. The ordeal must exact such a degree of revulsion within us that we will never again allow these despicable practices to transpire on our watch.

There is a stench of putrefaction rising from beneath our feet. We must uncover the corpses laid under by empire. Being placated by Barrack Obama's bland charm -- in the same manner we were cowed by George W. Bush's infantile petulance, amused by Bill Clinton's brilliant, bad boy seductions, and drugged by Ronald Reagan's stupefying 1940's Hollywood bromides -- will only defer the reckoning and render us ignorant stooges in the impersonal sweep of history. As a people, we have a choice: We can be strengthened by embracing uncomfortable truths, or we can grow enervated and enfeebled by pushing them away.

But sadly, Obama is attempting the tried and tested political trick -- used effectively by Washington hacks from Watergate ("Our long national nightmare is over") to Iran-Contra ("We cannot have another failed presidency") -- of inducing the uniquely American trait of Instant Amnesia that has, in the past, allowed the empire to stagger on, repeatedly committing variations of the same crimes, then coddling and protecting the same variety of corrupt elitists responsible, and thereby, reducing the Constitution to tatters and rendering the rule of law rubble.

But this time, the rot is too deep, the pathology too systemic. Obama's placebo presidency will not stem the hypertrophic decay. Granted, it was good to evict the previous, psychotic tenants from the property (Although Dick Cheney seems to be stalking the place with his obsessive, media drive-bys.) but that does nothing to repair the collapsing foundation of the structure, its core eaten away by an infestation of anti-democratic termites. Rather than addressing the core issue, the deterioration of the rights and liberties granted by the U.S. Constitution, President Obama is wallpapering over the rot wrought by the national security state's termite hive mind of authoritarian appetites, that has been, silently, and hidden by darkness, gnawing the house of state to sawdust.

Again our choice: Either open up the decay within the system to the light of day and start the process of rebuilding and renewal, or allow the republic-ravening pestilence to continue unchallenged, hence unabated, and let the nation go bughouse crazy as the house comes down around us to the strains of the insect-brain stridulations of Beck, Hannity, and Limbaugh.

Phil Rockstroh, a self-described, auto-didactic, gasbag monologist, is a poet, lyricist and philosopher bard living in New York City. He may be contacted at: [e-mail]

[dixiegrrrrl]

1. whew.

K & R

[pleah]

2. K&R

[quaker bill]

3. Yes,

but what if we do not have to destroy the village to save it? I know it makes a less compelling story, but what if some portion of the pain can be avoided?

I get, truly get, the psychological cleansing and community spirit that can be developed through 25 percent unemployment and breadlines. I saw it in my grandparents. After recovering from the crash, they found it patriotic to pay their taxes and rarely complained of it. The had a sense of obligation to their neighbors and ran ethical small businesses, and paid union dues when called on to do so. They were thrifty and financially sound, their desire for material things was always in line with their means.

But do we really have to destroy the village to save it?

Further, if we destroy the village, is there any greater guarantee of a positive outcome? Weimar Germany comes to mind as an example of a less than positive outcome from the cleansing force of economic crisis.

I am really not clear that you will necessarily get the outcome you are looking for down the path you so eloquently describe.

Thanks for the well written and thought provoking piece.

[Zodiak]

7. It's a good piece.

A little on the radical side for my tastes, but the central premise I do agree with. We Americans need to grow up politically and quit clinging to Mommy and Daddy archetypes and childhood fantasies about ourselves and our responsibilities. We have a seriously dysfunctional society that has now trampled the lives of millions and millions of people in one way or another, and it cannot continue or it will trample the rest of us.

I am not an incremental change person....not in these times. We have deluded ourselves and played make believe long enough.

But I seriously disagree with letting the whole system collapse or a similar notion. I do think Americans are capable of making the necessary changes in time to save ourselves. But what I see going on in Capital Hill and some aspects of the Executive branch do not give me comfort.

We have a serious courage deficit....and yes, I understand why. The other side are fucking monsters politically. Goddamned criminals, in fact. I just wish someone would have the courage to actually articulate that point.

[quaker bill]

23. The Truth

is generally not a compromise. It is also possible and even likely that neither pole of the current political debate has a full grip on it.

