I fear we're either at the point of no return or past it now

If the teabaggers in Congress don't budge, and why should they with their stated goal of destroying the government, our government will default and start a series of bad events that can't be reversed. If the Democrats agree to 'compromise' by cutting vital social programs it will also set off a series of events like falling dominoes. They've managed to take a fake crisis and create a real one, like everything else they've done. Either outcome of whatever plan wins is bad, and with either alternative we lose. The die is cast.

Who are we kidding to think either outcome will be any better than the other in the long run? Congress has the power right now which is held by a handful of treasonous people who are dead set on drowning the government. It doesn't matter that they're stupid or that they'll realize at some point that what they've done will hurt them too and destroy the country itself. It'll be too late to stop whatever will be set in motion once we've crossed the point of no return. Although like I said above, maybe we've already passed it. This damned debt ceiling crisis fiasco already seems to have the momentum of a seismic unstoppable mudslide going over a cliff. There's not a damn thing that can stop it because the point of no return has been passed.

Maybe this is a good thing. I don't know because not enough history has elapsed to make a judgement. But right now it's pretty plain to see that our country's foundation, or what we believed it's foundation to be is broken beyond repair. In hindsight it's kind of been obvious for years that we've been on a downward spiral of destruction. To people who paid attention all along they've seen it's happening for decades, albeit they've had to peer into secretive darkness for the most part. When the Supreme Court selected Bush as President in 2000 we were naive in our belief that it was an anomaly that would easily be rectified. I think we blindly believed it would be reversed because anyone could see it was a crime against our Constitutionally based Democratic government. Speaking for myself I believed our legal institutions would step in and litigate the Constitutional Crisis that was upon us, then later when that didn't happen I was sure that the next election would again show that the American people have the real power, but the only thing that happened was that the election was stolen again.

we realized slowly and painfully that the news media had been highjacked by corporations and billionaires with a self-serving agenda. It took a while for it to really sink in because maybe we just didn't want to believe it or maybe they were still being secretive about allowing that knowledge to come out. Now in hindsight we can see how we were really duped all along. Just like the teabaggers and a large part of Americans are still being duped. The propaganda machine works non-stop to keep us dazzled and entertained into submissive slumber while they obfuscate about the harsh truths of job losses and growing homelessness and while they commit the biggest heist of all time, stealing from the middle class and giving to the rich. They go on TV and lie boldly right to our faces while the transference of wealth is being done before our very eyes with their sleight of hand. They're bold and brazen about it which is most likely an indicator that they feel they have nothing to fear from us anymore. They've stepped out into broad daylight and they openly break laws and destroy unions and the right to choose since the last election. It's hard to believe how much headway they made since just last November which was only a mere eight months ago. It's almost breathtaking to see how fast they've moved once they were elected and how tightly synchronized they were and how many fronts they simultaneously opened on their war on us. It's obvious now of course.


Some people are rising up in protest as we see in Wisconsin, but it seems to be a race against time whether the Republicans, now infused and overrun by teabaggers will win or we will win. We're being killed by a thousand cuts from every side. People are losing their jobs and their homes and they can't recover because the jobs are gone now and they're not coming back. Those days are over. They're successfully keeping us off balance just enough so they can implement their tactics in the open which I think is a strong indication that they're comfortably confident of getting anything and everything they want.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I think they laid a very solid foundation while they worked in secret for decades, and I think that by the time they were able to quite openly go to the Supreme Court and have them select the next president it was probably already too late. A slow motion coup d'etat has been happening right under our noses, especially since 2000. I don't know if we, the people, still have enough power to stop it. I certainly hope we do. I plan to continue to vote and continue to be part of my union as long as it exists, and continue to do what I can to educate people. I'm a believer in never giving up the righteous fight for equality and justice for all humans. I can accept defeat in a battle as long as I know I fought the good fight for the right side every inch of the way. There is no dishonor in losing in that way but there is dishonor in them winning the way they're doing it. Given a choice I will always choose the side that's right, whether it's the winning side or not.

If you made it this far in my little rant I thank you.

edited for missing word

plant your victory gardens...
stock up for the winter...
help and encourage each other...
give the greedy elite and corporations nothing.
and dream of spring.

...for the sake of our children

the corporatocracy will realize that we (the U.S.) are still their biggest consumers because surely, the rest of the world hasn't quite reached the frantic level of consumerism that we have evolved into, nor do they have the interest to be like that, no matter how "multinational" our companies have become. They will have to be the ones to break the logjam that was their creation and like a rubberband, it may actually force them to snap back in equal fashion (balanced forces... equal and opposite reaction)

China is the new market....

and that our consumerism is easily made up for in raw numbers and growing consumerism in emerging markets.

