It's prom night at the State of the Union.

[seafan]

It's all about civility, you see.


David Michael Green:

.....

There’s been only one issue that really matters in the thirty years since Ronald Reagan came to Washington, and that is the highly successful effort by the plutocracy to enrich themselves further by destroying the standard of living of the middle, working and poorest classes. All the debates concerning taxes and trade and labor rights and spending and regulation policy have been precisely about this single theme. And all the other debates about gay rights and Iraq and immigration and putting Christ back into Christmas have been peripheral matters to this core initiative, if not intentional distractions.

Astonishingly, this campaign has produced enormous success. And, since policies have consequences, these policies have had the consequence of directing almost every penny of the considerable growth in GDP sustained over the last thirty years into the hands of the rich, while everyone else slips into economic despair, or uses credit cards with usurious interest rates to barely keep their noses above water. I say “astonishingly”, because you’d think that this development was the product of a non-democracy, because in a real democracy people would never stand for it. But in fact, that’s exactly what’s happened, with the compliance of the victims in this crime. We do get to actually vote for the people who make policy in this country, but we don’t in fact choose candidates with our best interests at heart. In the most recent go-round, we picked a group of feral dog Republicans for our Congress even more obscene than the McCain-Boehner variety who impoverished the country only two years earlier.

.....

If I believed that the right in America had the interests of the world, or even just the American people, truly at heart, it would be one thing. But I don’t at all. I know instead for a fact that their interest is actually in destroying us folks if it is necessary in the process of looting us. Does that deserve the sort faux civility we arguably practice far too much? We weren’t called upon to be nice to the Japanese after they killed about 3000 of us in a surprise attack, were we? Why am I called upon to treat with respect millionaires and billionaires and the politician whores they’ve bought, when their goal is at least as destructive?

Does that seem like a far-fetched claim?

.....

Fine. I say, tell it to the perhaps one million dead Iraqis. Tell it to a million dead Americans, the victims of gun violence over the last generation’s time. Tell it to the rapidly proliferating number of species across the planet we are speedily eradicating. Tell it to the American children who can’t get health care or a decent education because public money has been redirected to tax cuts for the rich or ‘defense’ boondoggles of every sort. Tell it to the massive chunk of our population – a greater percentage than in any country in the world – behind bars in order to serve a for-profit prison industry. Tell it to the million of unemployed Americans whose jobs have been shipped overseas where labor is cheap and goon squads ‘disincentivize’ organizing into unions. Tell it to African farmers who starve to death because they can’t compete with subsidized American corporate agriculture. For that matter, tell it to the American family farmer. If you can find one.

You know, it’s bad enough being screwed. But it’s far worse to be screwed and to have to pretend it’s just an honest policy difference between well-meaning patriots with two divergent but equally legitimate and public-spirited positions on these issues.

It’s well past time to be blunt about our situation. Indeed, we cannot even hope to ameliorate it if we cannot even begin by labeling it.

The truth is that there are economic predators out there seeking to take what we have so that they can live ever wealthier lives while ours are short, nasty and brutish because of their institutionalized and legalized theft.

Victims of these crimes can choose to treat their assailants with civility if they want.

I’m not interested.

Neither am I, Mr. Green.


These predators are committing ongoing crimes against the people of this country.


But, they hope we will be civil, so that the rape and pillage may continue.

[raccoon]

1. K&R. nt

[pacalo]

2. K&R.

On "putting Christ back in Christmas", how about putting Christ in their shriveled hearts & dark souls? Why only on one day? If they applied Christ's teachings in their lives, this country wouldn't have so many social & economic problems.

[Initech]

3. How about we set an example and arrest the Koch Brothers?