This does not mean that the Truth lies in the middle. One of the problems of the two party system is not so much that there are only two parties, but that it defines a linear model of political thought. There is a point on the far left and a point on the far right, and all else is defined as somewhere along a line in between.

My experience is that there is more than one dimension to this and that the Truth may not lie anywhere along the line of thought between the two extremes.

I agree with you on the courage deficit. The Bush admin's conduct of the wars reeks of this. Why did he pick a target (Iraq) where we had spent the previous decade demolishing their air defenses? (because he thought it would be a cakewalk with much glorious gun camera footage) Why did we choose a battle plan that was fast and light on troops? (to theoretically diminish the US casualties and expense - FAIL) Why did we depend on air power and not count the Iraqi civilians killed in the process? Why did he then cut our taxes and tell us to go shopping? Why did he ban photos of returning caskets?

He did not care to depend on our courage because it does not exist. As long as all "supporting the troops" meant was putting a yellow ribbon magnet on your bumper, he figured we would be good for that. If it meant paying taxes and seeing the body bags, sales would quickly plummet. This could be one of the very few cogent yet tragically accurate thoughts he had during his entire 8 years.

In the end, it was not the body bags from Iraq that did him in, because Iraq was a war zone and he could control our access to it. It was the body bags from Katrina, where Anderson Cooper could just hang out and roll tape, that ended that mess. It had to be something, too bad it had to be New Orleans.

Edited to add one further thought.

Revolutions are far easier to start than they are to control once they commence. Once events begin to unravel in this direction, control is diminished and emotional and stochastic factors begin to loom quite large. The outcome is not necessarily predicted by the initial direction of such movements. As Pilots are known to say, even the best landing is little more than a well controlled collision with the ground. We actually may be far better off with a good pilot who smoothes thing out a bit, even if the ride is not as exciting.

[cascadiance]

4. I guess we're seeing now a progression of what I felt earlier in the election...

... when I did a photoshop of what I felt was where we were being "herded" then...

[The Traveler]

5. I disagree with everything this man said!

Except for the first 18 or so paragraphs.

Sometimes, I read a post here and go, "Man, I wish I had authored that..." This is one of those times.

A great rant, Phil. Epic, really.

Need I add --- K&fuckin'R

Trav

[Mythsaje]

11. You and me both...

I do all right, but WOW.

[The Traveler]

14. We've both had our moments of eloquence

but this really is kinda exceptional. Guess its back to the word smithy for us, eh? :)

Trav

[4_TN_TITANS]

55. Me three... I used to be able to write like that n/t

[bertman]

6. Fuckin' A!! You took the words right out of my mouth. I mean, brain.

K & R R R

[bbgrunt]

8. whew! indeed. Brilliantly said.

[bvar22]

9. I think he was too kind.

K&R

[SammyWinstonJack]

46. Much too kind.

K&R! :applause:

[Mythsaje]

10. Very Nice, Phil...

I concur.

[emilyg]

12. k/r

[democrank]

13. You mean I`m not crazy after all?

Now that I know I really WAS seeing piles of you`re-kidding-me pixie dust everywhere, I feel...well...refreshed. I just knew those folks on the roofs in New Orleans wanted some of that ice melting in those trucks parked in Maine, but Heckuva Brownie became the story. I just knew the naked pyramids in Iraq had nothing to do with errant bad apples but leaders in Washington were more concerned with giving sermons on with-us-or-with-the-terrorists patriotism.

I couldn`t even do the McMansion math but the don`t-worry-be-happy-hucksters could and they did so every night on teevee. It was sky high re-fi madness disguised as old fashioned prosperity...the kind we read about that started with those great old Ellis Island stories. I heard almost no "leaders" step up to a microphone and say, "Wait a minute. How are these kids going to pay back an $80,000 student loan, buy a $210,000 house and drive a $35,000 car that gets 12 MPG? This is bullshit. Something isn`t right here."

We saw plenty of Paris Hilton, but did we see caskets with dead soldiers? Burned Iraqi children? Planeloads of taxpayer`s cash landing in Baghdad? Did we see the mercenaries we were paying for? The White Phosphorus? The torture planes? N-O. No. What we saw were fictitional glimpses of American prosperity, the kind Bush gave us by lowering taxes on multi-millionaires at the same time we were spending billions a month in Iraq.

