Classicide - Gassing the American Middle Class

[arendt]

Five and a half years ago, I essayed that our middle class was being decimated:

We are at war all right. It is war on the American Middle Class and the American Constitution; and it has been going on for two years already. If you haven't noticed, the middle class is losing without putting up a fight. In fact, it is voting for the people who are shooting at them. That makes it about as clueless as the Polish Jews who allowed themselves to be stuffed into cattle cars, hoping for the best.

Some middle class folks (mostly libertarians who don't understand that their status as 'useful idiots' has been revoked) think they can help the aristos to rationalize the economy. Like the helpful Jewish engineer in Schindler's List, they will discover that giving unrequested advice to the masters, even when trying to help , will be rewarded with a bullet to the head.

To paraphrase Commandant Goeth, the Southern Republican Fundamentalist Party is saying:

"For two centuries there has been a middle class democratic America. By the time of the next rigged, phony presidential election, those two centuries will be a rumor. They never happened."

Clearcutting the Middle Class (posted January 8, 2003)
http://journals.democraticunderground.com/arendt/54

Gee, not to toot my own horn or anything, but how did that "rigged, phony presidential election" of 2004 work out for you all? And, are you looking forward to the rigged, phony presidential election of 2008, complete with well-timed assault on Iran? Maybe, just maybe, you might want be interested in this update on the prognosis for the American middle class.

----

After seven years of Bush rule, it is more clear than ever that the super-rich 0.1% in America loathe the middle class that FDR created as much as pre-WW2 European anti-Semites loathed nouveau riche, assimilated Jews. It did not matter that those Jews were competent and loyal to the existing order. It only mattered that they were too "other", too intelligent, and too successful. Likewise, it does not matter to the American elites that the middle class made America rich and successful, that they want to join country clubs, buy yachts, and generally ape the rich.

To the super-rich, the middle class are not humans. In their scheme, there is only the master class and its slaves. The middle class, with its demands for regulation of unscrupulous business practices and for progressive taxation, is a threatening, unwashed "other", which momentarily reduced their share of the national income from 40% to 20%. But, no worries. Not only is the parasitical super-rich's share back to 40% under Bush, but the middle class is on its way to the showers - not in the baseball sense of the term, but in the Auschwitz sense.

In the American economy, petroleum is like oxygen. Lack of petroleum will kill this society faster than lack of water or lack of food. Like oxygen, petroleum is what runs our auto-dependent suburbs, our manufactured fertilizer agriculture, our imported from China economy. Taking petroleum away from America is like taking oxygen away from mammals. By raising its price to levels unaffordable by the middle class, via market manipulation (in the absence of any real shortage), the super-rich are deliberately killing the middle class - gassing them to death.

I have read that, when they opened the gas chambers after a mass murder, the capos (prisoners who did the dirty work in exchange for continuing to live) found the victims formed into a grisly pyramid underneath the hole for the exhaust fan, with the youngest and strongest victims on the top of the pyramid. This happened because, when faced with death, they all tried to live. They fought and crawled over each other for the last breath of un-poisoned air. The strongest did indeed make it to the top; but they still died.

I find it ironic that libertarians, and other "useful idiot" sympathizers of the right, who constantly fell for the Social Darwinistic worldview pushed by the GOP, are finally waking up to the fact that they have been had. But, only because they too are fighting for oxygen/petroleum with all the other victims of the gangster elite.

Nevertheless, worshippers of economic fundamentalism have a better chance of survival than people with humanistic principles. Libertarians have the self-centered mindset most likely to join the capos, to make their living by prying the gold teeth out of the dead victims' mouths. And, make no mistake about it, only capos (and other collaborators and sellouts, like the Pelosi/ Hoyer /Reid leadership of the Democratic Party) will survive the "classicide" now underway in America without becoming slaves.

In case you hadn't noticed, the only industries booming in America today are industries that prey on the economic and social misery of the ex-middle class: foreclosure experts, payday loan shops, outsourcers, temporary agencies, pawnshops, managers of cold-call boiler-rooms, HMO middlemen, military and private prison contractors, university presidents, and all the other sickening scavengers picking over the murdered corpse of FDR's America. And, while most super-rich are squemish about the actual murder, I have yet to see any of them intervene to stop it. After all, its not "their kind" that are suffering. Its only those "unwise, uppity" people who got in over their heads who are getting a lesson in economics - a lesson that will last for generations, if not forever.

The middle class in general is far from blameless in this classicide. As I said five years ago (was it really that long?) they remind me of those obedient, trusting Jews who packed the alloted one suitcase for their railroad trip to the camps. In America today, the middle class ran out to buy a worthless McHouse with a subprime mortgage, and they are now on a one-way trip to the poorhouse.

Just as the Nazis threw those suitcases in a heap, to later be picked over for jewelry or other valuables, the American elites long since made their money closing the deal on those subprime mortgages. As far as the elites are concerned, those houses are just so many cardboard suitcases - rubbish to be picked over for some pocket change.

----

In closing, if you still have a middle class job in America (hey, even if you only haven't yet been packed off to our world's largest prison system for some trivial offense), you should be thinking about an interesting statistic. The survival rate in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1944 was higher than the survival rate in the concentration camps. Yes, the middle class's situation is hopeless at this point; but we can go out fighting instead of rolling over for the likes of Pelosi, Reid, Hoyer, and Rahm Emmanuel's DSCC.(footnote)

America is not the world. Long after the demise of middle class America, historians in parts of the world that remained civilized will ask how we could have been so docile, so stupid. The answers will include television, suburbia, and corn syrup. Those historians will praise people who futilely, but bravely, resisted, like the Warsaw fighters and the July bomb plotters. They will honor people who did human things in the midst of barbarism, like Schindler and Raoul Wallenberg. They will have nothing but contempt for "good fundamentalist Christian Americans".

People always have a choice. You still have the power to determine how you will be remembered. Use that power wisely.

arendt

-------------

Footnote: The DLC/DSCC crowd reminds me of the Russian Army, which encouraged the Ghetto uprising to weaken the Germans, and then sat outside the city while the partisans were hunted down like rats. When the war was over, the people of Warsaw were no better off under the Soviets than under the Nazis. However, the ultra-nationalist Polish rightwing did appreciate the "cleansing" done for them. Contemplate that before you donate to the rich, pro-war candidates that the DSCC/DCCC has favored over genuine Iraq War veterans (like that clown in Florida who says he owes the Democratic Party nothing).

[LongTomH]

1. K&R

:kick:

[knitter4democracy]

2. K&R. Very good points.

I often wonder what the next 20 years are going to be like.

[SalmonChantedEvening]

3. K&R Well done arendt. n/t

[BeHereNow]

4. The transformation of the entire country to a Warsaw ghetto is nearly complete.

As will soon be witnessed by those trying to leave with US based assets.
They global elite have a tool that previous dictators did not.
Technology.
No need for barbed wire fences.
A flip of the switch can simply put you in economic prison.

BHN

[skooooo]

32. oh please...

The entire county is not a Warsaw ghetto.

:eyes:

People who died in the Warsaw ghetto would turn over in their graves right now if they knew what you wrote.

[truedelphi]

72. Except that no Warsaw ghetto ever exists at the beginning of a holocaust

First what happened during the Third Reich was that entire Jewish European villages shut down, as the people were no longer allowed to work due to the Jewish star on their clothes. People simply sat inside their homes, waiting, though most didn't know what they waited for.

So unemployment is the first step towards the holocuast.


Everyone in this country is taught to believe that holocausts are against the Jewish people and only the Jewish people, when in truth Hitler modelled his extermination policies against the Jews on those policies that our government used against the Native Americans in the 1870's through the 1890's.

And it is now occurring against America's middle income person. Those who are expendable are finding out what the Fourth Reich is all about - no food, or rent money, the only shelter offered that of friends or family or the back seat of the family car. (One good use of all those SUV's that we purchased.) Forget working if you don't already have a job. And forget eating, and paying for medications.

And countless times across America, Americans who are not feeling good, and can't afford to take the time off to get themself feeling better, find their job perfomance suffers and then they are fired.

The suicide rate that was already intolerably high within six months of W taking office, is now several notches higher. What else can aperson in their fifties who is laid off going to do? If it is this bad now, what will it be like AFTER WE ATTACK IRAN!! And what will it be like five years from now??

[Sheets of Easter]

78. Again, you're comparing something that already happened to what-ifs.

I am really, really, really SICK of people using Nazism as an analogy for what is currently going on in the US. There is NO comparison.

[arendt]

82. Right. And there is no connection between convicted Nazi financier Prescott Bush and his grandson...

George.

If you are sick of people using the analogy, then you might just wonder if you are sick the way daylight makes a vampire sick.

arendt

[skooooo]

92. Your ridiculous hyperbole...

...undermines your argument that elements of fascism have cropped into American political life. Lose the hyperbole and people will be more open to your ideas.

[arendt]

97. I assume you were responding to some other poster, since there is no hyperbole in my post...

just a lot of snarky innuendo; and the fact that Prescott Bush was convicted of trading with the enemy in time of war.

arendt

[skooooo]

100. sorry arendt

[arendt]

101. Its ok. happens all the time. n/t

[skooooo]

107. no wait...

You're OP does have ridiculous hyperbole. That's what I was referring to.

[arendt]

110. Well then why did you wait twelve hours to say something...

this is getting to be a regular thing with my threads. They get a lot of recs, and after about a day, the bashers like you come out of the woodwork with their whining - oooh, you used hyperbole crap.

Hyperbole is a valid literary device. Get over it.

arendt

[skooooo]

111. Get over it yourself hothead.

[arendt]

112. Cutting riposte. n/t

[Sheets of Easter]

99. to back you up- I never denied that was the case.

On a political spectrum, what's happening today is unique, but if had to be compared to something, it would be Fascist Italy with a heaping dollop of the Gilded Age. The Nazi Germany comparisons are factually incorrect and oftentime based on hyperbole.

[tom_paine]

108. Hyperbole, you say? Please take 20 minutes to listen to this please.

This radio show was produced by the BBC after reading the lengthy testimony of the 1935 House UnAmerican Activities Committee, which ad been sealed until 2000, I believe.

Listen with an open mind, please, and considering the source and reserach, if you are actually interesting in learning just how much "hyperbole" it is.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/document/document_20070723.shtml

[MonkeyFunk]

113. When was Prescott Bush convicted?

What was he convicted of?

