As U.S. Austerity Deepens, Prepare for Revolution

If politicians, with their pabulum “debates” leading to 2/3 of eligible voters not voting, and newscasters with their pabulum “analyses” think Americans (who are growing angrier) are going to lie down and be throttled by austerity from the newest Millionaire Congress…they’d better start paying attention.

Peculiar Progressive, during the deafening campaigns, heard both “debates” and news reports repeating over and over: the Republicans feverishly connecting their opponents with Everything Obama, and the Democrats howling about out-of-state billionaire money coming in their states to defeat them.

We watched Friday night’s pabulum “analysis” on the PBS News Hour, with conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks and liberal syndicated columnist Mark Shields echoing the limited thought process of the pabulum campaigns. They stressed Obamacare and immigration…as if that’s all that really matters to Americans. They seemed to agree that nothing would continue to get done if Congress and the president didn’t, as Brooks said, start small — “Let’s try kindergarten.” — meaning little pieces of legislation that might make the Millionaire Politicians look good.

In none of the Congressional campaigns we heard this year, nor from the mouths of Brooks and Shields Friday night, did anyone admit or offer solutions for what is really torturing Americans:

1. The over $1 trillion college loan debt, which is frustrating our young, and even abusing our elderly.
2. The $1 trillion credit card debt, which is increasing as banks turn more to subprime lending, not only for credit cards, but auto loans, and, yes, mortgages.
3. The $12.5 trillion debt (owed by the public). That’s the federal government’s figure. Some analysts claim it’s as high as $17 trillion.
4. The $2.3 trillion estimated need for U.S. infrastructure.
5. The gluttonous growth of the nontransparent (as in secret) derivatives investment industry, considered the chief cause for the economic meltdown of 2007-08. International banking analysts are expressing consistent concern that the derivatives racket, at a then-high of over $600 trillion in 2007, is currently over $700 trillion. Analysts are also extremely wary of the growing private debt worldwide.
6. The Millionaire Congress, Millionaire president, military industrial complex, Wall Street, and media conglomerate’s endlessly pushing the racket of endless war. It’s sucking the budget of any chance to fund solutions to America’s true needs, but instead sends money to the weapons industry and the bankers who back it.
7. The 750,000 active military and veterans suffering from TBI (Traumatic Brain Injury) and PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder), the tragic brain injuries caused by military conflict and leading to a continuing plague of suicides.
8. The skewed employment figures from government, ignoring the fact that 50 million Americans are on food stamps, 7 million Americans want full-time jobs but can’t find them. And while part-time jobs are being created, the country’s seeing no increase in incomes (except for top execs) and no benefits for part-time workers (many working two jobs or more) and their families.
9. A bubble stock market, fed not by executives investing in their corporations to create real jobs with rising employee incomes and benefits, but buying back their companies’ stocks to enrich their own incomes.
10. The conservative assault on state and local levels against women and minority rights.
11. The now-turned America from a democracy to an oligarchy.

Shields reached in his holster of accusatory sayings, chiding that if Americans don’t vote, they can’t complain. That’s a 20th century pabulum quip.

This is the 21st century, and we are seeing a vastly frustrated electorate, increases of citizens’ protests worldwide as governments attempt to continue austerity that is keeping people unemployed, and literally killing citizens who can’t get health care.

This is the 21st century, where in the last two weeks 1 million people protested austerity in Rome, thousands protested police brutality in France, violent protests broke out in Brussels, hundreds of thousands have protested in Greece and Spain. Even seemingly financially sound Germany is witnessing a week of transportation strikes.

This is the 21st century, where in America, the U.S. military is arming local police departments, who are being trained no longer to befriend citizens, but control and contain legal protests while wearing armor and carrying assault rifles.

It may not be clear yet to the cowed, politically ignorant American millions that they themselves are preparing to ignite, that they’re growing closer to mirroring the revolutions of the Middle East and those escalating efforts in Europe and Hong Kong. But the American federal and local governments know it.

And it’s time for you to know it. Click on the links to this column and connect the dots. And recall how this nation has a nearly 250-year history of revolution, either violent or peaceful, started by revolting against a violent, repressive dictatorial British regime.

Peculiar Progressive wishes all this wasn’t happening, that the younger generation could take hold of their power and make government and the military-industrial complex respond to them before they’re too beaten down through surveillance, intimidation, propaganda and debt. That a Gandhi would rise and challenge government with a peaceful revolution.

But we don’t see that. We see government actions ready to physically challenge Constitutional civil protest. And government, banks and big business cooperating in destroying the middle class and miring Americans in debt.

We even saw it coming and expressed it in a Peculiar Progressive column in 2011: “Solving the Decade of Our Discontent”. We wrote in 2012 about candidates refusing to discuss the Five Vital Realities facing America. And they are, indeed, vital realities. It’s a column in which we specify how to peacefully take your government back from the oligarchs, maybe. In 2013, we wrote about “Austerity as Failure and Killer”.

That’s why we’ve recommended for years that you get organized (you can’t do it alone), get educated, and get active. In this vital jousting for your and your children’s freedom, it’s now your Constitutional move.