If we weren`t manufacturing anything or saving anything or conserving anything or reusing anything, how could we maintain that Numero Uno thing? If we had 2,000,000 in prisons, homeless children pacing the sidewalks and people using Emergency Rooms for their primary health care, how could we be a beacon of anything, especially hope? When our "leaders" promised one thing and did another over and over and over, why did we zip our lips and send in the checks? And now we`re ready to give our approval to hiding torture photos. Apparently we think those raped children don`t deserve to have the truth told and those people we disappeared or killed don`t deserve so much as a hash mark on a helmet.

I`ll blame this on my age. I remember the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights Movement, the Women`s Movement. If all of us back then were as listless and submissive as so many are today, I shudder to think of what would have happened...or not happened. Today something different is honored...go along to get along. Be best friends with everyone in the room. Reach across the aisle, even if they whack your fingers off with a machete every time, keep reaching. Hire image consultants and wire people up to emote-machines. Find out which words work. If all else fails, hire Frank Luntz to do a focus group about flag pins. "Wallpapering over the rot" is an understatement.

[rhett o rick]

19. I agree, but still not certain you're not crazy. nm

[tom_paine]

15. K & R for the awful truth...

[MasonJar]

16. A hard hit but dead on. Go to Sibel Edmonds web page (123realchange.blogspot.com)

to get a clearer idea of just how off center we are.

[rhett o rick]

18. I know how off center we are. What I need to know is what we are going to do about it. nm

[rhett o rick]

17. yes

[Old Codger]

20. I'll be damned

I was afraid I was the only one who felt like that, thank you for saying something I saw/felt but am incapable of expressing in any underestandable for....

[femrap]

21. k and r

I likey. Can we now attack the true bad dudes.....the Corporations and specifically those that run them...like the CEOs and the largest shareholders of Chase, Monsanto, and AIG for starters?

Thx.

[Ikonoklast]

45. As a citizen of this country, and a taxpayer, you are one of the owners

of AIG.

[femrap]

83. I show up at the CEO's office

tomorrow for work.

[Senator]

22. K&R

[Tumbulu]

24. So well written, thanks (nt)

[DireStrike]

25. Yep. I sometimes forget that not everyone is thinking this.

It's the inevitable conclusion though.

[farmboxer]

26. I voted for health care, but that will "never" happen

because the rich do not need universal health care. Our politicians already have universal health care and such a fantastic retirement. We will probably all die in the streets. SICKO was a good documentary. Where is Michael Moore now? We need help from the damned plutocrats.

[defendandprotect]

29. Michael Moore is working on a new documentary about Wall Street . . .

but it is up to US all to put enough heat on our elected officials to move them

in the right direction. It's gotta be a daily thing -- and probably getting out

into the streets!

[Amonester]

30. Re: Michael Moore (DO SOMETHING:)

DO SOMETHING:
50-City Single-Payer Events on May 30th (tomorrow)

http://www.michaelmoore.com/

[defendandprotect]

27. The road to ending all of this insanity is ending campaign fund BRIBERY . . .

[Mithreal]

28. K&R nt

[VPStoltz]

31. Somebody needs and editor...

[Mythsaje]

32. Yup...

AND how.

[Greyhound]

54. I think you were looking for the word 'an'.

Oh the irony...

[ChiciB1]

76. I Caught That! Glad You Said It FIRST!! Irony Indeed!!! n/t

[Political Heretic]

33. We are not alone, and our eyes are wide open. K&R

[TheMachineWins]

34. Great rant, I like to call the whole mess the "fictionalization of deregulated capitalism"

Someone else called it "a false construct based on a propaganda premise". It's finally collapsed and most people don't even realize it yet.

[DUlover2909]

35. Best post I have seen ever. I wish I could recommend a million times.

You encapsulate so well what I have been feeling about this torture stuff and the overall miasma left unto us from the Bush crime syndicate.

:dem: :kick: :thumbsup: :yourock:

[rhymeandreason]

36. Jeepers!

"insect-bran stridulations" fer crissakes, someone call Orkin. What a great post!