[arendt]

114. Google is your friend...

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Brown_Brothers_and_Company

Six days after Pearl Harbor and the US declaration of war at the end of 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau and US Attorney General Francis Biddle signed the Trading With the Enemy Act, which banned any business interests with US enemies of war. Prescott Bush continued with business as usual, aiding the Nazi invasion of Europe and supplying resources for weaponry that would eventually be turned on American solders in combat against Germany.

On October 20, 1942, the U.S. government had had enough of Prescott Bush and his Nazi business arrangements with Fritz Thyssen. Over the summer, The New York Tribune had exposed Bush and Thyssen, whom the Tribune dubbed "Hitler's Angel." When the US government saw UBC's books, they found out that Bush's bank and its shareholders "are held for the benefit of ... members of the Thyssen family, is property of nationals ... of a designated enemy country."

The list of seven UBC share holders was:

E. Roland Harriman - 3991 shares

Cornelis Lievense - 4 shares

Harold D.Pennington - 1 share

Ray Morris-- 1 share

Prescott S. Bush - 1 share

H.J. Kouwenhoven - 1 share

Johann G. Groeninger - 1 share.

The UBC books also revealed the myriad of money and holding companies funneled from the Thyssens and the government realized UBC was just the tip of the iceberg. On November 17, 1942, the US government also took over the Silesian American Corporation, charged Prescott Bush with violating the "Trading With the Enemy Act", but did not prosecute Bush for the reasons Higham noted earlier. The companies were allowed to operate within the Government Alien Property custodian office with a catch - no aiding the Nazis. In 1943, while still owning his stock, Prescott Bush resigned from UBC and even helped raise money for dozens of war-related causes as chairman of the National War Fund.

arendt

[MonkeyFunk]

136. So he wasn't charged and wasn't charged and wasn't convicted.

thanks.

[tom_paine]

119. Is this one of your "good discussion threads"?

Here's a link for you to listen to, though we both know you will do no such thing, from the BBC, those unrelaible rascals:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/document/document_20070723.shtml

40 years from now, if everything hasn't gone all to shit by then, someone JUST like you will be sneering on some discussion board

What was George W. Bush ever convicted of?

OK, now give me your one-liner reply. Why oh why do I waste my time?

[MonkeyFunk]

137. Did you notice that I didn't start this thread?

I asked a question, because I believed the assertion that Prescott Bush had been convicted was mistaken. Turns out I was right.

What is your problem? Why are you being such a dick to me every time I post? Grow up.

[tom_paine]

139. Wow, a two-liner! And I just pointed out why your question was misleading and irrelevant

Why it was a customary for you, lovely non sequitur.

And I KNEW you wouldn't listen to the BBC link. You don't listen to others...ever.

When someone like you is posting 40 years from now, blithering the same non sequitur nonsense

What was George W. Bush ever convicted of?

you will be serving the same people YOU serve today with your ignorance arrogance and uber-dickishess.

By the way I'd like to make a note that BOTH times now, it is YOU who have started the cursing. Exactly what's to be expected of a dick like you, you child. But I am not so civilized that I won't return the favor IN SPADES when you start cursing me, asshole.

You ask me to grow up? That's a laugh, like Sean Hannity asking me to be calm and reasonable. Who's the grownup, the person who explains themselves and tries to discuss most of the time (nobody's perfect, you dick) or the pseudo-cryptic dick who tries to wow everybody with one-liners designed to evoke forehead-slapping in children or childish minds.

Got news for you, pal. I am grown up; have been for more than two decades. I served my country in uniform, how 'bout you? (we both know you won't answer that, Mr. Pseudo-enigmatic) How old are YOU Monkey? We both know you won't answer that either.

Why? Because we both know you and the dicks like you don't do answers. You do smart-ass and not much else. For all I know you are a smart-ass pimpled-faced college punk. You sure talk like one.

Apologies to all the college-age people who are not dickish punks like Monkey here. I know most of you aren't, so please don't take my insult to Monkey as a personal insult to you, it is not intended that way.

Further, you exaggerate, based on what we scientists call a very small data sample, the last three days or so. If you insist on spreading your Russert-like bullshit on threads I am posting in, I am bound to see it. And I happen to be in a mood lately where your dickishness needs to be answered. Most times I can ignore your dickishness more easily.

Other times, as you well know, we go months without "speaking" to each other.

Go find some eight-year olds to be dazzled by your one-liners, and you won't have to bother about grownups refuting your misdirecting, misleading, unexplained nonsensical one-liners. I believe the Cartoon Channel Discussion Board is calling out to you. Bet you'd kick ass over there!

What exactly are you doing here, Monkey? I mean, other than to be a Big Dick for Hillary.

But it's over now. Why then, do you stay? And are you going to vote for the Democratic Nominee in November?

Yes, yes, I know you won't answer, but I like exposing your fraud so every question I know you won't answer, you pseudo-cryptic dick who is transparent anyway, I am going to mention it.

You have not disappointed so far. You are 3 for 3, and after this post you'll be 6 for 6.

I have already wasted enough time on you, dick. I am trying to be as brief as possible, not always easy for me as I have the penchant, unlike a dick like you, to try and explain myself, make myself clear to people.

But I guess a person only has to do that if they are here to discuss, debate, and exchange ideas. It is quite clear you are here to be a arrogant dick, which I feel compelled to add you do a VERY good job at.

One last question for you not to answer, Do you consider this sub-thread one of your "good discussion posts"?

I knew you were full of shit about your many mythic "good discussion posts". You're full of shit about damned near everything, dick.

[MonkeyFunk]

156. I simply asked what Prescott Bush had been convicted of, and when.

turns out he wasn't convicted now, was he?

Not every question requires a paragraphs-long phrasing. I was simply interjecting an historical point.

And my college years are far behind me. I just turned 47.

My point was that it was dumb to take such great offense to my question, and the length of its format. And it's something you've been doing to me consistently lately, and it's stalkerish.

[tom_paine]

157. Oh please, what a drama queen you are. I'm stalking you? ROFL!

:rofl: :rofl:

Not only a drama-queen, but thin-skinned, too!

Just exactly what is your definition of consistency? Two or three sub-threads in six months? Woooo. Scary. :scared:

If you actually think I am stalking you :rofl: :rofl: take it up with the admins.

After all they have all the records. They can confirm that the first thing I do EVERY DAY is to search "MonkeyFunk" so I can seek you out and find every single post, then respond. :rofl:

Not every post? It must be at least half your posts, then, if I am a demented stalker. A quarter of your posts? An eighth? No, a sixteenth! How 'bout one-thirty-secondth? Still not that high a percentage of your posts "stalked"? I'm going to have to get into scientific notation, soon, to describe the tiny fraction of your posts that I respond to. :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

Woooooo....scary. :scared:

Go ahead, contact the admins and SEE what they say about your ridiculous paranoia.

I am going to continue to go on as I have always gone on. I am going to post in the threads I wish to post in. If you happen to be there, and I choose to respond, I will respond. If I don't, I won't. Usually, I don't. That's IF I even see you during the course of a given week, which I ususally don't.

I am going to say what I want to say to you when I want to say it, got it? You don't like it, put me on ignore. But don't think for a MOMENT that I am going to be intimidated by false accusations of stalking.

Take it up with the mods and admins. They've got all the records.

Excuse me now, I've got to bust a gut laughing at you.

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

[MonkeyFunk]

158. Ah, smilies make a weak argument.

You attack me in many threads for no reason. You carry fights from one thread to another. You insult and attack simply because I don't think the US is like Nazi Germany in the 30s. My position is perfectly reasonable and you have no interest in actually discussing it - you just want to insult me for disagreeing with you. That's dickish.

[tom_paine]

159. Let's see, your message: lie, lie, lie belying poor understanding, perfectly reasonable for pre-

2000 America, for today ... not so much (to steal from Jon Stewart)

Lie of projection (Mr. One-Liner accusing me of not wanting to discuss. That's positively Bushian! What an excellent Hillary Dick you must have made!).

Lie of projection. You proved it again. I got away from cursing as soon as you did. I have followed your lead 100% in that regard, you pompous, self-important pseudo-cryptic dick. Only cursing you when you cursed me first. But you couldn't stop, could you, Mr. Projection? I happily return the favor in sapdes, dick.

And YOU are the one who routinely uses your pathetic one-liners to insult simply because you disagree with someone.

Project much? Oh my my yes you do. The dick who projects his dickishness onto others.

And are you so so stupid, dick, that you thought my similes were meant to ARGUE with you? Not too bright, are you? The similies are meant to express how much I am gleefully mocking you. You couldn't be that stupid, could you? No, just another one of your weak Straw Men, like the stalker bullshit. I guess that's better than your usual fare, the non-sequitur one-liner.

I noticed you dropped the stalker bullshit. Doesn't it suck when you get caught in a lie, drama queen?

Keep up your lying dickhead projecting bullshit much as you like. I am starting to enjoy this.

It amuses me that you can't let it go. It amuses me that every time you open your mouth, it gives me an excuse to make you look even more foolish than last time. Every time you curse at me, I enjoy the release of being able to return it tenfold.

Do it again...please.

[truedelphi]

87. Before you dismiss us so lightly, Read "They Thought They Were Free!"

Apparently no one here will ever convince you of what is going down.

But the one person who carefully analyzed what happened in Germany during the early pre-war years (1933 to Kristlenacht) might educate you.

What is going on here is EXACTLY what happens inside a fascist state.

Among other elements are these:

A media that slants the news to the benefit of corporations or the State. (In fact, I would argue that our media does far less reporting than what occurred under Hitler. During the Third Reich, the newspapers carried reports of the opening of certain concentration camps. WHen that happens here, those items will be left uncovered if Britney gets her nose pierced that day.) A controlled media is the first requirement of a totalitarian state.

A demand for wholesale conformism - in Hitler's day, everyone putting up a flag on their home. Now a days, everyone wearing a flag lapel pin while running for office.

Unemployment for those who are deemed "unacceptable." In Hitler's era, that was the Union Leaders, the communists, the Jews, dissidents, and certain types of outspoken Catholics. Nowadays, the unemployed here are those who, after a medical bankruptcy, have poor credit and so cannot be employed. Anyone else with bad credit. People over the age of 45. People between the ages of sixteen and nineteen.

A Reichstag event. In Hitler's era, the rallying event was the Reichstag fire. Blamed on a Jewish dissident. After that, Jews were labelled "terrorists" You were not apprehended so much because of your Jewish status, but because in the eyes of the State, you were now a terrorist. For instance, Anne Frank's family had committed the terrorist crime of having an illegal radio. That is what they were charged with. In our day, the events of 9/11 have moved the money of our government from normal civil affairs to Homeland Security. Laws depriving us of our civil liberties are put on the books, while our established rights are taken from us. (Please read about FISA's deeprer meaning - Turley covers this on an Olbermann YouTUbe video.) Already, poets have been arrested simply for speaking out through their poetry.

