by Donald Croft Brickner
Boy, the new Republican Whatever-They-May-Be are a piece of work.
They don’t even know who they are, thanks to the Tea Party … whatever that is.
Foolishly brazen and rabid doesn’t begin to tell their jointly improbable November 2010 story.
At this writing, three days after the national mid-term elections in which every Republican and their grandmother were elected to the U.S. House of Representatives — the triple A farm club of the U.S. Senate, which remained in control by duly tazered and wiggly-mouthed Democrats (albeit, less of them) — the country’s future has never looked worse than it does now.
Can anybody say second downturn?
Does anyone honestly think these Republicans are going to going to create jobs? They’re not even the least bit interested in doing that — they just plan to “stick it” to President Obama over the next two years for no clear reason — and they plan to continue to support an inevitable all-but-entirely-privatized economy enroute to an Amazing Jobless Recovery, which the cleverest Wall Streeters created and then manifested while no one was looking, about a year or so ago.
The first part of that — sticking it to President Obama — these new Republicans even bragged about doing, only this week! They ill-guidedly think that’s why they were voted into office!
More regarding the Amazing Jobless Recovery shortly, which was supported by both parties, apparently. Greed has no ideological roots beyond cynicism and nihilism. It’s emotionally-empowered, and so (Gordon Gecko notwithstanding) has no clear rationale. It’s fear-driven.
We’re all going to end up bloody sorry should more transparencies, in both government and private corporations — all of it — fail to become the laws of the land. Every prediction I’ve made to date related to a freshly-leveled playing field in America will come to pass, as mostly is (see my previous editorials posted over two years at www.groundreport.com/donaldcroftbrickner .)
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Um. The only thing is . . .
Since these volatile mid-term elections, something has shifted well behind the scenes. I say “something,” because whatever happened has been largely outside my frame of observation.
But my instincts tell me that it will be possible, on some newly-introduced level, to achieve the same results — a major shift in our ongoing absence of humility — without a total collapse of all things American. And that includes the economy which, as I’ll soon suggest, is not Wall Street.
I still strongly doubt the above intellectually, by the way. From where I stand, there’s still next-to-nothing holding up our self-centered and materialistically-foundationed house of cards.
And, frankly, I’d far prefer having the America of my childhood back — not this ugly dark mess.
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Consider the following consensus delusion related to Wall Street and the so-called American economy:
As of early-to-middle October 2010, our legitimate media reported that “our economy” ended the previous month with the Dow Jones Industrial Average recording its best September numbers since 1939 (!) (http://www.dailyfinance.com/story/investing/the-dow-notches-its-best-september-in-71-years/19655666/ ). Meanwhile, however, market investors were complaining about being stiffed by companies now paying below-market yields — or, instead, not sharing their ridiculous wealth at all! (http://www.marketwatch.com/story/as-corporate-cash-grows-so-do-dividend-calls-2010-10-04?dist=beforebell ).
As of Friday, Oct. 8, 95,000 jobs were reportedly “trimmed” in the previous month, while the Dow closed the week above 11,000 for the first time since May, oblivious to the week’s worth of negative news (http://www.dailyfinance.com/story/careers/americas-job-creation-engine-remains-stalled/19666261/ ).
It’s finally becoming clear that Wall Street’s transactions and “the economy” aren’t measuring the same thing. The Dow, S&P and NASDAQ are cumulatively not the U.S. economy, which Dictionary.com defines as, “the prosperity or earnings of a place” — in this instance, the United States. Not Wall Street.
Not only is Wall Street not a synonym for the economy, but it sucks away billions of dollars from the real economy — which is reflected by the overwhelming majority of U.S. workers who, when they transform into consumers, reportedly make up 70 percent of our economy.
Only these days, somehow, they apparently don’t.
Enter the new Amazing Jobless Recovery.
I have no idea how this has been pulled off, but I expect the supercomputers that actually run Wall Street each weekday have somehow been programmed to pull this off: Whether there’s good news or bad news for investors, Dow numbers, and the Amazing Jobless Recovery, now steadily rise.