[man4allcats]

37. You can say THAT again! ;-)

To put it more succinctly and far less eloquently, a good coat of paint will cover up a lot of sins, but the sins are still there. Eventually and inevitably, they will surface. It will take more than a good coat of rhetoric and fancy oratorical paper hanging to fix this mess. In fact, there's not enough paint or paper in the world to even begin to cover it up. Either we and our leaders have the courage to strip it down to the foundation and get rid of the rot, or we live with the consequences of our cowardice.

[puebloknot]

38. Truth to savor -- with poetic sauce. Fantastic. A recipe for the saving ...

... of our democratic republic -- the "if you can keep it" one that Ben Franklin referred to.

[democracy1st]

39. K & R great piece

[Hubert Flottz]

40. K&R

Placebo against Cancer...

[Enthusiast]

41. K&R- We can't continue to pretend,

or simply try to forget. The MSM is completely useless in helping us return to reality. Needless to say.

[Soylent Brice]

42. very vivid depiction of our current predicament.

K&R

and welcome to DU

:hi:

[Joanne98]

43. I just posted this. HI PHIL!

:hi:

[Ninga]

44. Articulate, and stunning. Here is my simple offering on the subject.

We are all frogs sitting in a pot of water.

The heat is turned on.

The water begins to warm, and we frogs still sit in the pot.

Eventually, slowly, bit by bit, we frogs unaware, are sitting in water that will come to a boil.

The End.

The first step toward resolution is an assessment written down so that clarity is present.

Next comes courage.

[PainPerdu]

47. Acquiescent Accomplices

"Evil flourishes when good people do absolutely nothing." Edmund Burke

[Vidar]

48. Brilliant piece.

[Butch350]

49. K.I.S.S.

You could have taken ONE SENTENCE from each of your paragraphs to summ up the situation.

Extracting the few pertinent pieces of information from your tedious thesis basically sheds no
new light on anything. Get a way from the Tale of Two Cities thing - too many trees died for this post!

Welcome to the NWO. Now that you've so elaborately summed it up - there is still nothing you can do about
it except go on with your life and write that novel you apparently are training for.

[Greyhound]

56. So, he did go a bit overboard with some of the metaphors, but take it from

experience, painting those pictures succinctly will get single digit responses and recs.

I'd say that this was pretty damn good for this medium.

[Butch350]

61. Touché !

[Mythsaje]

57. No trees died, but many electrons were inconvenienced n/t

[Infinite Hope]

50. I haven't agreed with all Obama has done or not done, but to say there hasn't meaningful reform...

is to have a selective memory.

[urgk]

63. But...but...I want it NOW. ;-)

Gooses, geeses
I want a goose to lay gold eggs for Easter
At least a hundred a day
And by the way

I want a feast
I want a bean feast
Cream buns and doughnuts
And fruitcake with no nuts
So good you could go nuts
Give it to me now

I want a ball
I want a party
Pink macaroons
And a million balloons
And performing baboons and
Give it to me now

I want the world
I want the whole world
I want to lock it
All up in my pocket
It's my bar of chocolate
Give it to me now

I want today
I want tomorrow
I want to wear 'em
Like braids in my hair and
I don't want to share 'em

I want a party with roomfuls of laughter
Ten thousand tons of ice cream
And if I don't get the things I am after
I'm going to scream

I want the works
I want the whole works
Presents and prizes
And sweets and surprises
Of all shapes and sizes
And now
Don't care how, I want it now
Don't care how, I want it now

(ARTIST: Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley
TITLE: I Want It Now
Lyrics and Chords)

[serbbral]

65. I agree with Infinite Hope......

I may not agree with everything he's done either, but I think he has made some great strides or at least has tried to for his first 100 days. I will start criticizing his Presidency when the man has been in office for more than a year or two. We haven't forgotten that it hasn't even been a year, have we? Have we forgotten what a mess he has inherited? He is not God or Jesus Christ or whoever you believe in, etc. He cannot clap his hands and make all crisis disappear or make things the way WE want them. NO ONE could do that. No matter who you wanted in office.

[Infinite Hope]

85. Just 4 short months and I like the changes that have occurred in that time, especially...

the environmental reforms.