I would even argue that to a certain extent, life in Germany of 1933 to 1937 was rather splendid. The national health care system provided health programs for everyone who was not in the class of unacceptables. There was massive growth in unemployment, as long as you were not an unacceptable. People had two week vacations, for the first time since before WWI. Married couples of the middle class were able to expnd their families.

Many measures of the corrupt banking system were eliminated. German prosperity was so tremendous that in 1936, Life Magazine devoted huge amounts of magazine space to its accounts of all the wonders there.
(They also had two pages to the sad truth that Jewish people had to wear these little stars on their clothing, and couldn't be seen in the parks. But what was that against all the prosperity that Herr Hitler had brought to his nation?) Life Magazine reported on the Furher as well: He was called a "unifier" and praised for his abilities as a leader.

[truedelphi]

125. The other thing is, two or three times a year

Some friend calls me to say that at a dinner party, an elderly Jewish person takes them aside and says, "You know, things here are now as they were THERE!"

This has been going on since March of 2003.

I think that people who have personally experienced the S-L-O-W decline in a civilisation in the past, from a free society to a controlled society, are the PERFECT way for us to tell if what is happening here has gone over the line.

Also I forgot to mention, you could stand to read Naomi Wolf and her book about the ten steps to fascism.

[arendt]

126. Yes. Forgot about that. Funny how we must listen when Israel feels threatened, but not when...

our own Jewish population feels threatened.

You just reminded me. I have a way to talk to a 90-year old German (father of a friend of a friend). He's still sharp as a tack. I really want to hear his take on America under Bush.

arendt

[truedelphi]

146. My dad who would be 96 if he was still kicking (He died six years ago)

Called WWII the "war where they made me go and shoot down my cousins."

Way way back when I was a fourth grader, some one of the nuns at my school got on a harangue about how great our dads were for fighting in WWII. They were heroes who had undergone great deprivation to kill the heinous Nazis and yada yada yada.

So I am all fired up. I'm absolutelyinspired. I decided to meet my dad's train when he got off from work. He steps off the train, and I throw my little fourth grader arms around him. And on the walk home, I start in with "You are my hero, I love you for things you've done." And on and on.

Then I started in on how the Nazis were so evil and how good it was that my dad killed them all.

My dad turned white. He looked like a completely different person. I thought for a moment that he might hit me. (He had never hit me - in fact, when mom sent me off to the back bedroom for a spanking, this gentle giant would grab his belt, and after giving me instructions, would wallop the bed next to me with many hearty whacks, and I would "scream" in "pain" each time the bed was hit.)

Finally he found his voice. "Who has been telling you this nonsense? I thought we'd had a few talks about this?"

"The nuns at school, Daddy."

"Oh." He was very sad for a long moment. Then he found his voice. "The German people, like most people, are decent people. But their country was stolen out from under them by a group of thugs. And if that should ever happen here, if thugs should ever take control of our government, we would likely be corrupted just as they were."

He shook his head, blinking back tears. And we walked home the rest of the way in silence.

[Fridays Child]

5. The frog has been in the pot for decades. It's been only within the last few years, though...

...that the cooking water has neared the boiling point.

[BeHereNow]

6. As usual, with an Arendt post- K&R!

I repeat, though it makes you uncomfortable-
Arendt, you are a DU treasure.

BHN :applause: :thumbsup: :thumbsup: :thumbsup: :hi: :loveya: :hug:

[zeos3]

7. K & R

[SpiralHawk]

8. Aaaaarrrrrrrgggggghhhhhhhh!

The k and the r

[BeHereNow]

9. Already recommended, so here is a KICK!

O8)
BHN

[psychmommy]

10. k & r

chilling.

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

11. K&R. They ask us to dig our own graves...

...we ask, "How deep?"

[BeHereNow]

12. 20 recommendations, and only 11 responses? What's up with that???

BHN, shakes head in wonder.

[nashville_brook]

13. it's too depressing and too true.

sigh. not much left to say, except... here's my k and r.

[arendt]

15. That's me, Mr. Happy. n/t

[mdmc]

20. back in the day didn't your sig line have cartoon ducks in it

or something?

This is dark. I dig it. Thanks for the post. :kick:R

[Binka]

132. I Think You Are Thinking Of Arwalden....

[mdmc]

141. I must be

thanks:kick:

[arendt]

16. I appreciate your enthusiasm, but looking at your impending demise is an acquired taste...

most people don't respond because the subject is pretty awful - like attending the wake of a loved one.

I try to dress the situation up in historical analogies, so readers will realize that individual people survive when their dysfunctional societies commit suicide. But, that is cold comfort for most folks. Don't be too hard on them.

Thanks for reading and promoting.

arendt

[reggie the dog]

133. leave the USA while you can.

Other countries offer a better place to fight back from.

[arendt]

14. One more point: like the Nazis, they will prosecute killing the middle class to the detriment of...

winning the Oil War they started. They have diverted a lot of money from the war budget into domestic surveillance and concentration camps to contain people when the middle class economy collapses. Our leaders are as insane as the Nazis' leaders. "Faith-based" reality is more important to them than facts. Their ideology gets its big money adherents (and they are the only ones that count - the fundies are chumps) by talking about "purifying" America and creating a perfect "zero government" country for the "master class" of super-rich overlords.

The super-rich are used to buying anything they want. They believe in their own invincibility. They believe that dollars spent equals military power, even when those dollars are spent on boondoggles like star wars or the various useless weapons pork, like the Crusader artillery system or that useless VTOL plane or those worthless helicopters that never flew during the Bosnia conflict - or even worse, the outright looting by no-bid contractors, and the $1 B of cash handed out the back of an airplane. So far our military have been ATTEMPTING to stomp pipsqueeks, and barely holding its own. Wait until the Russians or the Chinese say "enough" - and I don't necessarily mean militarily...The Chinese can ruin this country (and hurt themselves badly, too) by simply stopping to loan money to us. The Russians can not only blackmail Europe by stopping the delivery of oil, but also, they can arm, train, and ally with Iran - turning it into a replay of North Viet Nam.

Just as the mass of the Nazi-sympathizing German people thought everything was just fine until the first 1,000 bomber raid on Hamburg (some time in 42 or 43), the mass of super-rich Americans has had no trouble at all from the great American class war. In fact, it has benefitted greatly from the class war looting of the middle class. But when Russia and China decide it will hurt them less to economically ruin us than to let us grab all of Iran and Iraq's oil, there is going to be some Hamburg on the menu in America - and the super-rich are simply not prepared.

Why are megalomaniacs all the same? Why do people never remember?

arendt

[tom_paine]

19. Yes. Nothing ever really changes, does it? Oh, the snake sheds it's skin, remarkets and rebrands,

but it's still the same snake.

I try to explain it and no one gets it. Amazing. Sometimes people sort of get it, butthen they say a variation what was said in 1942 and 1943 at the US State Dept.

Why would they be doing what you suggest if it would be so counter productive? Why would they actively be destroying the Goose That Laid the Golden Egg? they ask.

Because power is not rational, and lust for it, like the lust for sex, does not have to make sense. Because collectively the Armeikan Aristocracy is like those mokeys in that (perhaps mythical) 80s experiment where they were put into cages with an unlimited supply of water but they have to push a button to dispense food. Unfortunately for them, there is another button which dispenses cocaine.

In these experiments the monkeys starved becase they couldn't stop pushing the cocaine button, even though some part of their "rational" brain must have been screaming warnings of starvation, but the pleasure was too great to stop the self-destrcutive behavior, I reply.

What is this, 1943 all over again?

Why would the Germans be exterminating a whole group of peopleinthe middle of a war. Can you imagine how much rolling stock and other supplies they would have to be diverting from their war effort to do something like that, in the midst of a life-and-death struggle? How wasteful to eliminate the efforts of millions of potential workers when every worker is needed to increase the German War Effort.

Industrialized Death Camps...rubbish!

The answer then is very much the same as the answer now, but few could see it then and few can see it now.

Plus a change, plus a la meme chose (the more things change, the more they stay the same)

[arendt]

35. The cocaine monkeys! What a perfect analogy!

Also, the failure of rational people to comprehend what drove the Nazis.

Long ago, I opined that the super-rich were more than willing to spend half their fortune to wipe out the untermenschen of the middle class. They figure that, once the job is done, they will be able to sweat the money back in no time from the remaining slaves.

As Jay Gould remarked, "I can always hire half the working class to kill the other half." (paraphrase)

For the super-rich, it is about their Divine Right to rule.

arendt

[Frank Lemadeer]

103. I'm picturing a lake

with a glorious island in the center. The water in the lake is being drained away rapidly by the inhabitants of the glorious island and pumped into holding tanks underneath their island.

As the water level falls, the island is lifted higher by the expanding holding tanks, and as it rises higher and higher above the lake's falling surface it appears even more glorious and lofty. This pleases the island people very much.

The falling lake levels force the "water people" who once lived on the water back to the shore to join the shore people there.

The island is the island of the very wealthy. The water is the wealth of the middle class. When the water level in the lake was high, the shore, the water, and the island, and all the inhabitants of each, were almost the same level. They didn't stand out much above one another. There was some balance.

And as long as the water remained high, there was at least some opportunity for the shore people to cross to the island, or some distance closer to the island, buoyed by the water. Some water people could even manage to become island people.

Now, as the water is drained away, and the island pumped up so high by the expanded holding tanks, the poor shore people, whose numbers now include the former water people, see that all that is left is a growing, soon-to-be-impassible gulf between themselves and the inhabitants of the island.

The island people, on the other hand, have now begun to see themselves more than ever as nobles entitled to rule all the poor down on the shore, and to take and extract from them whatever they wish to maintain and lift up their island even higher and acquire for themselves. They have even begun to feel they are entitled to do whatever they want to the shore people, no matter what it is.

The pumps run 24/7 and guards are always stationed around the holding tanks to keep the lake from filling back up.

I'm not sure what sort of ending will be written to this little story.

[bertman]

73. Good question. Why would they?

I just recently read a book that was given to me by a friend who I have always considered kind of a nutcase because he reads all of this "strange" stuff that reeks of weird sci-fi geekery.

Side note: the Nazis had and used some of the brightest, most creative scientists on the planet to develop technologies that even now are only coming to light, but most of you probably already know this.

