Wednesday, October 31, 2012

31 October 2012 No candy for plutocrats



Today, there are two opinion columns I’d like to see widely circulated.  Both can be found in the Washington Post:

A vote for the future or for the past?

By Harold Meyerson, Published: October 30

The 2012 presidential election is fundamentally a contest between our future and our past. Barack Obama’s America is the America that will be; Mitt Romney’s is the America that was. And the distance between the two is greater, perhaps, than in any election we’ve had since the Civil War…”

Warfare waged by the upper class

By Katrina vanden Heuvel, Published: October 30

“The Republican vision is clear — ‘I got mine. The rest of you are on your own.’ Republicans say they don’t believe in government. Sure, they do. They believe in government to help themselves and their powerful friends. After all, Mitt Romney is the guy who said corporations are people. No, Governor Romney, corporations are not people
Cassi Creek:
          Meyerson writes about the inability of the GOP and its teavangelist core to move forward into a more diverse society.  He points out the efforts made by George W, Bush to bring about immigration reform and to encourage minority participation in the GOP.  Due to the rabid anti-immigrant nature of the teavangelists, the GOP is fully fueled with a new load of bigotry, racism, and fundamentalist/evangelical Christianity that will allow the figureheads and demagogues to steer the GOP’s ship of fools straight onto a bank of shoals and reefs guaranteed to rip its belly out. 
          The end, says Meyerson, is inevitable.  Failure to accept the changing nature of the U.S.’ demographics will sink the GOP.  The only uncertainties are how rapidly it will sink and how many of the teavangelists it will carry down with it.  The sooner and the more, the better.
         
          Vanden Heuvel   looks directly at the frequently denied class warfare that sits poised to split the nation apart on economic lines.  The GOP owners are so blinded by their own self-designated indispensable nature that they can’t see the potential to find their selves riding a tumbrel toward the public square for a quick acquaintance with mob rule and justice. 
          I’m not a fan of vigilante justice or mob rule – after all the teavangelists are mob-borne and lack the collective intelligence to spell “justice” with the aid of a dictionary.  I see no difference in a lynch mob and a vigilante/kangaroo court.  America doesn’t need to return to public hangings, particularly now when the Romney-Ryan supporters would demand that the public be charged admission to view the event.  That, I think, is one of the very real dangers of a Romney-Ryan win next month. 
          However, the upper class financiers who stole billions and manipulated the bailouts that kept them from prison by dumping the cost of bank solvency directly onto the American working and middle classes, need to be given a taste of the personal damage that they brought down upon our citizenry. 
          The good thing about the reign of terror was the terror it engineered and delivered.  The banking/investment giants, hedge-funders, and the rest of the Wall Street denizens who think that their stolen wealth will always exempt them from harm need to be taught a harsh lesson.  This class war will become much more real if the plunderers suddenly are plundered.  Gated communities are not proof against a determined mob with a sapper or two working for the mob.  A week or so of kangaroo courts with justice for the people who lost their savings to the new robber barons being carried out at the long ladder and short rope should provide a new respect for banking regulations. 

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