We are only a small percentage of the global population. I also believe they see a more diffused "middle class" as much less dangerous to power and demanding of resources than a concentrated version.

Eventually, they will have many more consumers, huge excess labor that is hungry, desperate, and even slightly educated and they will be spread around the globe with many daily reminders of how good they have it above the squalor and deprivation. That new "middle class" will be much more docile and desperate to avoid falling into the plight of the masses. They will be more loyal, ask fewer questions, and be much more fearful.

We are being strategically disassembled, I think your view of the situation is more than optimistic and may be based on a privileged frame of reference.

Soon, both the Indian and the Chinese middle classes will each be larger than our total population, people should have thought more in your vein twenty, thirty, and forty years ago or probably they did and could be placated by illusions of the magic rubberband snapping back, now it is a dog that doesn't much hunt. More an appeal to exceptionalisim than a rational assessment.

It seems like so long ago.. we were all so optimistic.
It's all over now.

I am still waking up, but MUCH of your rant is spot on.

Yes, we thought that things would be rectified, because it couldn't happen to US, right?

So now we are collectively screwn, what's next?

Time to focus on picking up the pieces and community building. Nevermind trying to win the next election, or trying to mobilize like wisconsin people...working within the broken system is not going to be an option in a while.
It's time to just focus on our own contingency plans for getting through this next crisis with our skins intact.
then, we can hopefully rebuild something that works, from the ground up...

either way, i am sure things won't look anything like they do now, brace yourselves..

where the criminals write the rules and those rules are subject to change whenever there's a chance the people might win something using the "old" rules.

Brace yourselves is the best advice going.

we have shown the world that we are not able to manage our own country. It is apparent that this is a game of chicken and one side or the other had to totally get out of the way, or there will be a crash.

the effects. The teabaggers were given so much press even when they had pitfully attended events.

Fareed Zakaria was on tv last night. He seemed very depressed. Said that the teabaggers think they're representing their constituencies....at all costs. Also said the teabaggers don't realize that they can push their viewpoints in Congress but when they are outnumbered the constitutional way is to work with others.

But, they won't....they are holding us hostage.

edit:spelling

But I also noticed that Democrats were specifically talking about the teabaggers and their antics. Kerry called them absolutists I think.

any other questions?

Losing a fight isn't about getting hopeless. It's about finding out that losing and hopelessness don't have to mix. Acknowledging a loss isn't falling into hopelessness. It's just sticking to facts.

the Right"s Vision for our country.

But there has to come a time when we must accept facts. If we don't we'll stay in denial or we'll keep believing they're really just a little confused and that they'll quickly rectify their behavior as soon as they see the error of their ways. At some point their consistent behavior has to sink in so we get it that they're acting the way they are to gain power. They really don't care about the principles of Democracy and equality. The American values they talk about aren't the ones we talk about. We think Democracy and they think Capitalism and believe it to be Democracy.

of our lack of vision.

This didn't happen overnight or without too many of us helping or at least standing by and allowing it, counting on magic, grace, or exceptionalisim to maintain a more or less positive path.

My sons are both heavily into role-playing games and online multi-player games, and they're both analytical enough to have learned a lot from the experience and drawn some general conclusions.

Son #1 in particular believes strongly that there is no rule-based system that players cannot eventually learn how to game. They will use obscure rules to undermine the clear intent of the major rules, they will combine rules in ways they were never meant to be combined, and they will use every possible trick to maximize their advantage while minimizing their risks.

He also believes that this principle applies completely to the real world: There is no rule-based system that will not eventually be gamed. This includes the US Constitution and it includes democracy in general. It's kind of like a predator-prey relationship. No matter how fast and strong and adaptable you are, the predators will eventually find a weakness in your defenses and exploit it mercilessly.

There was an article a few days ago suggesting that sex exists in the natural world because if offspring are exactly like their parents, the predators/parasites/diseases will already know how to get through their defenses. Sexual reproduction, by making each generation a little different, helps them stay a jump ahead of whatever's on their heels.

When it comes to politics, however, sometimes small tweaks are enough to stay ahead -- and sometimes the entire system becomes too thoroughly corrupted to be redeemed. I'm starting to conclude that we've reached the point of systemic rot, where democracy as we know it is no longer able to throw off the disease of corruption.