[ChiciB1]

77. I Think There's Too Been Too Much "HOPE" Injected Into Politics

and not enough REALITY! Up thread the post about the frogs sums it up with very few words!

I WISH I could make a difference, but having recently written BOTH my Senators, my Representative, the Federal Reserve and the OCC about a certain matter, and then not having EVEN ONE of the above take the time to respond was almost too much!

It said VOLUMES without ONE WORD from them!! I mean nothing and nothing I do will make any difference! It's almost laughable about how very LOST I feel!! Depression abounds! I sometimes just want to go to my room, get in bed and throw the covers over my head and NEVER peek out again!

[ChiciB1]

78. Too Many Too's... But I Think The Message Stand! Can't Help Myself...

my OCD gets the better of me and I have to "correct" my mistakes when I see them! I don't ALWAYS catch them and that bothers me too!!!

[abq e streeter]

51. Sometimes I skip posts this long, or get about halfway through...( ADD, sorry)

but I could not stop reading this... magnificent. And glad to see the many posts agreeing with you. As I said in my profile when I first joined DU, I have no ideology, save for what makes sense to me. I get so annoyed at those who dismiss any concerns about the direction the Obama administration is going on many key issues as being immature whiners who" didn't get my pony". It is right and necessary to unflinchingly look at what is going on and calling it what it is, as one sees it, and if that includes criticizing Democrats then so be it. Mr. Rockstroh, I am a musician who is occasionally a lyricist and would- be poet, but I bow to your obviously far superior skills at expressing oneself. You have said pretty much exactly what I and obviously many others are thinking and feeling, but so much more powerfully and eloquently than I could have. Thank you.

[The Hope Mobile]

52. K & R

:kick:

[Dystopian]

53. KandR. Brilliant. n/t

[hfojvt]

58. it was the best of times, it was the worst of times

So, you take every cliche and hyperbolic critique for how bad things are and then claim the answer is so simple "it's time to embrace the horror". Become pessimistic and hopeless, admit how bad things are, and also release the torture photos.

Naturally, this message, (which is very well written in terms of adjectives, metaphors and clever turns of phrase as well as a sort of auto-didactic summary of almost every complaint and fear of DU) will be lapped up by a group of pessimists who are already adamant about the need to release the torture photos.

Plus, our Democratic President is apparently an empty suit "Barack Obama's bland charm". Another message bound to be lapped up by those who hate the other corporatist party.

Overall, I give it three thumbs down :thumbsdown: :thumbsdown: :thumbsdown:

[mistertrickster]

59. Just kill yourself. It's a lot faster. (heavy sarcasm)

Look, folks,

Our history is replete with major seismic upheavals . . . the Civil War, for instance.

So what if it's not a perfect world. You want perfect, die and go to heaven.

The joy of life comes from the struggle to do what's right especially when it's not easy.

Grow a pair and carry on.

[truedelphi]

82. Huh? n/t

[katty]

60. K&R

[Riverman]

62. Excellent! The phrasology right-on! Need for National Therapy!

Can't fix any problem - and most can be fixed, without first looking at it, fessing up to it, acknowledging it and most importantly feeling it as this author so beautifully laid before our eyes! Must walk directly into the fire and through it to fully feel the heat, the burn, the searing pain in order to come out the other side, maybe scared, but emboldened to take the slow steps to correct the condition that led to the creation of the problem, and resolve and act to never repeat those mistakes again. It is painful, it does take time and it is necessary! Or, continue to stagger to and over the cliffs!

[robertpaulsen]

64. Here's the core issue: Until you change the way money works, you change nothing.

You seem to have a very informed understanding of just how truly fucked up our country is. I agree that reestablishing justice by prosecuting the dark actors in the Deep State would be a truly cathartic action that would spell REAL CHANGE in no uncertain terms to the rest of the world. But nailing the traitors responsible for destroying America doesn't solve the problems they exacerbated and exploited.

