all the left-wing pundits are going full-throttle into pre-speech analytics, anticipating what obasma will be spouting tonight at the SOTU -- that most unfortunate acronym for a most perfunctory rendering.
triangulation seems to be a common theme: obama will try to co-opt some of his opponents' ideas to promote a vision of him as dedicated to the common good, and against the more extreme elements of his own party. they recognize that the middle is so far to the right that nixon would've been a left-wing radical today.
it's a nice try, but those who reduce it to its most elemental level are right: the discussion is driven by those who control the politicians through their contributions -- financial, that is. money is power, and the powerful have one thing their opponents lack: money.
if there ever comes a time when money no longer sways the popular mind, and when the rich can no longer buy the outcome of elections, it'll be when they're the only ones left with money. when their victims have been wiped out, when they don't have the means to tune into the narcotainment media, then their hold over the popular mind will start to weaken.
right now, the messengers are strong. a media landscape controlled by a handful of giant corporations who dictate what people see, hear and care about. the oppressor is cast as yet another victim in this crazy world, portrayed as a struggling family farmer seeing the fruits of a lifetime of labor confiscated by the government through the "death tax". 3-year-olds carry signs saying i have no future because of all the government debt.
the problem in the US today is income inequality, but the citizens who don't have it have been conned into thinking that government programs are helping undeserving poor folks, while the real reason the government is going broke is because all our taxes are going to support not poor but the fabulously wealthy. it's not socialism that's ruining the country, but crony capitalism; it's not a free market that functions just fine without government regulation, but a rigged market that pays big dividends to people with gigantic investment portfolios when their investments prosper, and who are bailed out by working people when their gambles tank.
blame a darkie, a mexican, claim our hard times are god's punishment for tolerating gays... anything to distract ignorant and lazy people and prevent them from facing the facts -- that they are the agents of their own misery.
pay no attention to what that man at the podium says tonight, nor to the squirming, shifty-eyed bastards who watch, either mindlessly applauding or frowning like their dog has just been run over. don't look here, the joke's in your hand! not one of them cares about "restoring america to greatness," not when there's still all that money out there just waiting to be stolen.
watch and wait for it: wall street will get your social security money before it's over with, and you'll live out your old age under a bridge. none of the guys at the capitol have to worry about that -- just you and me. and i don't worry about it because guys like me, who criticize the setup, will be eliminated -- the squeaky wheel gets iced.
so much for dissent. have you ever noticed that when the right wing protests against the government, it is never taken as a threat by the authorities. you never hear about gun nuts and survivalists and militias being investigated by grand juries and its membership infiltrated by the FBI. it's only environmental, social justice or anti-war groups whose politics are seen as a threat to the established order -- although they openly advocate for the elimination of their political opponents using unmistakable calls for violence.
x-treme stupidity is what i see all around me. politicians who spout demonstrably false rhetoric to an electorate that wants to be pandered to, extolled in spite of its ignorance and pettiness. one george allen, aspiring to regain his senate seat in virginia, announces his candidacy as a means to restore america's greatness -- as though further enriching the plutocrats will raise the stature of a nation whose fall and trampling in the muck his own politics were largely responsible for.
end war for profit, government for profit, with all the associated subsidies for businesses and bailouts for the reckless, failed investments of our overlords, and then tax all according to the benefits society has given them. give working people a share of the benefits of the prosperity their labor has brought to the country. that is a program to restore america.
we can do this on our own, or we can wait until the economic cycle forces a day of reckoning. but by then the price paid will be in blood, not money. that's a promise written in the history of empires.
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