In part, this is because representative democracy doesn't scale well. A member of Congress who represents a few tens of thousands of constituents and spends most of the year living in their home district is very different from one who represents hundreds of thousands, needs massive amounts of campaign funds to reach the voters, and spends most of the year in Washington hobnobbing with lobbyists.

The technical complexity of issues today has also increased, to the point where most representatives don't really know very much about what they're doing -- which makes them even more vulnerable to lobbying or to groups like ALEC that supply pre-written legislation. I suspect that -- far from cutting the bureaucracy as the right wants -- we need to bureaucratize and de-politicize a lot more of the government, bring the voters more closely into ongoing policy debates, and drastically reduce the current role of the president and Congress to one of keeping the machinery running smoothly.

How to get there, though, is another question.

It is a mindset, and I think conservative politicians and capitalists may actually be hard wired that way. They think in terms of acquiring power for it's own sake to serve their 'needs'. The rest of us think in terms of spreading power around so everyone can have their needs met. I wonder what kind of evolutionary purpose it serves though.

I've often thought that in today's world we could do away with relying on our representatives to vote on issues for us. There's no reason that if we get to vote electronically for them, why we shouldn't get to directly vote for the legislation we want. Then our representatives could be given the job of writing the legislation while we would vote on it directly.

It's a thought. Or little more than a seed for thought.

"I can accept defeat in a battle as long as I know I fought the good fight for the right side every inch of the way. There is no dishonor in losing in that way but there is dishonor in them winning the way they're doing it. Given a choice I will always choose the side that's right, whether it's the winning side or not."

You have a working sense of right and wrong and you still believe in honor. Personal and (I assume) national honor is still an important value for you. Most of here will never be all that good at gaming the system as the predatory capitalists and their useful idiots, basically because we don't WANT to. It's not because we are any more stupid than they are (in most cases the opposite is true) but because Machievellian thinking is so foreign to our nature. Because the common good is such an important value to us, we don't understand why it isn't important to everyone.

Likewise the idea of winning fairly, whether it's a game or an election. That's where the sense of honor comes in. Who wants a victory you had to cheat to get? I mean, if you had to cheat it isn't a real victory, and besides--what if you get caught cheating? Won't that invalidate your victory? Republicans don't have to worry about any of that, apparently. They did steal the election of 2004, and eventually they did get caught. But so far there have been no repercussions for any of them, not even the election rigger in chief, Karl Rove.

IOKIYAR - a sense of honor and integrity is clearly an evolutionary disadvantage for liberals.

If not for the injection of ever increasing debt into the system over the long term, what we're experiencing would be done and over by now.

74 debt ceilings raised since 1962 made it possible for them to keep us thinking credit cards, sub prime mortgages, futures gambling, 401Ks, derivatives and other computer entry wall street games would somehow save our miserable souls from ultimate bankruptcy.

What we've ended up with is food stamps, homelessness and wars. Oh, and debt, lots of that. They'll take the food stamps and leave us with the rest while they scamper off to their dachas in Paraguay where they'll be insulated from the angry mobs. Lovely.

they still had support

It's a sad and bitter realization.

G'Quan wrote: 'There is a greater darkness than the one we fight. It is the darkness of the soul that has lost its way. The war we fight is not against powers and principalities, it is against chaos and despair. Greater than the death of flesh is the death of hope, the death of dreams. Against this peril we can never surrender. The future is all around us, waiting in moments of transition, to be born in moments of revelation. No one knows the shape of that future, or where it will take us. We know only that it is always born in pain.'

-- G'Kar in Babylon 5: Z'ha'dum

I looked it up. Thanks.

but to anyone who's been halfway paying attention the last 10 years (hell, the last 30 years!) it has the absolute ring of truth.

Taking a Closer Look at the Result of a Credit Downgrade
By BINYAMIN APPELBAUM
Published: July 30, 2011
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A downgrade to the nation’s credit would probably increase the cost of borrowing for the federal government and for everyone else. But the Obama administration, House Republicans, some economists and Wall Street strategists have concluded that the economic impact would be surprisingly modest, one reason that negotiations over a “grand bargain” for debt reduction broke down.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/31/business/economy/taking-a-closer-look-at-a-downgrades-effects.html?hp

It seems that people not receiving Social Security checks in the broad view of events doesn't mean shit when compared to how it would effect fucking Wall Street!

So you can do what you must to deal with it.