The book he gave me was entitled (and I think this is correct--if not I'll come back later and edit) Reich of the Black Sun. It is about the superweapons program that the Nazis had in place to develop nuclear weapons and other at-that-time unimaginable weapons. Without going into a lot of detail the book alludes to a number of Nazi industrial complexes that were built in remote areas of Germany, Poland and the Balkan states. According to the author these plants were operated with slave labor and were considered top-secret complexes, often disguised to appear as other "normal" manufacturing facilities.

Bottom line: they used their "free" labor to do the dangerous grunt work (radioactive exposure, for example) and treated them as disposable draft animals--or worse.

I realize this does not explain all of the death camps nor why they selected the Jews and gypsies, among other groups. Except that those relatively small, ethnic minorities would have been easier to stigmatize and turn into "the other" that they needed to do their worst work. Uhhhmmm, much like the muslim minority or the hispanic minority in the US of A.

This doesn't relate to the topic at hand, but the author argues that the Nazis did, in fact, test nuclear weapons on several occasions but were unable to get them into production in time to save their evil asses. And, of course, we all know that our American forces liberated many of the top Nazi scientists who went on to help US develop our formidable nuclear and black ops weaponry.

[truedelphi]

74. People have to be of a certain age to remember

I think that the RW can talk about a nuclear strike against Iran because right now so much of the populace was born AFTER the Cuban missile crisis.

IN september 1962, I lost my taste for nuclear action at the age of eleven. As I was standing at the corner that entered the two block shopping mecca of my modest Chicago neighborhood, a couple of old geezers stood talking. Then one of them, not noticing me, swept his arms across the expanse of stores, and streets and people, and said, "If the world leaders don't compromise, this won't be here a week from now."

BUt people born after that event never entertain the idea that nuclear war against US could occur. Just as easily as it almost did back then.

[Pooka Fey]

17. Another one knocked out of the ballpark, Arendt. K&R

[tom_paine]

18. A post which is even outstanding compared to your other outstanding posts!

My God, and the comparison of the DLC/DSCCers to the Soviets outside Warsaw is so apt, my mind is boggling at the clarity of the analogy. Well done!

And yes, now that you ask, I AM enjoying the brief allotment of foolish hope the soon to be Stolen Election of 2008 affords. The same way I worked hard for and enjoyed the 2006 "victory" which was no victory at all, until finally the serial capitulations and the mounting evidence of the reality of the situation becamse too great to maintain the illusion of hope.

It is an odd thing to delude one's self while knowing that you're doing it, and yet still working to preserve said delusion for it's ration of hope...like unto a glass of water to someone wandering in the desert dying of thirst.

Thus I KNOW there is a 98% chance that McBush and the Bushies are going to steal it, the Toady Media are going to explain it away and the TV addled Amerikan Subject Populace will accept whatever comes out of the TV without question. I also know the Democratic Congress, as it did in 2006, will actively work to suppress investigations into the massive Bush Election Fraud Machine, even if caught red-handed as they were in FL-13 in 2006.

I KNOW this to be true, and yet take a look at my new signature line.

Need I say K&R?

[DeeDeeNY]

21. K & R

I wasn't here 5 years ago, but your rant and analogies are chilling.

[bertman]

22. Thank you, thank you, thank you, Arendt.

Maybe someday we'll awaken from our sleepwalk.

Or is it hypnotic state???

[arendt]

34. Its a personal choice: red pill or blue pill. Each of us awakens individually. n/t

[Joe Bacon]

23. But, Jesus is coming back in a week or 2

I have heard that bullshit from my idiot family since 1980. The worse off they get, the deeper they get into their bible studies and the more convinced they are that JC and his Sonshine Band are gonna suck em up into JC's trunk for the big drive up to heaven. Gonna happen in a week or 2....

[arendt]

28. Oh, yeah, the white man's version of the Ghostdance...

the American Indian cult of the 1890s. Unsurprisingly, it has many features of the Rapture, complete with being taken up into the sky.

Don't worry, suckers, everything will be better soon.

I have always been torn between contempt and compassion for those people. But, not being very Christian, contempt usually wins.

arendt

[Cassandra]

24. Just to correct you...

the capos (or kapos) were the Jewish policeman in the ghettos, recruited by the Nazis to keep the other Jews in line and were truly loathsome. Those more pitiful souls who dragged the bodies out of the gas chambers were the sonderkommandos, for whom I have a lot more sympathy because they had so little choice. The kapos had far more choices but were natural authoritarians and more likely to enjoy the power over their neighbors that they were given.

[arendt]

26. Thanks for the info...

perhaps you can sort this out for me:

In the Wertmuller movie, Seven Beauties, the protagonist winds up behaving like a capo inside a concentration camp. I was under the impression that this movie was historically accurate in that regard. Are you saying that there were NO prisoner trustees/wardens/capos whatsoever in the camps? That the Germans ran everything directly?

arendt

[Cassandra]

37. There probably were kapos at the camps...

possibly brought directly with the others and left in the positions they'd had previously, but they didn't do the job the sonderkommandos had.

[MedleyMisty]

43. There certainly were capos in the camps

I've read that some of the more brutal ones ended up being killed by the people under them.

Of all the survivor accounts I've read none of them have been by a capo and there's never been a detailed explanation of how one became a capo - I do remember that one had been in the camps since the 30s.

[DailyGrind51]

79. Kapos were used in concentration camps to maintain order.

The following is a paragraph from the "Holocaust Survivors Encyclopedia":


"Certain features were common to all camps: Violations of orders were punished severely by beatings or torture. Prisoners were also liable to be beaten for no reason at all. Kapos, chosen from the ranks of common criminals or political prisoners, were assigned to supervise their fellow inmates. They were often as brutal as the guards. Guards and Kapos might bribed with cigarettes, food or gold, if prisoners could get these contraband items through their camp jobs or connections. Roll calls which could last many hours were a daily feature of camp life and were held outdoors in all kinds of weather. Roll calls were especially feared by the Jewish prisoners because they would sometimes be accompanied by selections where the weaker prisoners would be culled for extermination."

http://www.holocaustsurvivors.org/cgi-bin/data.show.pl?di=record&da=encyclopedia&ke=19

I visited Auschwitz in 1995 to see where those of my father's cousins who remained in Poland prior to WWII were murdered.

[tom_paine]

121. You are speaking of The Joe Liebermans and The Daniel Pipes and the David Brookses.

Oh my yes, they were integral parts THEN and they are integral parts NOW.

Needless to say, as a Jew I am filled with shame for my people. I always thought that all the years of Jewish suffering at the hands of the Medeval and Nazi incarnations of the Bushies would somehow make us "wiser".

:rofl:

But it seems quite obvious now that we Jews have the same proportion of authoritarian followers and sellouts as anyone else, suffering be damned.

[arendt]

122. A discussion of sellouts and capos inevitably leads to ponerology...

my point is that, once an OP has been around long enough, you can link it to just about any topic, due to comments downthread.

With that disclaimer, yes, even historically victimized groups are full of sellouts. It is a part of human nature that desperately calls out for a technological fix, like an PET/MRI lie detector or sociopath detector.

Didn't realize that Pipes and Brooks were Jewish. Just knew that Pipes is a fascist and Brooks is a douchebag.

arendt

[Cassandra]

135. Dr. Altemeyer says it's the same 23% or so in any...

population. Why should Jews (of which I am one) be any different in that regard. Many are fundies, not because the religious beliefs or ideologies are so compelling but because the idea of surrendering to authority is so compelling for them.

http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/

[DailyGrind51]

25. Great historical analysis!

I would also add, for your comparison, that the Soviets murdered some 20,000 members of the Polish "middle-class" at Katyn Forest during the beginning of the war and then blamed it on the Nazis. Analogous to those Democrats who voted in favor of NAFTA and the bankruptcy bill, blaming the consequences of the legislation on the Republicans.

[janetblond]

29. what does k&R stand for? nt.

..??

[tblue37]

45. Kicked and Recommended.

When you post a reply to a thread, even if your reply is just "Kick" or "K&R," it is kicked to the top of the page. When it gets enough recommendations (5), it ends up on the greatest page.

This reply I am making to you will also kick this thread to the top of the page. While I am at it, I also plan to recommend the thread, because I think it is very good.

[Andrea]

50. Kick and Recommend

Kicking is posting a response so the thread will go back to the top of the list in the forum. Recommending is clicking on the recommend box under the OP (original post). IT's like voting for the post. Five or more votes and it goes to the Greatest Page. The more votes, the higher it goes on Greatest and with enough votes, on to the front page.

Welcome to DU!

:hi:

[EstimatedProphet]

105. Yeah, that's really analogous.

[iamahaingttta]

27. "television, suburbia, and corn syrup"

You got that right.

I manage to mostly avoid all of those things. Those three things are killing America, and America says "Thank you, may we have some more?"

Suckers.

I would actually take your thesis one step further. There are too many people on the planet, as I think we all know. There are certainly too many people on the planet to live the American Middle Class Lifestyle, as everyone, everywhere understandably wants. I believe that the super-rich not only want power and control, I think they want most of us dead. You don't come out and say that, although the Nazi analogy certainly alludes to it.

They want to kill off as many people on the planet as quickly as possible. That's what I've been saying for five and a half years. The super rich want a planet of 500 million to 1 billion human beings, with two or three million, mostly belonging to a few rich families at the top, controlling everything, and everybody else as their servants. "Liberals" want to educate the masses out of overpopulation, and use evolving technology to solve our problems, but that just takes too long compared to... gassing us to death.


On Edit: At least we finally know, without any doubt, what that old Chinese proverb meant - "May you live in interesting times."

[arendt]

33. I enjoyed writing that line. I am certainly aware of the "cull" thesis...

I was going to write about how today's super-rich aren't paranoid enough to survive. The Robber Barons at least had the sense to build fortress-like mansions (such as the Glessner House, in Chicago - google it for pix) and hire tons of guards and Pinkertons. But, then, I realized, they will simply board their private jets and go to their private islands while we all kill each other over the scraps of petroleum left behind. So, I do not dismiss the cull thesis out of hand. Nevertheless, it would be pretty hard to coordinate.


Someone could do the world a favor by making a website that lists all such private islands and their owners.

arendt

[Hydra]

67. The culling idea is easier than you think

All around the world, people are rioting about food prices. Here, people starve in relative quiet.

Kissenger said that the most economical way to practice genocide is by starvation. Even that isn't fast enough for them, though. He went on to suggest disease as faster/more effective.

Most Americans will do nothing to fight back when it happens.

[arendt]

70. It is really a mystery how America went from being "can do", innovative, self-starters to being...

a bunch of fat, sloppy, addled couch potatoes who believe the BS of the corporate media - all in the space of my adult life.

