Matt Taibbi, the author of this piece on the subject of the vanishing middle class goes on to observe that it is precisely these class issues that simply don't get addressed in our political campaigns. The desperate financial straits affecting millions of Americans, worse and deteriorating, is no secret.
Here, however, is something that is a secret: that this is a class issue that is being intentionally downplayed by a political/media consensus bent on selling the public a version of reality where class resentments, or class distinctions even, do not exist. Our "national debate" is always a thing where we do not talk about things like haves and have-nots, rich and poor, employers versus employees. But we increasingly live in a society where all the political action is happening on one side of the line separating all those groups, to the detriment of the people on the other side.
It continually amazes me how people can keep taking it in the chops year after year by the richest segment of our population, sink slowly into basically hand-to-mouth existence, and they still think the really important concerns are issues that have nothing whatever to do with their actual lives. Things like gay marriage.
And the way the current campaign is shaping up, the main focus will once again be frivolities.
4 comments:
Have you caught the whole "lipstick on a pig" "controversy"? Go check out Glen Greenwald today if you really want to get all riled up.
I agree with some commentators I saw yesterday on TV that Obama should just quit commenting on Ms Moose-Gutter and focus on McCain. He shouldn't be dealing with Palin at all. To acknowledge her and try to fight this swell of publicity she's generated, just makes him look confused and less presidential. It brings her to his level and he to hers. Yes, I saw this b.s. about the pig. The so-called "controversy" is just more smokescreen by the Republicans. So far they've been imminently successful in getting the Democrats off message and into the bottomless rhetorical swamps that have nothing to do with the issues and the fact that McCain is more Bush. That has to be hammered and hammered and hammered.
Of course, the mindless media is all over the b.s. things because it's controversy and excitement. Just right for the brainless U.S. electorate.
It seems fairly obvious that the policy of the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer and the middle class being killed off is self-destructive.
Witness Wall Street today, September 15, 2008.
Yet, the lure of greed is so seductive that we cannot say no.
Heaven finds means to kill their joys with what they love.
Yes. I know what you're talking about. I've read that things are going to get much, much worse. This country has been whistling through the economic graveyard for some time now. And today the crypts are sending forth their zombies. I'm moving all my $$, what's left of it, and it's damn little to start with, into bonds and CDs. Good luck to you.
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