Our economic infrastructure is still dependent on a paradigm of infinite growth through consuming finite resources using a fiat currency to represent the energy we've depleted. Something's got to give. Unless President Obama has the foresight and the guts to cut his losses by severing his ties with the Goldman Sachs coterie of doom and start listening to alternative economic perspectives from the likes of William Greider and Mike Whitney who foresaw this crisis years in advance, we will just be papering our way to a Weimar Republic on steroids. If he were a true visionary, he might take the advice in Richard Heinberg's The Oil Depletion Protocol or Michael Ruppert's A Presidential Energy Policy: Twenty-five Points Addressing the Siamese Twins of Energy and Money to truly reorganize our economic infrastructure so that we can change the way money works for the benefit of the many, rather than the top 1 percent.

[truedelphi]

68. Right now, what is giving is that the middle incomed is no longer able

To ride out their lives using credit. Credit for most people is gone! Credit even for most banks is gone! (It is possible that most littler banks, who will not be favored by the "Too Big To Fail Establishment" will be seized by the Powers that Be and held in receivership, as they will simply not be offered the monies they need.)

But for now, the middle incomed is given yet another jobless method of securing survival - WELFARE. County, state or some form of Federal Assistance. Being in my fifties, I know of so many other people in their fifties who are suddenly deciding to apply for Disability via Social Security. Few employers are hiring the fifty somethings. Food stamps, and maybe a basket of food from a local church each week. County or state based medical insurance and Doctor payments.

A once proud and vital middle class, who tamed the West, invented the major appliances of the Modern day era (Electricity, and airplanes, cars, telephones, computers, laser technology, advances in health care) is now on the dole. And sadly, for many of the older Americans it will be for good.

[roberto]

66. good but unrealistic

If you let the system decay, as you meant it, so radically, we'll have a "coup d'etat" at home. Already within Bush and co, we were leaving under a permanent semi "coup d'etat". When the economic crisis will attain its highest level, when millions and millions of people will be looking for jobs (that do not exist ...), when the europeans and chinese, and most of the economic world will be using euros or other currencies instead of dollars (no more credits under the business as usual scenario), when other countries will blow out the american bonds given that the even the paper-gold will be de-valuated, the old system, will try to come back, and they will try to come back strong, for a last battle (strong america) as the nazis during the Ardene's battle. If the change is too fast, we'll have it for sure because all the rest is happening already...

[truedelphi]

67. Whew! usually when I read something that is this creatively written, with soaring prose &

Surrealistically true statements, I circle one and emphasize it in my reply.

But I am left with a manuscript that has two sentences in every paragraph circled.

So I have chosen the most important of the sentences (though it is not the most creatively inspired)

President Obama and the Democratic Congress could have ridden a wave of public discontent towards meaningful reform, but instead they have hugged the shore

Yes they could have. Instead, they have stolen our money and robbed the future generations of the middle incomed class any way out. Feudalism, full stream ahead.

And forget that pesky sentence or two in the Constitution about not enabling nobility, Mr President and Constitutional scholar. You have enabled the Wall Street thieves into a nobility whose resources to purchase the most magnificent of realities, while although stolen from Main Street, still leave us breathless as we ponder which Tropical Island will be purchsased by some new CEO and which symphony orchestra will be hired to be sent and then play to a select crowd at the top of that Tropical and almost Celestial Paradise.

[ChiciB1]

79. Sure JUMPS Out At You Huh??? So Much Does & Unfortunately So Much

sums up what so many millions of us are feeling! I can't get away from this thread, it has captivated me!

Those bold lettered words are like a dagger in my heart! I realize I sound overly maudlin but it's how I feel these days! I KNEW BFEE and WHAT they were, I DIDN'T see THIS coming!

[truedelphi]

81. me either. But a couple people here on DU told me it was coming

One poster told me last summer that they were for Hillary Clinton - not because they thought her policies would be better than Obama's - but because lacking his charisma, should her policies be bad, there would be massive opposition.

Obama is just so friggin' likeable that he can accomplish whatever he wants. And he is so busy socializing - who knows if he even realizes the ramifications of what he is sowing (Or should I have made that sentence the Rahm-ifications of what he is sowing?)

[earcandle]

69. May I post this on my website news section?

And thank you for your marvelous vision.
And clarity and language skills! 