Can it really be as simple as "television, suburbia, and corn syrup"? I mean, suburbia destroys real community; TV substitutes phony community with corporate-programmed standards, and corn syrup makes you a fat yutz who needs a land cruiser to navigate to the 7-11 to buy more chips and beer. Is that all that it is?

Or is there some active agent at work that I just don't see?

---------

However unconnected it may seem; the above is in response to your comment that Americans will do nothing.

arendt

[Hydra]

80. I follow you

But I propose a darker thesis.

This is the TRUE face of America.

It's amazing how something like George Bush's crimes and the lack of response can get you asking the question, "Where did this all start?"

The answer I found was amazing. It may not even have gone far enough back, but this will certainly do.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shay%27s_Rebellion

he nationalists took advantage of a propitious rebellion, that of Daniel Shays, a former Continental Army officer. Shays and other local leaders led an uprising of distressed farmers from western Massachusetts groaning under the load of heavy taxes assessed to pay the interest and principal (at face value in specie) of the state's wartime debt. During an economic depression, with farm prices low and foreign markets closed, the state government was taxing the farmers (payable in hard money only) to pay wealthy eastern creditors who had lent depreciated paper (accepted at full face value) to the state government for bonds during the war.

<snip>

Obviously, the nationalists wanted to scare the country into supporting a more vigorous government. George Washington was terrified. "We are fast verging toward anarchy and confusion," he wrote. His nationalist friends did their best to heighten his terror. Henry Knox wrote Washington of the Shaysites that "their creed is that the property of the United States" having been freed from British exactions "by the joint exertions of all, ought to be the common property of all." This was utterly false, but it did the trick. Washington agreed to be the presiding officer at the constitutional convention. Later, Madison in Federalist No. 10 warned that without the strong arm of a vigorous central government, the states would be vulnerable to movements motivated by "a rage for paper money, for an abolition of debts, for an equal division of property" and for other "improper or wicked project(s)." The Massachusetts historian Mercy Otis Warren, a contemporary of these events, warned of "discontents artificially wrought up, by men who wished for a more strong and splendid government.

We went into the 1st Constitutional Convention with the Nationalists fighting for the rights of Corporations and private entities to defraud their customers.

Auspicious beginning, wasn't it?

[arendt]

85. Yes, I was on this theme when talking about Howard Zinn. But, my question is more...

specific to the WW2 generation. My sense of people that age (a lot of them are now dead, but my sense from when I was younger) was that these people had fought for union rights, had seen Wall St. capitalism for the vampire that it was, were for public education and science.

My question is, how did these people end their days as union-hating, government bashing, fundamentalist loons?

Your answer is that I mistook their kindness at a personal level for a compassion at a social level. Looking back at the society they had in the 50s and 60s, I can't quite bring myself to believe that the then "middle class" agitated for these views. Rather, these views were cleverly wedge-issued, race-baited, and hippie-hated onto the national stage. The one thing about the average American of 50 years ago is that (as long as race or communism wasn't involved) they were predisposed to be kind to strangers.

Shoot me for being so nostalgic. I can't help the feelings I remember.

arendt

[Hydra]

89. And I wasn't there to see that era

So I can't tell you what happened to them. I CAN tell you that my Grandparents went from being died-in-the-wool Dems to being the ugliest Republican Religious wackos EVER.

My guess is that they and people like them started to drink the kool-aid as things got easier for them. They started trusting the Gov't when it floated the idea of the "Red Menace." The fear was papable...anyone around us could be a communist spy. McCarthy's witch-hunt feeds their fears that there ARE bogeymen everywhere. The fear grows too much- they start listening to their church and the BS about the Rapture coming...

It was a small, gradual process. In the end, it worked. People who were no more than comfortable than well paid working class saw themselves as "rich" and started looking to the GOP to "protect" that wealth.

The so-called greatest generation stopped asking questions...not unlike "The Good Germans." I think that was what brought them down. Without questions and ways to make people in power answer them, you have a dictatorship.

[Andrea]

91. What you are describing here matches

the changes I saw my parents go through from the 60s through their deaths in the 90s. It most definitely was sparked by media stereotyping of liberals, minorities, and union workers. This resulted in the weirdest disconnect between how they were in their personal lives (African American friends, for example) and their larger world view. It progressed steadily until by the time my dad passed away in 1998, he was a faithful listener to G. Gordon Liddy's radio show. I have no idea if that show still exists. I have a memory of hearing it in the car one day while driving somewhere with my dad. It was the most hate-filled, and the most delusional, broadcasted rant I've ever encountered.

[arendt]

95. Sounds like "television, suburbia, and corn syrup" isn't too far off. n/t

[dixiegrrrrl]

83. Culling has been going on for some time

example: World Health Organization giving "tetanus" shots to only women in So. America. It was later realized those shots contained a chemical which produced miscarriages.

Years of known experiments in putting germs, microbes in the air, on subways and busses, to see if enough people got sick from them.

The AIDS Virus.

The US government proclaiming it had "resurrected" the 1918 Influenza virus, now at Fr. Detrick and other labs for "study".

And the all too frequent fear bating of the Avian flu along with pressure to get our flu shots, with emphasis on the very young and the elderly to take them. ( I know many people who got violently ill last year from the shots, had to be hospitalized)

Darfur.

Katrina..a mini Darfur, where all help was systematically kept away from the mostly black survivors for 4 days.Then the unwanted population was dispersed across the country, thus destroying entire communities.
( which are being bought up for gentrification)

All those "sanctions" of helpless countries, meaning reducing water, food, medicine until the population is too weak to resist being shoved behind cement barriers. Depresses immune system greatly. People dying for lack of basic medications.

The most recent ghetto-ization of Washington DC 'select" neighborhoods, with the Mississippi National Guard being deployed to help blockade the streets.
One headline in Army Times read the Guard was being deployed "to help protect the Nation's Capitol".

Many many ways of "culling, not all reported or even noticed for years.

[Andrea]

93. How recently was the MS guard deployed in DC?

I have no memory of this happening. What was the pretense, specifically? Protecting the capital from what?

[dixiegrrrrl]

96. Here's the link to the May 30th story

the original story was about the same time, in Army Times, but I couldn't find the citation/archive just now.

http://www.clarionledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080530/NEWS/80530026

[Andrea]

109. Thanks for linking that

It sounds to me like a routine staffing of army bases in the DC area. Was there another article that said they were blockading the streets? Or am I missing something here? Sometimes I'm dense.

[MountainLaurel]

148. Here's another link

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/20/AR2008062001954.html

Basically, the deal was that DC blocked off several streets into a small neighborhood that had seen a huge spike in shootings (mainly gang- and drug-related) over a very short period, so that only people with a reason to be there could drive in. (Most of the shootings were drive-bys.)

[Andrea]

152. Thanks

That really sounds crazy. Some times I think they do this stuff just to get us in the habit of accepting it. It sounds like the "DUI checkpoints" they have here. They set up somewhere and randomly just stop people for no reason. Ostensibly they are doing it to educate and warn people about areas where there is a lot of drunk driving. I hope I never get stopped in one. If I am on my way somewhere, I don't have spare time to spend assuring some officer that I'm not drunk when I wasn't giving them any probable cause to stop me in the first place. The weird thing about it is, they always announce them in advance, so everyone knows where they are. Thus, I avoid those areas. (I never drive with any alcohol in my system.) I'm sure that everyone who drives drunk avoids them, too. So what exactly are they accomplishing?

I wonder if they did anything to try to learn why there was such a spike in murder in that area and to address the root causes. I doubt it.

[DailyGrind51]

48. Even when you think about the "Dr. Laura" pitch about two working

parents being bad for the kids is merely a subtle means of giving corporations more control over their employees, who become more dependent on the employer of the working parent and less likely to gripe about working conditions.

[mimitabby]

123. finally someone making sense here.

I am not sure the uber rich want us dead, but they don't want to see us, hear us or smell us; unless we are serving them directly.

There are too many people on the planet, and there are not enough resources; gas, water, aluminum, arable land; the list is very long.

The next 20 years will certainly be interesting, these are not times for the timid.

[peacetalksforall]

30. When I saw gassing, I gasped. I just woke from a dream about

my pursuit to find out what was meant by a threat from an authority type figure that referred to a plan about gassing us - not for death, but control. Then, I found someone I knew who admitted that they knew about it.

Your point is what I came to believe over a long period of time. I'm a slow learner when I have to overturn something that seems impossible to piece together, believe, and accept as the truth. I could kick myself for settling into the belief that the Dems were different - that Pelosi was a heroine, that Reid was going to be OK, that there wasn't much that could be done about the reps who consistently voted with the Repubs, that my Senator was going to be different.

What is the practical end to the knowledge of who and what they are (doing) to us? The controllers in the Dem Party have an expertise at pretense and their talent is being able to push the right word buttons to make it impossible to teach other people what I learned and to teach others in a short time. How do you teach people that there is a scam or a plan that is different from what they say it is? Especially when they have to base for interpreting the tv? On the other hand, now that they know the depth of crime against us by Republicans, it might be easier to learn that Repubs have helpers in the Dem Party, sadly in the leadership.

Republicans have Dem aides and facilitators. The truth hurts.

Trying to find out why the Dems never accused the Repubs of theft of votes, never seriously attempted to investigate, never called for and arranged oversight and set standards for performance, never rushed out to correct anything. So are we all prepared to give it to them again? To allow the candidates to be made fools of again?

In going back to your comparisons with Germany, there is one more thing that could be said that does not parallel the Nazis. In the invasions we make that involve destruction of the infrastructure, our leaders blatantly make money on the reconstruction. I'm not sure that was an upfront agenda item for the Nazis. Now, being faced for OUR reconstruction under their control and their prisons for us, our leaders have something the Nazis didn't have, fully loaded databases for selection of those who will get to work on the reconstruction.

Not to be forgotten. Stockholders who knowingly invest in and profit from the weapons of control, destruction, reconstruction. And those who close their minds to what they are investing in.

I want to be wrong.

[arendt]

61. The Todt Organization

You said:

In going back to your comparisons with Germany, there is one more thing that could be said that does not parallel the Nazis. In the invasions we make that involve destruction of the infrastructure, our leaders blatantly make money on the reconstruction. I'm not sure that was an upfront agenda item for the Nazis. Now, being faced for OUR reconstruction under their control and their prisons for us, our leaders have something the Nazis didn't have, fully loaded databases for selection of those who will get to work on the reconstruction.

Not to be forgotten. Stockholders who knowingly invest in and profit from the weapons of control, destruction, reconstruction. And those who close their minds to what they are investing in.

