If it weren't for fearmongering, I wouldn't have no news at all. Still, as a public service I offer "Meltup," the viral video from the National Inflation Association.
If you read around the edges of the Apocalypse, as I do from time to time, you encounter certain names over and over: Peter Schiff, Ron Paul, Marc Faber, John Williams, Gerald Celeste, Max Keiser. These are the Heralds of American Economic Doom, and the route they all see, when you boil it down, is basically the same. The United States has painted itself into such a corner in terms of debt and unfunded entitlements, and the maintenance of an overseas military empire, and the destruction of its productive capacity, that there is now no way out. We are going to have to monetize our debt by printing money at an accelerating rate, which will devalue the currency and lead to collapse.
Sigh...our very own Weimar Republic. Anyway, if a picture is worth a thousand words, then perhaps a moving picture is worth a million.. It's curious, as the events in Greece and Europe have focused our attention more fixedly on the nature of sovereign default, that a convergence and truly "nonpartisan" consensus seems to be forming that mainly is characterized by class warfare. This is the golden braid that unites elements of the Tea Party with mainstream liberals. The game is rigged, and there isn't enough to go around anymore. Wall Street bankers are dividing billions of profits into huge bonuses while one in eight Americans are on food stamps and the real unemployment rate hovers around 20%. You can't make any money by putting it in the bank, whereas big banks can borrow money from the government for nothing and make a killing without risk.
As I said in my last brainbelch, perhaps many American "rebels" cannot articulate with consistent precision why they're so angry, but the gravamen of their complaint is not wrong. The differences between factions of the Pissed Off are sometimes trivial and sometimes simply related to predisposition. For example, in this video you can see an argument against the minimum wage and what appears to be a complaint about requiring businesses to set aside facilities for nursing mothers to breast feed their babies in secluded dignity. The video also bitches about "lazy Americans" who expect to be supported by the government. This is all part of the standard Right Wing catechism, of course, but what I've learned (I think) is that the emotional origins of some opinions perhaps matter less than the general accuracy of the main complaint: the Middle Class of the United States has been systematically sold out in favor of offshoring jobs, importing oil, relegating our commerce to Big Box stores full of Chinese crap, destroying tariff protection so domestic multinationals can use cheap foreign work forces, and in general allowing the Middle Class to subsist and wither away on ever-mounting piles of debt.
That reality is what ties the liberals and the Tea Partiers together. One side might favor gun control and the other rail on about gay marriage, but in the final analysis, unless the great majority of Americans can support themselves and buy food and fuel, these issues are the agenda for the Great Debating Society on the Deck of the Titanic. As money dwindles, as Social Security retirement and Medicare become threatened with insolvency, the luxury of basing one's politics purely on "social issue ideology" goes the way of....the American Middle Class.
Politics in the USA, not surprisingly, is becoming increasingly volatile. Ancient Senators are being unceremoniously thrown out of office before they can even get to the general election in their states. Things are going to get more fractious and unpredictable as things get worse, and I think this video explains many of the reasons why. I think we should watch the riots in Athens with a sense of trepidation, for they could well be coming soon to a Main Street near you.
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