[Raksha]

70. K & R for the Truth...

and yes, it's capital-T Truth, eloquently expressed. It's painful because the reality is painful, but it's even more painful if we turn away and try to pretend it isn't there. Many of us can't do that any more, because the reality burns through our closed eyelids like bright sunlight.

[wuvuj]

71. Are you sure you really want to see...

...the SHIT CAKE?

Most Americans are happy with the icing.....

[madmax]

72. k & r

[GeorgeGist]

73. Thank you ...

for taking the time to describe the sweet stench of anti-Socialism.

[ooglymoogly]

74. Pert near exquisite

Too many home runs to be missed....Too bad I got here too late to KR

bookmarked to read again

[ChiciB1]

75. What A SUPERIOR Post!!! There Have Been Times When I Look At

a VERY LONG post and think, jeez I can't read ALL THAT right now because if I do I won't have "time" to cover other issues.

BUT THIS TIME, I read EVERY SINGLE WORD and couldn't agree more! What you wrote hit me in the pit of my stomach where so much ACID has accumulated up to an including today!!! I have had to STOP watching MSM, CAN'T take so much of the "meaningless" babble that is rehashed from one program to another! I've even stopped watching C-Span, something I done for over 25 years! I've come to a point where I've JUST HAD ENOUGH!

I NO LONGER CARE what others HERE think when I disagree with the supposed NEW policies we THOUGHT we were going to see enacted! Where others ARGUE over and over that it's REAL CHANGE, GIVE IT MORE TIME, I say to myself... HOW MUCH MORE??? I say that to have let this administration even BEGIN this way is a mistake!! I'll let someone else list those issues that many of us feel betrayed by. They've been listed here before. Still, those like me are called out as "agitators" or even worse! Sticks & Stones, etc.!

This post is very probably the BEST one I've EVER read here, and one I UNDERSTAND and FEEL so intensely that it HURTS LIKE HELL!!

Words written here, words spewed on MSM and words splashed on billboards are NOTHING when NO ACTION is taken. I freely admit I have spent many many years TRYING so very hard to make a CHANGE only to come to a certain realization that my beliefs and hard work are simply being ignored and run over by power hungry people WITH MONEY!!

Thank you for your writing, thank you for speaking out... BUT WHEN will the time come when this nation has finally stopped letting our so called leaders keep lying to us? Or at the very least make them stop fiddling around the edges, throwing a few crumbs to make it's citizens think they are being truly led, and let us know that we live in a REAL Democracy?? The Pied Piper is still raging and in FULL FORCE, and all I feel I can do is hold on and try to stay clear of the worst of it!!

And to those of you who say... get up and DO SOMETHING... well don't think I haven't beat the pavement and given much more than many other citizens who don't even HAVE A CLUE!! Answers? I don't have any, and I don't know how or where to start anymore!!

Thank you again... I'm so sorry I was too late to recommend... but this one is superb!!!

[nvme]

80. Right on but verbose

[FlyByNight]

84. Makes me wonder...

Just how bad do things have to get before Pres. Obama has to fundamentally change course from corporatist friendly to progressive/liberal (if he can or ever will)? I realize it's still very, very early in his presidency and I knew he wasn't a liberal when I voted for him. However, I'm not fond of some tacks he's taken since he took office (too slow a pullout from Iraq, the escalation in the Afghan imperial graveyard, prolonged/preventive detention, unwillingness to prosecute war crimes, etc.). I get the feeling that there's not much margin for error and that precious time is wasting away.


:scared:

[PainPerdu]

86. Audacity or mendacity?

Ah,yes , the mendacity of nope.

Nope, I'm not gonna prosecute Bush,Chney,or Rumsfeld.

Nope, I'm not gonna relaese those torture photos.

Nope, I'm not gonna quit giving the usurers on Wall Street any more taxpayer's $$$.

Nope,I'm not gonna demand Israel give up HER Nuclear arms.

NOPE....................

[Martin Eden]

87. Eloquent RANT but what does it mean?

What corrective measures are the author proposing other than releasing the Abu Ghraib pics and dismantling our "dark tower of self-imprisoning delusions"?

The latter is certainly a prerequisite for any meaningful positive CHANGE, but how should that change manifest itself in terms of, say, our poltical/economic system?