I don't know much about the non-military, non-concentration camp side of the German war economy - only what I picked up from Albert Speer's "Inside the Third Reich". All I recall is that there was something called "the Todt organization", which managed construction of things from the Autobahns to the Atlantic Wall. I'm sure it was totally corrupt. And, the Germans have always been obsessive record keepers. I would not bet against the fact that the Nazi leadership got kickbacks for all construction projects anywhere in their empire.

But, its another area of research for me. Thanks for bringing up the point.

arendtt

[Just-plain-Kathy]

31. Excellent read. ...K&R

[Tyler Durden]

36. Do not forget Howard Dean.

A "Zondercommando" if ever there was one.

They have all betrayed us: every last one of them, none excluded.

[BlueJac]

38. Very well said.....

it is stunning how easy it has been. The slaying of the middleclass!

[hobbit709]

39. Sent this to a former friend

Who went from pot-smoking freak to ultraconservative, bible thumping, kool-ade drinking mccain supporter.
His response was that DU was the only internet site to the left of Daily Kos.
My response to him was
"Excuse me. I keep forgetting.that to the ultra right wing republicants like Oxycontin Boy even Hitler would be a liberal."
His reply to that was "?"

[johnlucas]

40. One problem with what you said, arendt

Hi everybody. My name is John Lucas. I've been browsing the site for a few months now due to the election and this is my first time actually posting.

And the reason I have come out of the lurk is because of this post.
You've said some very intelligent and thoughtful things here. Can't say you were not in the truth.

But there is One Problem with what you said...

...You never made the connection with the Poor Class.

This is the grave mistake those who consider themselves "Middle Class" make. They don't realize that just as the Ultra-Rich do to them in disregarding their group as people of value, the Middle Classers act similarly to the Poor.

I'll say this right here and right now. There IS no Real Middle Class. Never was. It has always been an illusion. I laugh at Lou Dobbs with his "War On The Middle Class" tirades. There is only HAVE and HAVE-NOT. The HAVES got smart one day in the face of czars, kings, and queens being beheaded, killed, and ousted. They decided to play the old tried true human game called "Divide & Conquer".

They divided the Poor against themselves by allowing some of the poor to gain a LITTLE bit of wealth. Once you give someone with nothing just a little bit of something they will be loyal and satisfied losing the motivation to join their fellow poor in the rebellion against the hording of wealth and tyranny of greed. They not only lose motivation but also ape elitist attitudes to the ones poorer in comparison to themselves. Parroting the rich's social manipulations like those capos you talk about. Trickle down theory and complaints about "welfare queens". Being more afraid of the guy robbing the liquor store than you are about the executive robbing the infrastructure of the country. Like those capos they unwittingly aid the elitists in their goals to gain even more obscene wealth than they already have WITHOUT adhering to the social responsibility such wealth should bring.

These Poor First Class (Private First Class) or Middles became wannabes who looked in awe at the rich folks saying with my rugged individualism and hard work I can one day be just like them. And the beautiful part is some got lucky enough to get over (as is the part of the rich's plan) causing them to look down on the ones who didn't make it. Some Middles got Rich as these elitists let some of them into the club for further Dividing & Conquering. "If I can make it, you can too." Never mind that life is not always about skill and is usually full of a lot of luck both from birth and throughout living. The Chance Card in Monopoly can bring you as much good fortune as it does bad fortune. Stock Market is another example of legalized gambling. Forget the point that any good society should have a safety net to protect against bad gambles. Civilization is the opposite of that corruption of Darwin's theory Survival of the Fittest, the euphemistic phrase for callousness and heartlessness. A chain is always as strong as its weakest link.

They demonized the word "Socialism" and Middle Classers bought it. Socialism for a Society. In its purest meaning, it is a good thing. And nevermind that the country already operates under some socialism now as is the case of the Public Library which allowed some Poors to become Middles. Communism for a Community. People got fooled by 1930's Italy and the U.S.S.R. which were not what they proclaimed on the label. Hasn't anybody heard of false advertising? Is the People's Republic of China really for the people or a republic? Linda Richman says "talk amongst yourselves."

No we got Capitalism for Capital. Capita...Latin for Head. In Spain's Latin...Cabeza. A Head of Cabbage. How do you procure a head of cabbage? You cut its stalk. A neck is another type of stalk. How do you get the head? You cut the throat. CUTTHROAT. That's pure capitalism for you and that's no way to run a civilization. Those ruthless criminals you're so afraid of? They're just emulating those role models at the top. They realize this system is rigged and are willing to play ball like the game says. They just don't have the best equipment all the time and they rough up the audience in the stands.

Wealth creation, the pursuit of abundance does NOT have to mean Capitalism and all of its machinations to keep the rich rich and the poor poor. The world began fighting because of a drought, a lacking. A rainforest became a desert and people with their needs began scrambling to fulfill their needs even at the expense of another. We've never been right since. When everybody has what they need and what they want, they'll tend to be happier and more agreeable. Rich folks don't fight in the streets for survival because that Tempurpedic bed and air conditioning makes things too comfortable. Why would I want to get my hands dirty? I'm fat, I'm fed, I'm financed, I'm feeling love. What do I got to fight about?

Status Quo folk are not good for Revolutions but the Disenfranchised are. The so-called "Middle Class" will NEVER be successful until they stop seeing themselves as Middle Class and rather one and the same with the Poor. One medical disaster, one Enron 401K raiding, one too many gas hikes, one major job loss, one major natural disaster and you are right along with the poor all over again. The twilight zone illusion will be over. Poor Folks WORK for their money, Rich Folks's money works for THEM. See the difference?

A math problem to put in more perspective. Warren Buffet, currently the world's (official) richest man at about $62 Billion ($62,000,000,000). If he lost 99% of all of his money, which is virtually all (or 100%), how much money would he have left?

$620 Million ($620,000,000). Over half an Oprah or half a Billion. Still extravagantly wealthy after losing nearly all of his money. Worth more than most CEOs, entertainers, sports stars, and media moguls. Still rich enough to pay all of his bills, have all of his needs taken care of, all of his wants taken care of, and still having enough to retire on and leave in inheritance (this doesn't count the perks rich folks receive which save them more money).

How much money would YOU have if you lost 99% and could you maintain your lifestyle with the remainder?
The big mistake you made is emphasizing Middle Class and never realizing that Middle Class is REALLY all in all Poor Class too.

John Lucas

[tblue37]

46. Another way the so-called middle class apes the super rich is

by going deeply into debt to pay for extravagant weddings that ape the weddigns of the 19th-century aristocracy. Not only the bride and groom and their families, but also the guests end up spending far more than they can afford to ostentatiously display wealth they don't have. Thoorstein Veblen hit it on the nose in The Theory of the Leisure Class when he said that conspicuous concumption and conspicuous waste were the foundations of invidious class comparisons, the markers of status.

[arendt]

59. The wedding lunacy goes on, even in these hard times...

I have no sympathy for people who can't afford it to spend mid to high 5 figures for a wedding. It is worse than potlatch. It is putting yourself in hock for your pride.

A lot of my friends said, skip the fancy wedding and give us the money you would have spent on it.

arendt

[Dr.Phool]

129. Do you know how many people bought into the DeBeers marketing strategy?

I'm talking about the one where you have to spend 3 months salary for an engagement ring to prove you love her.

My Best Man at my wedding owned a bar. I was in there one day talking to his daughter (a nurse). She was squawking that she would NEVER marry a man who didn't think enough of her to spend 3 months salary on a ring.

She didn't want to hear that that was more than enough for a decent down payment on a house. I'd never marry anyone that delusional.

[tblue37]

47. Excellent post, John Lucas! n/t

[arendt]

49. Everything you say is true. I used "middle" to try to connect...

because, in America, 30% of the country thinks they are "rich", and everyone wants to believe they are middle class. I used "Middle class" because it is a sacred word in the American mythology.

Thanks for coming out of the lurkery, John. I am very honored that you would send your first post to one of my threads. I will do my best to treat it well.

----------

I know there are "poor class" people on DU. I expect that they would find my academic "concerns" to be quite irrelevant to their hard-scrabble lives. My hat is off to people like that who find the time and energy to post on DU.

In archived posts, I have compared our "middle class" to the Soviet kulaks:

The propaganda campaign to label high-earning, but non-super-rich people as the new kulaks began over twenty years ago. We have been called Yuppies and Dinks, and Liberal has become a dirty word.

But, just as the only distinction between a peasant and a kulak was that a kulak was in the top 5% of the peasants, the only distinction between a liberal and an American peasant is that he makes a decent income at his job and has a decent education.

Just as Maxim Gorky found the backbone of Russian Society to be useless, the Radical Right finds the backbone of American society (independent small businessmen, professionals, technically trained people) to be useless in the new fundamentalist/corporatist version of America.

As I have stated previously, a basic alliance between corporatists and fundamentalists has been struck...

The middle class stands in the way of this vision because it will not be docile and stupid, because it wants its children to have decent educations, decent jobs, good healthcare, and a clean environment. All those things are in opposition to the basic corporate demand to maximum short-term profits for its CEO aristocracy regardless of the consequences. If Stalin were a CEO today, he would say that the middle class is "objectively anti-corporate".

And that is why the middle class must be destroyed. It must be forced into MacJobs in the corporate collectives that sprout like poisonous mushrooms all over our country. Of course, this definition of the middle class includes a lot of moderate, country club Republicans.

- Corporate Collectivism and The New Kulaks (Feb 27th 2005)
http://journals.democraticunderground.com/arendt/26

As you note,

>> They divided the Poor against themselves by allowing some of the poor to gain a LITTLE bit of wealth.

This is exactly the thesis of Howard Zinn in "A People's History of the United States". He documents time and again how the elites bought off trouble with carefully rationed doling out of their vast wealth. They did it again after WW2. They let the soldiers who won the war have their labor unions for a while. They could afford it. They were making more money building for the entire world than they could gain by smashing labor unions. Besides, it would LOOK bad to destroy unions while fighting the Commies. So, they let a "middle class" grow up - something that this country had never seen before. But, it was an artificial construct. As you say, most of these people were simply working class folks with a good income. Nevertheless, it allowed the kind of splitting that Zinn and you mention. Between the time of Nixon and Reagan, the working class sold itself out to the GOP. Like poor peasants jealous of slightly richer peasants.

Yes, the middle class is on its way to kulakization; and if they have to starve, its no matter to the elites. I have had first hand experience over the last seven years that I, a member of the so-called middle class, have zero power to control the government which robs me blind and is preparing to turn the country into a continent-sized, open-air concentration camp.