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In any event, the newly-mandated Republican world view is all about winners and losers.
That’s it — period.
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Actually, it’s always been about that, at least on a less demonstrable level. They’re the big winners — and you’re not.
Even when they’re out of office, the party’s perspective is that of innately being divinely correct about, realistically, well, everything. And so has that perspective carried over to the (midterms’ partially-winning) Tea Party, which is a subgroup within the Republican Party for now — even though less than a day after the national elections had taken place (!), it stated its grandiose intentions of commandeering everything Republican, and turning all of it droolingly conservative.
Let’s not make a big fuss here — but the word for the Tea Party’s intentions is hubris: (Hubris, hubris, hubris.)
No real decency is permitted in either Republican camp, for now. It’s all about winning. That is the truth.
Which is another way of saying — it’s all about power.
Which has been reduced to a sickening one-note addiction, just about everywhere. That applies to you, too, Mr. and Mrs. Democrat, who covertly embrace love affairs with lobbyists.
Democrats talk a good game, but are infamous for failing to take appropriate, tenable actions.
I had to get that in. I’m a political Independent for a reason.
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I don’t like politics. Its participants continuously tend toward the megalomaniacal.
Here’s a sliver of insight regarding all bullies, political or otherwise:
They always — always — underestimate their selected victims.
In fact, the only time David ever loses to Goliath is when David lacks the requisite motivation.
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This was posed by 2010 Elections Politics Daily and AOL senior correspondent Jill Lawrence in her November 4 column, Republicans Think They Won a Mandate, but Did They?, based upon17,504 national midterm election exit poll responses: “…And though economists of all types say the Democrats’ stimulus package helped avert a depression, two-thirds of this week’s voters said it (stimulus package—DCB) either hurt or made no difference.”
…Really?
Where have we heard such a similar damn-the-torpedoes-of-science-and-reason perspective before? When 2,000 world scientists gathered in Stockholm, Sweden not so long ago and declared that global warming/climate change was unquestionably the real deal — and, further, that humans were in large part to blame as a major causality. A very loud collective in America declared in response, without blinking, that all of those unanimous scientists were wrong — yet these Americans failed to provide any substantial evidence in support of their disbelief(s).
Well, the same thing’s going on here: Two-thirds of Americans didn’t believe we were all that close to a depression in January 2008, when President Obama first took office. The rationale, if that’s the word, thus saw nothing wrong with the Bush administration’s handling of the economy prior to the initial economic collapse during his last fall (no pun intended) in office.
That’s how they’ve allowed Bush Administration policies to be ushered back on the table. And how the actual villains here, Wall Street’s highly manipulative and greedy barons, have been entrusted, prior to the facts, with privatizing Social Security and Medicare.
The last time this happened, when Wall Streeters and their management operatives privatized business-based retirement benefits away from pensions in the 1990s — and all of us let them do this — retirees watched their promised retirements evaporate when Wall Street slipped into a deep recession toward the end of the decade. Did no one in government see that coming?
This kind of, yes, insane declaration by a loud, severely biased and (where’s-my-rifle-depth-of-) angry segment of the U.S. population has managed to insinuate itself once more, despite proving itself infrastructurally destructive, and murderously callous.
The primary underlying message then, as now, is this:
Money matters. People don’t.
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Pets still matter.
People still don’t.
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Our recent circumstances have two primary components: unhealthy psychology, and way-errant world views — the very same two components that have brought this once (mostly) wonderful nation to its knees … and is threatening to bring today’s structurally-suspect house of cards plummeting to ground zero, as well.
Just like any gathering of stumbling addicts on the verge of hitting bottom.
So it’s clear: we’ve lost our once cherished notion of “decency” for no reasonable reason.
Thus, we are not only likely emotionally ill as a population . . .
…we are a nation full of everyday, garden-variety addicts — and something’s just got to give.
I still vote for The Great Leveling, personally.
But then — what do I know any more?
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