I will soon be joining the "poor class", and I hope to bring back some class consciousness when I do.

Nice to make your acquaintance. Your post is good enough to be its own thread.

arendt

[MedleyMisty]

54. Nice reply

I'm not quite sure if I'm middle class - my husband and I make about $40,000 a year (that's combined, not each), I think. I do have the time for surfing the net, but then we don't have and don't want kids.

I do know that I am super rich compared to most of the planet, though.

Anyway, the "middle class" thing had kind of put me off, because I generally find that the people who go on and on about the troubles of the middle class are elitist and look down on the working class.

I'm reading the People's History of the United States right now. It's quite the interesting book. And the theory certainly makes sense to me - have you read My Bondage and My Freedom, by Frederick Douglass? He makes the same point.

[arendt]

64. Now "middle class" is a smear. The media have sure done their job well.

> the "middle class" thing had kind of put me off, because I generally
> find that the people who go on and on about the troubles of the middle
> class are elitist and look down on the working class.

And isn't that a statement all by itself. By careful massaging of the media, the elites have created this David Brooks-ian perception that the middle class are a bunch of self-centered slobs. These people were created to be hated. And so many working class people do. Hence the success of the "latte drinking, sushi eating, Vovlo driving" slam on Howard Dean.

Last week I wrote about the destruction of language. This is a great example. Middle class has been turned into a curse word for working class people. How terribly sad.

----

BTW, unless you are retired and own your own home free and clear, I would say that it is going to be very hard to make ends meet at that level, what with the price of oil and the rampant inflation. You didn't mention about health insurance. If you don't have it through work or Soc Sec, that would consume 25% of your pre-tax income right there.

arendt

[wurzel]

104. It is a "curse word".

The working class should never accept that label. Especially in light of the attitudes of the "middle class" in most countries.

[wurzel]

98. You are right . "Middle Class" is not just income.

It is attitudes. The middle class in any other country than America is reactionary. This label the affluent working class allowed to be pinned on them has greatly advantaged the Republicans. And the Dems are afraid to remove it in case the "middle class" see it as a insult to be labeled what it really is; Working Class.

[Hydra]

75. Poor class person here!

Sorry to hear that you will be joining me down here, but you'll be better company than most of the "middle class" people on DU that tell me that my concerns are irrelevant- after all, they're doing fine. Nothing wrong with America- it must be my problem.

It's amazing what a full belly, a few dollars and few luxuries do to most people.

Hell, if they knew what the REALLY rich had, they'd fall over dead to see what it's like to have privilege and security.

[kineneb]

115. another, here

learning to live on as little as possible (under $800/mo, and get food stamps). I already have "class consciousness" after battling the medical system, which is why I am poor (and pissed).

[Hydra]

117. Poor and pissed too

They docked my relative's food stamps by 2/3 because they qualified for disability- as if you can live on $595.

[kineneb]

124. pissed because...

in what other country in the "first" world, does one have to go broke to get medical care, and then have to go through bankruptcy? And then care for a dying spouse full-time, only to have no income when the spouse dies? And no consideration of time to recover from everything? I am not really able to work enough to support myself right now.

Social Security pays a death benefit, one-time only(!) of $255. Other than the family paying my bills and some small, occasional "cash" jobs, I have no real income. There are no provisions for childless widows under 50; only if a widow is disabled and over 50 are they able to receive a part of their spouse's Soc. Sec.

Yes, just a wee bit pissed. And no, no one can really "live" on $595/mo.

[Hydra]

76. A post worthy of it's own thread

And a GREAT first post. Welcome.

I was going to have to post something similar- after all, who screams when the poor are economically raped? You put it more extensively and completely than I would have, so thank you for de-lurking.

[arendt]

81. "de-lurking" - I love it. Sort of a Star Trek "de-cloaking" reference. n/t

[tom_paine]

106. Excellent post. Well said, and welcome to DU!

:toast:

Where you and I probably differ is that I stil believe in capitalism, that it can be practiced with some semblence of decency and responsibility. "FDR Capitalism" so to speak.

And I stil believe that, while some socialism in necessary in today's modern industrial society and that the wealth inequality curve is spiralling back toward the Robber Baron Days, a flat wealth inequity curve would be a disaster, too, at the other extreme.

As well as probably not being achievable, human nature being what it is.

But in all, an excellent post that I mostly agree with and splendid as your first post here at DU.

Welcome aboard! :hi:

[Dr.Phool]

130. Welcome to DU John Lucas!

:hi:

Post more often. We may not always agree, but we enjoy intelligent discourse.

[conspirator]

131. I agree. Also, although middle class people are material better, they still have to slave

40 ou more hours per week, in jobs that require a lot more stress and repression of human feelings than lower class jobs.
A lot of middle class people are for this reason unhappier than poor people. They slave a lot just to keep their superficial status, in the hope of someday becoming rich, but they are slaves nevertheless because their salaries, on purpose, are not enough to control the means of production.

[datasuspect]

142. welcome to DU

[DailyGrind51]

150. John, you make a great deal of sense here.

The American "middle-class" has the same subservient attitude towards the "rich" as does the "poor". The fact that so many CEOs received pay increases, even when their companies did not do so well in fiscal '07, should have caused outrage, especially when real wages for average workers did not enjoy similar appreciation. The middle-class seem content with the "boss-man's" excess, like the slaves who were glad when "massa" was happy because then they would not receive a beating.

[conscious evolution]

154. This reply should be its own OP

Thank you and welcome to DU


also-A K & R for arendt

[wurzel]

41. The "middle class" label is a disaster

We never had a large middle class. What we had was the most affluent WORKING CLASS in history. This was all lost in the label "middle class". Once the working class lost its identity and became "middle class" it acted like a middle class: anti-union and Republican.

[arendt]

57. See my #49. I agree with you, but I have to deal with "common usage". n/t

[Jackpine Radical]

42. There is no class warfare.

There is only class rape.

Class warfare would require that the victims fight back.

They do not fight back. They identify with their abusers just like so many victims of other kinds of rape.

[conspirator]

144. right on. A few of middle class poor souls even worship their rich abusers n/t

[Seabiscuit]

44. K&R - frighteningly good analysis.

[Lugnut]

51. K&R n/t

[electropop]

52. Our docility is so frustrating! My mother-in-law thinks they are putting something in the water.

:beer:

[tom_paine]

102. I think it might be something less sinister and more open, like the hypnotic nature of TV

Evil Bushies don't even have to "beam" anything special through it (other than Fox "news" and the rest of the Bushiganda), the very nature of the device is vert useful to tyrants.

Also, consider how we now have 24/7 basically tailor-made entertainments. The Bread & Circuses of ancient Rome, but magnified in power 1000 times by TV, Internet and media saturation.

Add in the massive numbers of people on psychopharmacologics and I believe that is enough to create this condition without the need for anything sinister to be added to the drinking water.

Not that I am saying suhc is impossible. If it was happening likethat, who wouldinvestigate and tell us? CNNMSNBCFOXABCDISNEYTIMECBS?

Don't make me laugh! :rofl:

Anyway, that's my two cents. The Nazis created a whole system of nightly meeting and rallies to suck up Germans' Free time and give them other things to think about so they would stand by and let monstrous tyrants rule without check or balance.

The media saturation of modern Imperial Amerika performs the same task, I think, thohgh it likely evolved on it's own, more or less.

24/7 tailor-made entertainments. I don't think it happens without that cornerstone.

[electropop]

116. The TV is pretty powerful, especially when it beams religion or missing blondes.

Creepy!

[Nay]

127. TV is unbelievably powerful. I am nearly 60, and the contrast between

TV today and TV in my youth -- well, let's just say it's the difference between a dripping faucet and Niagara Falls. The PTB have used TV to advertise to us, then to shape and mold our ways of seeing the world, and now -- good heavens -- it captivates nearly everyone. They can't stay away from its shifting shapes. In the process, they learn exactly what the PTB want them to learn, and they will sit in front of that TV until the goons shoot it full of holes and take them off to the camps. TV is both a propaganda device and a hypnotizing device.

[EstimatedProphet]

53. What do you have against university presidents and contractors?

[arendt]

56. It may have sounded hyperbolic to you; but here are some things...

Over the last 30 years, univeristy presidents have presided over pricing college out of the reach of the "middle class"; substituting phys-ed plant, media studies courses, and entertainment for serious education, stifling academic freedom, and turning scientific research over to corporations.

For all of this, they have been well compensated, even as college tuition has risen at three times the rate of inflation. Meanwhile, they still hold out the very expensive lottery ticket of a college degree to the screwed children of the "middle class".

University presidents are parasitic, insider scum in my book. Like the asshole at Columbia who publicly berated Ahmedinejad for daring to show up for a debate.

----

As for military and prison contractors, these are functions that absolutely should NOT be privatized in a democracy. First, military service is part of what binds us together. When you contract it out to a bunch of foreign mercenaries (and many of them are not US citizens), how are we any different than the British Empire and the Hessians? (Except that we are much crueler.) Ditto police functions.

But, even more, why would you hand all the guns and weapons over to grasping, greedy hirelings? How do you know they won't rip you off behind your back, and eventually rob you to your face with the guns you gave them.

No democracy privatizes these functions and survives for long.

arendt

[EstimatedProphet]

60. Thank you for the explanation

Where I disagree:

Some university presidents have tried to turn their jurisdictions into cash cows, and done the things you said. Some haven't though, and I was confused by the way you were seeming to lump in university presidents with pawn shops and collection agencies.

As for contractors: I agree that contractors such as Blackwater are a very bad idea indeed, for the reasons you state. Military contracting is far bigger than just those functions however, and in many cases is necessary. For example, land use planners for military bases often are contractors. Construction and design are usually contracted out too. When you mentioned contractors, I was thinking these were the jobs you meant.

[arendt]

63. You are welcome. I wasn't being clear, just being nasty...

I think that most university professors have been happy to let parents pawn their houses to give their kids a college education and themselves a big salary.

Parasites. Con-men.

-----

When I talked about military contractors, I was thinking of the mass privatization that the Neocons have put in place. They essentially want a private army - i.e., mercenaries that they own.

arendt

[Greyhound]

55. K & R

:kick: & R

[Andrea]

58. Fantastic post

You see happening what I have been seeing happening, but you understand it better, explain it better and put it in context better. So, maybe you can answer the questions that plague me.

Can we survive by leaving the country?

How do we know when we have to go?

How long can we put it off?

What signs should we look for?

Every day I listen to the headlines on PR at the top of the hour and feel like I am listening to radio from the future. Things are happening now that I thought were 20 years away. This is very frightening.

[arendt]

62. Wild ass guesses in answer to your questions

> Can we survive by leaving the country?

I think it depends on where you go. Canada will be taken over. Mexico has long been a puppet. South America may be viable. Europe seems OK. Australia is sort of climatically challenged. New Zealand looks good to me, if you have some money and you can get in.

> How do we know when we have to go?...What signs should we look for?

Mere peasants like you or I will never be let in on the secret. Forget about the media informing you. The Internet is such a sea of rumors and black propaganda that it is useless for this task. You can pay attention to known good sources, like Sy Hersh, John Dean, and Kevin Philips; but they won't be in on the details either.

I think you are on your own on this one.

> How long can we put it off?

You have between now and the election or the coup, whichever comes first. With Kristol and Bolton telling everyone that we will attack Iran, and the NYT not firing Kristol on the spot, I expect that if Obama manages to beat the election fraud and media hit job there will be an Iran attack and a coup/martial law. They didn't set all this up to walk away from it.

arendt

[Andrea]

90. Thank you

Your answers are much as I feared. I can't imagine I'd be able to put together enough money to leave in time. I guess I have to stay and fight.

[Andrea]

86. Too late to edit, but

I meant NPR, not PR. Ergh.

[whistle]

65. My K&R as well

[HCE SuiGeneris]

66. You have dissected the situation with surgical skill...

it is a shame there is little hope to staunch the blood-letting.

K & R

[bbgrunt]

68. In 2000 I thought things would right themselves, since

2004 I knew we were doomed. I see more and more awakening to the reality, but not nearly enough to alter the trajectory. Thank you Arendt for your determined efforts to ring the bell for all to hear.

[Nay]

128. I, too, knew we were doomed in 2004. Mr Nay and I had hoped to

be able to wait until we retired to flee, but that may not be possible. Like many folks, I have given up trying to warn people of the danger. They either think I'm weird or, worse, they LIKE the way things are going -- they think the powers-that-be will find them valuable enforcers. They truly do not know they are disposable trash. Then there are the fundies, who can hardly wait for the war with Iran because that means they get raptured up! When I ask them why the Iraq War wasn't enough to rapture them up, I honestly get the feeling they are waiting and hoping for the nukes to fly. THAT is what is required. Have I said how much I hate this place?

[Frank Lemadeer]

69. You know what else I'm reminded of?

David Seaton has pointed out that if poor and middle class whites ever realize they have more in common with the poor and minorities than with rich whites--that both are being equally exploited and suppressed and used and fleeced by the plutocracy--you couldn't find an elected Republican in 5 years.

And that made me think of the Civil War and the whites' Southern ancestors. Most were dirt poor and hadn't a pot to piss in, but somehow they became convinced they were part of the landed patriarchal gentry class. They took up arms to march north to defend "our right" to own "property"--i.e., slaves, taking bullets and dying by the thousands for a right they'd never have the means to exercise, for a class they really never belonged to and never would. It was a delusion. They had much more in common with the exploited and suppressed slaves than the rich plantation owner class, even if they did attend the same whites-only church on Sunday. If they had realized this, the South could never have raised an army.

That delusion is ongoing today. Middle class whites--men, mostly--hear about a tax increase on the rich, and psychologically they've been duped into believing that's a class they belong to. And they march to defend "their" property.

It's the greatest of GOP strategic successes--convincing the middle class to vote against its own interests, by convincing them they're in the same country club, instead of shut out of it like the minorities and the poors, all all of them paying the greens fees and bar tabs for all the members inside.

It's a mind-bogglingly successful con job.

K & R'd.

[arendt]

71. Some of it is money; a lot of it is "masculinity"...

Susan Falludi covered this so well in "Stiffed" - how technology obliterated the traditional role of man, the breadwinner. How there are very few "tough guy" jobs in the U.S. anymore, like working in a steel mill or on an oil rig. What there is is a lot of office/service jobs that can be done by a 70-year old woman. In reaction, the tough guys became a parody of themselves - the idiots who paint themselves at football games, etc.

So, all these macho bullies feel castrated. Then, they go out and vote for the war party, because as Chris Hedges says: "War is a force that gives us meaning.".

I have always been aware of the trashing that any kind of helpful (as opposed to criminal forensic) psychological help gets in the media and in real life. dog help us that anyone should have an insight instead of just punching someone else in the snoot. Look at the TV portrayals of psychology: Bob Newhart, Kelsey Grammar - ineffectual, mousy twits who make a lot of money. Simultaneously inducing sneering contempt and jealous rage among the stiffed.

But, I must agree with you. It is an amazingly successful con job.

arendt

[Swamp Rat]

77. The DLC reminds me of the Croatian Ustaše during WWII.

[MountainLaurel]

84. So many insightful posts here

Thank you all for so eloquently saying it.

[Rosey]

88. So how do we prevent this tragedy from happening?

It sounds like there is no hope.

[datasuspect]

143. it's been happening since before the enlightenment

[Imagevision]

94. Must keep repugs out of office, they're a failed option for the middle class...

[Name removed]

118. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Raksha]

120. K & R - So very true!

How can anyone still be in denial at this point?

[UndertheOcean]

134. K&R

[tomreedtoon]

138. What's your answer? Guns, guns, guns!

Kill 'em all! Mow 'em down! Join Tanya in the glory of the Revolution!

Or, if that's not what the OP is saying, what the hell DOES he recommend?

[tom_paine]

140. I believe you are mistaken. People are talking National Strikes, not guns guns guns

I can only speak for myself, but I believe that is where I and others are coming from.

Why is it you assume that simply outlining the severity of the problem implies a violent revolutionary solution of guns guns guns?

It doesn't. All it implies, most of the time, is what it says, an outlining of a very severe problem that has perhaps gone past a "tipping point" such that the system can no longer heal itself using the system. I like to say the Bushies have given America a case of political AIDS.

But, rhetorically-speaking, ask Ghandhi, ask Martin Luther King, even ask Joe Hill, Eugene V. Debs, and Mother Jones if guns guns guns was what they were all about.

So I don't agree with your intuitive leap that OPs like these imply guns guns guns.

[tomreedtoon]

145. National strikes? Are you in grade school?

Strikes don't work. Walkouts and moritoriums don't work, if the situation is as grave as the OP insists. And you'll note that the OP insists on ranting about how desperate and hopeless the situation is. Only going around and killing the Evil People will save the day.

This is what happens when fanatics start taking over the conversation, as has happened with several posts on DU recently. The OP is Emma Goldman, inciting Leon Csogosch to assassinate William McKinley. She wasn't talking about "national strikes" either.

[tom_paine]

147. Gosh you're angry. I'm supposed to be the angry one.

I'm actively suppressing my temper about your gratuitous "grade school" crack, because I have no desire to get into a shouting match with you, but it was unwarranted.

I don't recall ever treating you and talking to you with anything but respect and I don't think it's too much to ask for a little in return.

The situation IS pretty desperate and hopeless. So? I think to assume that desperation and hopelessness automatically means violence is the answer is not very smart.

You seem determined to put words into arendt's mouth. You seem certain of what arendt is thinking. The only thing that I am certain of is that I don't know what you or arendt are thinking, having never met you in person not once, let alone knowing you well enough to make such drastic asumptions.

I also believe the situation is desperate and near-hopeless, does that mean I am a fanatic out to do violence?

I don't know what else to tell you, tom. I think you are making a whole lot of assumptions that are just not true.

I think that for some reason you fly off the handle at stuff like this, and maybe you want to calm down and think about what I am saying.

I know because I do the same thing, though I have been trying to work on it.

At this point, you are going to blow me off with some more insults or you will stop and think about what I have said.

P.S. I haven't been in grade school for more than three decades.

[tomreedtoon]

153. I am saying, hopelessness automatically incites violence.

Maybe you don't think so. But maybe you haven't ever REALLY been hopeless.

Also, making people feel powerless and hopeless - which is what your post was trying to do - is the first step in making people support a totalitarian cause, whether left or right. Read Eric Hoffer's The True Believer and you will recognize you were taking the first steps to that.

I just went through eight years of feeling hopeless and powerless from Bush. I will not have it happen to me again from someone on the other side of the graph.

[tom_paine]

155. No, I do not agree the process is automatic, nor does it lead to violence.

You said I just went through eight years of feeling hopeless and powerless from Bush. I will not have it happen to me again from someone on the other side of the graph.

Does this mean you've done violence? It's a rhetorical question, don't bother answering, except to yourself.

Also, isn't that blaming the victim? After all, the hopelessness that person is feeling is the same hopelessness you felt (but apparently no longer feel and apparently it didn't make you turn to violence) and generated by the same awful truth of reality.

They way you talk, it's as if arendt is trying to make you feel hopeless in order to create The Arendt Movement of Violence or something, which is clearly not so.

You're blaming arendt for feeling and talking hopeless, then you are quick to let us know that, for most of the past eight years, that's EXACTLY the way YOU felt.

We can agree to disagree. It sounds to me like we are going to have to agree to disagree, especially with you saying things like hopelessness leads automatically to violence.

Tell it to Mother Theresa, the Murdering Militant True Believer of the Hopeless.

Look, you can have the last word if you wish. I have said my piece and tried to give you some food for thought. If I have not moved you or made you think, fine. If I have, so much the better.

But there's not much more to say, IMHO. You have made your position clear and I have made mine.

If this sort of "hopeless" talk upsets you, then use "hide thread" or "ignore".

Because this sort of talk is not going to end, at least until there are GOOD REASONS TO HOPE, such as the possibility of Obama getting on the throne AND making at least a couple substantive inroads to "reconnect the Constitutional Burglar Alarms".

[arendt]

149. My personal answer is to look for a way to leave the country...not guns. never guns...

Do you think people survived the Warsaw Ghetto by going gun to gun with the Nazis?

No, they survived by slipping through the lines in the chaos. The ones who stayed to fight died, and perhaps they died so their loved ones could slip away.

You.cannot.read.my.mind. Do.not.even.try.

arendt

[tom_paine]

151. People see what they want to see, arendt.

Neither you nor me nor anyone is fully immune from this most human of characteristics. The best we can do is be self-aware of it and TRY to mitigate it. If we are to be honest with ourselves, we know it is impossible as a human being to be completely successful at it.

And none of it has changed one iota in 10,000 years, I think. The only thing that has changed is our expanded energy budget and increased technical knowhow.

In the end, perhaps it is that human characteristic more than any other, which is the reason 95% of all people who ever lived have lived under tyranny.

Up until 2000, we were in the lucky 5%.

No more.